Page 7 of Empire of Dark

That we were entitled to more. That we were better than any other living creature. Merely because we were born as we were.

Weird, how the mind worked. How easy it was to convince one’s self of entitlement when you were the beneficiary of the lies.

I was still amazed at how the students at the Academy came to us. The pompous thoughts in their heads. The privilege. The gall.

Sickening at times, really.

Only the elite of the elite came through the Academy, so they were already the chosen ones.

I counted a win in every graduating class if I had managed to dissuade just one of them that they were not entitled to everything on this earth by sheer matter of birth.

It was a losing battle, but one still worth fighting.

And the Academy was my home. The only place I was safe.

So to leave it, Triaten knew what he was asking of me.

But I owed him this. I owed it to myself.

And I would gamble on the chance of being discovered here—I had to.

We curved around a sharp outcropping of sheer granite and the castle came into view.

Fused into the cliffside, tall, white limestone walls glimmered in the sunlight, juxtaposed to the dark granite of the mountain. How this place had ever been built was beyond me. The limestone probably wasn’t native to the area, and the stones in those walls were huge.

Majestic, the castle was framed on the corners with spire-topped towers that rose, echoing the stretch of the mountaintop behind it. Evenly spaced turrets dotted the outer wall of thecastle, which hung precipitously over empty air that descended into a deep ravine.

The type of fairytale castle that inevitably held a beast of some making.

We curved farther out on the road, and the angle to the castle changed. On the left side, behind the left tower, what looked like part of the structure had been ripped away—sunk into the valley below. Huge stone bricks were raw and exposed, jutting into nothingness.

Most of the castle appeared to be intact. But in that one area, the heavy stones had clearly been torn apart. And not delicately.

A flicker of trepidation fluttered in my chest.

No.This would be easy.

Resist. That’s all it would take.

Resist.

One year, and I could disappear again.

Resist.

Chapter Three

{ DAMEN }

Well, hell.

I should have known.

The female Triaten had delivered to me nosed about the drawing room I’d had her placed in.

The very same female that I’d saved at the Grog & Ale. The pretentious little ingrate.

I’d saved her neck from a sword and she’d rewarded me with a stein crashing over my head and a kick in my belly.