Page 68 of Empire of Dark

“Clearly. Why do you preserve it?”

I inhaled a breath, even though it felt like fire going down into my lungs. I was never going to do this. Never going to talk about it. Never. Not with anyone.

At my silence, she looked to me. Rage still brewed in her green eyes, but unlike a malefic, she had control on the rage. Control on it before it destroyed everything in her path.

Truly, that was the most significant difference between our species.

One had control over rage. One did not.

Two sides of a coin. One always the winner. One always the loser.

“Who painted this?” She nodded with her head toward the rain of demons, then locked her stare on me.

I stepped fully into the room, silent, and then closed the door behind me.

What should send fear into her eyes, what would send fear into the eyes of anyone else—being trapped in a room with a malefic that was furious and clearly unhinged—didn’t so much as make her blink.

For how much she didn’t trust me, she sure as hell trusted me a lot.

Another breath. More fire into my lungs.

Fire that wanted out.Neededto escape.

I ignored it.

My footfalls creaking along the ancient wooden floorboards, I moved to stand next to her, my stare landing on the painting.

The one I could never look at when I was in this room.

I opened my mouth.

No sound.

I swallowed, my lips parting again. “This was the last painting he had been working on.”

Her gaze shifted from me to the painting.

“Who was he?”

“My eldest brother. Rodolfo. I called him Rodo. I was the only one.”

“He was important to you?”

The side of my face twitched. An understatement.

My voice dipped, catching, words ripping out from deep in my gut, tearing through my chest as I spoke. “Funny fact, there were never any girls in our family. Not one born in our generation. And my mother was killed soon after she gave birth to me. My father as well. I was the last of nine. Rodo was the oldest. He was the one that came back here to the castle. Raised me. My grandfather was here, but he was…evil, I guess, is the best word for him. Rodo was never going to let me be at the mercy of that man.”

I paused, letting my words sit in the air.

I’d never once spoken of Rodo after he was killed. It wasn’t our way.

“Rodo kept all of us in line. I don’t know how—it had been a mixture of using fear and cunning to keep my deranged brothers from burning the world down to embers. He was different with them than he was with me. I was never scared of him. He was my father. My mother. My only family. My everything. And he didn’t think like the others—he wasn’t unhinged like the rest of us. He could be unspeakably brutal, but it was calculated. Never without purpose.”

Out of nowhere, her left forefinger entwined with my pinky and ring fingers. No other movement, her look still fixed onto the painting.

The instinct to jerk my hand away ripped through me, but I held steady, letting the warmth of her finger singe into my skin.

How was she always like this? For as hot as my skin was, hers was always hotter. Fire on fire.