Page 1 of A Hint of Darkness

1

Helena’s piercing eyes seared into me. Her curiosity had warped into accusation. One moment they had Peter, the Dark Caster, imprisoned in a cell, and the ability to move freely between my world and the underworld. Moments later, they were the ones imprisoned in the underworld, Peter was gone, and I was left in his place. The only thing they knew was that I was the reason.

Despite my denials, Helena didn’t seem convinced that I wasn’t a co-conspirator. Her desperate need to learn the truth behind their imprisonment was clear in her graceful feline movements. Every time she moved, I did the same, cautiously, to keep her in my line of sight.

“Your human has caused a lot of problems,” she said, snapping her eyes from me to Dominic. I could feel the collective weight of Dominic’s and Anand’s eyes on me, but I was too wary of Helena to risk looking at them. After all, she was the one who’d casually suggested taking off a finger and murdering me just on the mere possibility it would fix the problem and return the escaped prisoners. If I was the reason we were imprisoned in the underworld, and if she believed freedom could be gained by my death, there wasn’t a shadow of doubt she would kill me.

“This is my problem to deal with,” Dominic provided, his voice a grave command. Before she could respond, his hand braced around my wrist like a cuff and he was navigating me up the stairs. The more I struggled, the firmer his grip became.

The clench of his jaw made the muscles of his neck bulge. His silence was ominous.

“You know I had nothing to do with this,” I explained as he marched me through the palatial home. The foreboding nature of his silence pricked at my survival instinct. I needed him to say something. Soothe my fears. Assure me that he knew I had no role in what had happened. Provide a plan of action. Something. Instead, he hauled me through the house as if I was a suspect. I hated that my mind kept going to his room of torture in his farmhouse. And the room at the entrance of the home, which he wouldn’t allow me to fully see. My imagination went haywire.

“Dominic?”

Screw this. I’m not going any farther with him until I know where his head’s at. Gripping my socked toes into the marble floor for traction didn’t even slow him. It only reminded me of when he’d taken on a roomful of people in a macabre display of violence. At least his claws weren’t out. Not yet.

I went limp. He wasn’t going anywhere with dead weight. A flit of amusement curled his lips. In a flash of movement, he swooped me into a bundle and tossed me over his shoulder.

“Put me down right now!” I demanded.

After a few minutes, he did. After throwing open the door of a room, he lowered me to my feet. Unsteady, it took me a few moments to straighten to my full height. The several inches he had on me, I felt.

“Don’t you ever do that again.”

Banked fire raced across his eyes. They were dark amber, his eyes. They drank me in and he made his unspoken challenge, swallowing the space he’d allowed between us.

“Or what, Luna?” he asked, drawing out my name in a taunt.

“You know I had nothing to do with this, right?”

Canting his head, he studied me. In an attempt to keep space between us, I’d inadvertently backed myself into the wall. His arms caged me in.

“Do I?”

As a distraction from his intense gaze, I took a look around. The room was more spacious than the one they’d placed me in during my stay. Minimalist décor. A cognac-tan contemporary chesterfield sofa in front of the wall-to-ceiling window. Alabaster walls. Two slim dark wood bookcases in each corner. Bold scenic large art pieces on the walls that didn’t distract from the view of the garden. Open French doors to his bedroom. I could only see the bed that stayed true to the simplistic style, but moodier. Dark steel-gray platform bed, larger than the typical king size. Fluffy duvet with contrasting darker coverlet. Three pillows lined across it. I assumed this was his living space. Everything about it was distinctly him.

“Luna,” he said, coaxing my attention back to him.

“You do. Why would I do anything to lock myself in the underworld with your violence-positive sister and prisoners so heinous that they were sentenced to be here? I don’t want to be here.”

Still silent, his hand enclosed my neck. Not tight, yet I was fully aware of it and how easily that could change. His thumb ran lazily over the pulse in my neck that was pumping erratically. It wouldn’t have been so frightening if he was more relaxed. Tension and wrath were in every slightest movement of his body. He was trapped in the underworld. A caged animal. He’d probably never been restricted.

“Tell me what happened again.” He leaned in, his lips inches from mine and his thumb still languidly moving.

Rehashing everything that happened, I gave him minute detail, hoping he’d find answers where I couldn’t. It wasn’t like the incident when I’d unintentionally released the prisoners from the underworld. Then, it was apparent something had happened. One minute, I was perusing a weird book; the next, it pricked me, drew blood, and I was looking down at blank pages. This was entirely different, so he got the entire minute-by-minute replay of my mundane day. My day at work, details of what I ate for dinner, that I cleaned my apartment and had conversations with my brother and Emoni. The day had ended with me winding down with a cup of ginger tea and air-popped popcorn. Dominic knew in intricate detail the title of the rom-com I watched and that it had become my top choice over my previous favorite fantasy genre, having now had my fill of the supernatural world. Pushing down any form of embarrassment, I told him how apprehensive I now was about reading a book and how close I was to using my e-reader instead.

His eyes traveled over me. “Why did Peter choose you?” he inquired, but the question wasn’t for me, just an internal speculation that he’d allowed me in on.

“I don’t know,” I said before his hand slipped from my neck and eased to my waist, under my shirt, the warmth of his touch slinking over me. Lavender filtered into the space, a somnolent feeling of peace fell over me, and I found myself relaxing into complacency.

No the hell I’m not. My hand shot out to punch him. He grabbed it and pushed it against the wall, then my other hand received the same treatment before I could make an attempt with it.

“Luna, Luna, Luna,” he drawled, a sharp edge in his tone rounding off. “Why so violent?”

“Me? You just had your hand around my throat,” I hissed.

His lips still curled. “Did you believe I was about to choke you?”

---