Page 95 of Empire of Dark
I wasn’t going to lie to him on this score. I couldn’t.
“That said, I want your brothers dead, Damen. It’s why I agreed to come to your castle in the first place.”
“To find them?” He asked the question without the slightest blink at my words.
My head dipped, my look lowering to his classic black shoes disappearing into the shadows of the sea wall. “To find all of you.” My breath locked into my chest and my gaze lifted to him. “To wipe your bloodline from the earth.”
His head snapped back. “To find us…” He stared at me, his eyes frantic for a moment as he tried to read me, tried to understand me without words. But I’d said the words without emotion, or at least without emotion he could read. An easy feat, for I was at a loss as to how to feel about anything at the moment. The underlining blood thirst for revenge I’d come to his castle with had left me. Dissipated into nothingness.
I knew it the second Eustice charged at me with his sword. The need for his death wasn’t forefront in my mind like I thought it would be. Self-preservation, yes. Harbinger of death, no.
Maybe I wasn’t the killer that I had wanted to be. Needed to be.
“Then this is a moment of celebration for you?” His words spat out, clipped.
“No. Not a celebration.” My voice shook with the raw honesty I was forcing upon myself. “Am I sorry your brother is dead? No. Do I wish it had been my sword across his neck instead of yours? Yes. But only because it is a burden that I didn’t intend for you to have to bear, killing your own brother.”
He looked away from me, his stare going far out to sea. Long seconds passed before he shook his head. “In the end, it only could have been me. There was a rightness in that.”
My mouth pulled into a frown as I stared at the hard cut of his profile. He was fighting against all he’d ever known, ever lived.
Folotto blood, united and merciless.
Except that wasn’t how he was built.
Damen was different from his brothers. I knew it. He had to know it about himself as well, as much as he walked the Folotto line. Adhered to the Folotto code.
And this, what happened tonight, had to be torture for him.
On instinct, my hands shifted outward to slide along his waist and my dress flew open at my side.
My hands dropped away from him and I gathered up the shreds of fabric to hold it together again.
His fingers brushed against my bare upper arms as I adjusted the dress, his left hand pausing as he traced the brand on my right arm.
“I ruined your dress.”
I looked up at him. “Ruined in the best way possible.”
He smirked. “Still, I ruined it, I should have taken more care.”
“You have made sure I have plenty more back at the castle. I’m not worried about the dress.”
“Still…” He slipped his arm around me and pushed my hands out of the way, clamping the edges of the dress together and holding it for me as he started walking again, squeezing me to his side. “You looked like a damn queen in this thing. I will miss it.”
I glanced up at him as we walked. “What is it with you and all the dresses in my closet? Clearly you do that for any female staying there. I’ve seen the dresses in the other rooms near mine.”
He shrugged. “Some women need to put something on like those dresses to feel beautiful. To be desired. They don’t feel like they can do that on their own, in their own skin—be desirable.”
I scoffed a chuckle. “Really? How is that possible? With the way you look when you’re on the prowl, I don’t know how any woman could not feel desired by you.”
His lips quirked to the side, giving me a funny look.
“What?”
He stopped walking, forcing me to stop as well or risk him pulling my dress straight off me. Something I wouldn’t put past him.
He turned toward me, his arm around my back pulling me tight to him, his eyes intense on mine. “Make no mistake, Ada. I only look like that when I look at you. No one else.”