Page 94 of Empire of Dark
Cletus. A shiver ran straight through my belly, freezing me from the inside out. Cletus was nothing but a ghost. There were no pictures of him and I had never found out where he was. Not one sighting of him in a hundred years, though a whisper about him would pop up now and again.
I’d hoped against hope that he was dead like the rest. He had to be. It only made sense.
“Anyone’s hold on our family has always been tenuous. It wasn’t until three of my brothers were killed five years ago that I was able to fully take over the family. And my time since then has been divided between keeping the family and all the other malefics in line and my personal obligations.”
“Venetia?”
“Yes.”
I nodded, feeling slightly guilty for not contributing much to the world in the last hundred years. For hiding out from everything. How many times had the world almost imploded while I had been nestled in my safe cocoon at the Academy?
While people like Damen had been keeping the world from burning down to ashes while trying to heal his daughter at the same time.
Oh, and fucking a lot of women in his spare moments. Lest I not forget that piece.
Damen cracked open the door of the storage room and peeked out. Satisfied, he stepped back and grabbed my free hand, leading me out the door and off the loading dock.
Sounds of the battle inside the club still echoed out into the night, but the rear of the club was empty except for the dead bodies littering the ground.
Damen veered off to pick up my arm cuff, dented as it was. It would need to be fixed before it fit around my arm again. He set us off directly toward the seawall that lined this part of the town. Turning south, we walked along the footpath adjacent to the wall and his steps slowed, almost nonchalant about all the blood that had been spilled behind us. As though we were merely out on an innocent date and had just finished a fabulous meal, then gone for a romantic walk along the sea.
Romantic, if we both weren’t splattered with blood and I wasn’t holding the scraps of my dress onto my body.
Hell—in a weird and very wrong way, itwasromantic, even with all of that. The waves lolling against the rocks along the seawall, clear skies above, the heavens twinkling above in a million dancing lights, the plumpness of the sea air, the faint burn of salt in my nose, Damen holding tight onto my hand—like I would disappear in a wisp of the breeze if he let go.
I drew in a heavy breath. I truly had lost all good sense.
How had this happened? I’d been telling myself all of this was because I hadn’t been out of the Academy in a hundred years. An obvious trap, falling for the first new guy I met living in the real world.
But I knew it was more. This wasn’t just that my vagina had been starved for a century. It was more that my vagina had struck the jackpot on the first pull of the hot, anti-hero slot machine.
Was it that I couldn’t believe my luck or was it that I didn’t know what luck was anymore?
We made it a distance away from the club and I looked up at Damen. “What the hell was that in the club? I didn’t know who was swinging a blade at who—or at me. Is it a common occurrence when that many malefics gather in one place?”
He chuckled. “No. Despite common belief about how my kind act, that is not a common occurrence—at least not in that grand of a melee. The whole club was in on that one.” We walked a few steps before he pinned me with a look. “Why did Eustice go after you?”
“I had stepped away from his henchman that had let it slip to me where Len was—I’d gone deep into that dark hall by the washrooms so I could tell you. I thought I was alone, but one of his men had followed me close enough to hear me tell you where she was. Then he slipped in behind me when I was walking tothe bar. He grabbed me and then Albert and your men attacked them.” I paused, my eyes narrowing at Damen for he had told me nothing of Albert and his men shadowing me. “Didn’t trust me alone?”
“Didn’t trust the world around you when you were alone.”
I exhaled a sigh, nodding. No arguing with that. It was actually nice he hadn’t let me walk into a pit of vipers without backup.
“After I saw you through the crowd, one of your brother’s men—that huge brute on the ground just outside the back door—grabbed me from behind, locking my arms and dragging me out the back door. Eustice followed us out. I guess he saw his men with me. It took me until we got out the door to get my blade across the brute’s arm and then into his neck.”
Damen’s eyebrows lifted. “You knew that was my brother?”
“I did. I know what he looks like. He’s never kept a low profile.” I didn’t bother to add that I’d stalked out every tiny tidbit of his brothers from any source possible over the years.
He shook his head. “There were too many pictures of him online. Lived like a fucking king, that idiot.”
His voice, if anything, sounded wounded, almost nostalgic.
My feet stopped and I moved in front of him to fully face him. “I know. I know what you did. What you did for me. What you just had to choose back there—my life over his.”
He stared down at me, a gleam I couldn’t read in his eyes flickering in the moonlight reflecting off the water. “You are happy about his death?”
I exhaled a deep sigh. “I won’t lie about it and I cannot apologize for my part in his death. But I didn’t seek him out and drag him out that back door of the club. He attacked me after I felled his men.” I dropped Damen’s hand and took a small step backward, putting space between us.