Page 81 of Empire of Dark

“Yep,” she muttered, noncommittally. She knew as well as I when her father was involved, I wasn’t the best at controlling my time.

I waited until the side door to the main part of the castle closed behind her and then turned back to Damen. He’d turned away from the castle, his hands on his hips, his head back, staring up at the top of the mountain.

Taking a wide arc, I approached him from the side. His breath was heaving, fury pouring out of him with every breath. He was absolutely going to rip the head off the next person he saw.

Did one approach a rabid dog? No. Not if they valued keeping all their fingers.

Except my skin made me fearless when perhaps I should be less so. I moved in on him cautiously, reminding myself there was sanity under that frothing.

“Damen, what has happened?”

His glare shot to me, shredding me into a thousand gnarled pieces. He turned away from me. “Leave me alone.”

Yes. Exactly what I should do.

I took another step toward him. “Damen?—”

“This doesn’t concern you, Ada.”

“Youconcern me.”

His look whipped to me, his lips still curled in a snarl.

“It may not be a concern of mine, but I am here. I can listen. That may help to expel some of your anger over whatever has happened and help you think straight, for I can see you’re primed and ready to rip the world apart.” I waved my hand in a circle in the air. “And I won’t have an opinion on whatever the matter is because it doesn’t concern me.”

He heaved a sigh, shaking his head, but the snarl eased from his lips.

Progress. He wasn’t looking to tear my head off.

Gravel crunching under his weight, he spun on his heel toward me. His head dipped, a lock of dark hair falling across his eyebrow, but he kept his stare on me. “It’s my idiot brother doing idiot things.”

My ears perked. His brother? I hadn’t heard him say hardly one word about his brothers. His brothers and what they had done to me was the whole damn reason I was here.

I checked my voice before I spoke—I couldn’t be too excited. Damen would read that in me in an instant. “Which brother? What did he do?”

“He just jeopardized the whole damn tenuous hold our family has on power.”

My brow wrinkled. “How did he do that?”

“He stole a girl.”

“He stole a girl—as in, he kidnapped her?”

“Yes.”

I shook my head. “Why?”

“Because he’s fucking obsessed with her. Eustice has been for years.” His hands curled into fists at his sides, the whole ofhis body so rigid, so tight in holding back the ferocity surging through him I feared he would pop—or really start tearing heads off of nearby people.

Eustice. My mind raced, combing through all the information I knew of him. The third eldest brother. Unhinged—all of them were, barring Damen. Liked to party up and down the coast of Greece. Into carving his initials into the skin of women as he fucked them. Ate oysters nonstop. Kept a crew of twenty men, both human and malefic, with him at all times to do his bidding. Generally regarded as the prettiest, but stupidest brother. Top weakness was looking in the mirror—he was unusually enamored with himself.

A kidnapping was atrocious, of course, but there had to be something more at play for Damen to react as he did to the news. “Who, exactly, is the girl?”

“She’s a woman, really, not a little girl. She’s the youngest daughter of the Genora family. They’re the family that is poised to take over as ruling family of the malefics after our family.”

Oh… Shit.

“The Genora family?” The blood started to drain from my face. “The woman, who is she—what is her name?”