Page 79 of Empire of Dark

She moved to stand next to Damen.

A smile quirked onto his lips that wasn’t dislodging, and he motioned to Venetia. “Align with me and mirror my motions.”

Slowly at first, Damen moved Venetia out of a defensive position using the Musashi tactic. Again and again they repeated it, faster and faster until Damen was satisfied with his daughter’s movement.

He flipped my sword into his right hand. “Now we practice it from both a right hander and a left hander.”

Swords clanked, slowly, Damen walking her through the motions and onto what to do immediately after the defensive move.

The sun at my back, I relaxed, watching him with her. They were natural and easy together for once. Not strained. Not both of them searching for words that they didn’t have for each other.

All it took was a little deadly steel clanking between them.

Out of nowhere, my chest cramped at the sight.

I’d been secretly, in the darkest parts of my heart, starting to wonder what Damen would be like with our child. The one I would bear him. The one I was now almost certain would never be.

There was no logical reason for me not to be pregnant at this point. I was a breeder. That was my blood. He was a breeder, that was his blood. No reason.

My lips parted as I tried to take a steadying breath that only served to wedge a hard lump into my throat.

“Shoulders back,” Damen said to Venetia. “That is your balance, your strength. Don’t curl forward.”

She straightened and then laughed in the next moment as she avoided a strike with her quick feet. He laughed in turn. Easy, heartfelt. He was actually quite good with Venetia when he wasn’t thinking about it. When he had a concrete task with her, he could relax and make her smile. And her hesitancy around him disappeared, her stare centered on him like he was what she’d been waiting for her whole life.

Which, truthfully, she had been.

She needed a father like this. One to show her life and how to survive it—the life she would lead as a malefic. Even as a half-breed, the panthenites would never embrace her—she’d been ruined far too young for that to ever happen. Her place in the world was with the malefics, and she needed Damen on her side if she was to survive. Lucky for her, for as much as Damen insisted that he didn’t know how to father, he did.

All it took was showing up.

I wanted to see him with our child like that one day. Teaching, sparring, playing, laughing. I wanted it. Wanted it more desperately than I was allowing myself to admit.

I wanted it because I wanted him. All his smiles. All his growls. All his touches. I wanted him for more than just this short slice of time.

Even if he was the enemy.

Even if I should hate him.

But he was not his blood. Not his family.

He’d shown it, time and again. He’d made mefeelit.

“Well done, Venetia,” Damen said as Venetia ducked a swing of his sword and spun out of his reach.

They both stood straight, relaxed, with smiles on their faces and they turned toward me.

A crisp wind, bitter on the front edge of it, swept down from the mountainside and blew Venetia’s bangs up and to the side. A gust that was the direct opposite to the summer breezes that had been flowing up from the valley since I’d arrived here.

I shivered, my shoulders lifting. “That is a Poppins wind if ever there was one.”

Venetia’s forehead scrunched. “What? Poppins who?”

My eyes wide, I pinned Damen with a perplexed look. “You’ve never shown herMary Poppins?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “That has not been high on my list of things to accomplish with Venetia.”

I stood up, my hands on my hips. “You are a shit dad.”