Page 86 of Empire of Light

With the advancements the whole of society had made into brain research, we still didn’t have a fucking clue about how the brain really worked. Sure, we liked to talk about neural pathways and gray matter and white matter and cranial nerves and all that shit. But how it really worked, especially in malefics and panthenites, was a mystery of the universe that was determined to stay a mystery of the universe.

That was likely what drove Cletus mad in the first place—wanting to understand something that was not understandable. Not controllable.

I sat next to her bed in Leo’s compound on the Filothei Hill outside of Athens, fucking terrified for days about what Cletus did to her.

What she would be like when her brain finally healed enough for her to wake up.

What she would remember.

What she would forget.

Had Cletus wiped those synapses and neurons that held her memories of me from existence?

He’d wanted a mate, and for that, he would have had to destroy all evidence of me in her mind. For if there was one thing I was certain of, it was that I had become her soul, just as she’d become mine.

That was the one thought that I tried a million times to suppress—had he destroyed her memory of me? But it would always creep back into my head like the cockroach that Cletus had been.

Even dead, he was a fucking ghost haunting my existence.

I rubbed my eyes, staring at her still form in the bed, watching her chest lift and descend. I’d brought her into the bathtub myself, scrubbing her body free of any evidence of Cletus’s hands on her.

But it wasn’t that easy, washing away what he’d done to her.

I was stuck here, my breath shallow, still praying to the gods I didn’t believe in that she would wake and know me. I’d set my hands, my lips on her forehead multiple times, checking to see if she was in the slightest pain.

She wasn’t.

She was a void. No energy. Good or bad.

That was what scared me the most.

Triaten and Aiden had both stayed—awkward guests in this malefic compound. They knew as well as I how she might wake up, and they needed to be here just in case she had to be whisked away back to Colorado or the Academy. Back to familiarity.

Triaten had offered to pull Venetia from the Academy for me—at least until Ada woke. Something strictly off-limits for the rules of the Academy, but no one was going to argue with Triaten on the matter. Generous of him.

I declined.

I didn’t know what Venetia would do if she was here and Ada awoke with no memory of her.

That was something that needed to be managed and I could barely manage my own breathing at the moment. Every minute that passed, losing another little piece of my mind.

I shook my head, trying to conjure what Ada would want me to conjure.

Hope. Faith that this unyielding energy that had always surged in a primal, undeniable way between us would keep our connection unbroken.

I closed my eyes, trying to reset the manic thoughts in my mind.

WhenAda awoke.Whenshe remembered me. That’s when I would send for Venetia. All things thatwouldhappen.

I tried to send those thoughts, that optimism into my mind, for I could hear Ada’s voice demanding that very thing of me.

But that was her world—a world of optimism—and I did not live in that world. Never had.

Just one more thing I would fail her at.

Her chest suddenly lifted in a violent intake of air and I scrambled forward, sitting on the side of the bed, my hand wrapping along her thigh under the sheet.

In the next instant, she shot upright in the bed, gasping for breath, her eyes not opening but her hands flailing about, searching. Words croaking out in raw whispers in between her gasps. “Damen…kids…did…did…I…did…I…kill…”