Page 107 of A Debt of Darkness

“You’re not angry?” she asks, darting her gaze between us.

“No,” we reply in unison before bursting into laughter.

“We’ve been friends a very long time,” Ryan says. “There’s not much left unsaid between us.”

Matt coughs and everyone’s eyes snap to him.

“There is one thing,” he says, tentatively. “I hate to ask, Ivy, but I need to know. How did you get out of your room? I locked it and it’s bothering me. It feels like you’re hiding something.”

She shrugs.

“She is,” Ryan says, sitting up and paying attention. “Ivy, the security cameras went down before you left the room and we didn’t get it back up until after we got you back. What happened?”

Ivy sits up and her heart races in her chest. Ryan’s right,she’s hiding something and she’s staring at me, searching for a way out of this. She bites her bottom lip and she knows she’s caught, pleading with me to understand as the sense of anger and betrayal rises inside me.

Her fingers dig into my forearm and my eyes snap down, watching her clinging onto me.

Fuck, she’s not looking for a way out. She’s looking for reassurance. I won’t punish her for whatever happened.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “We need to know to keep you safe, lea. We’ve been through quite enough in the past few days and there are no consequences for whatever you’re frightened of telling me. I promise.”

She nods, but her pulse doesn’t slow.

Ivy’s still shaking when her lips part and she tries to find a way to tell us whatever the hell it was that took her out of her room. She’s still scared and I don’t like it. I fucking hate it and we’re going to be working on building up the trust between us.

“Damon,” she says. “My father’s head of security.”

Ryan leans forward, and his eyes snap to mine. I know exactly where this is going, and Ivy doesn’t need to say anything more. But she’s continuing because she thinks this is a confession and it breaks my fucking heart.

“He opened the door, Matt. He said he didn’t have the time to explain, but I had to come with him or else I was going to die. I’ve known him since I was a child and I trusted him.”

She holds back a sob, and Ryan nods, encouraging her to finish. For all our goddamn sakes.

“And I did. We were going to hide in the woods, until it was over. I wasn’t running away. I promise I was coming back,” Ivy blurts out and there’s panic in her voice. She’s afraid I’ll lock her in the dungeons again and I pull her against me, reassuring her she’s safe and we’re secure. “They caught up with us and heheld them back, Ryan. He stayed in the castle so I could escape and…”

Ivy bursts into tears and sobs against my chest. I cradle her and stare at Ryan, telling him this damn well ends now. We’ve got the information we need and it wasn’t what we thought it would be. I’d assumed one of Rowan’s coven got to her and she somehow escaped. The presence of the man who’s stopped protecting her father is surprising and intriguing—and he got through our security in the middle of a fucking war. It suggests we’ve got a massive fucking problem we’ll have to deal with.

“He’s not dead, Ivy,” Ryan says, gently.

Her head snaps up and she shakes it furiously.

“There’s no way he could have survived, Ryan. There were too many of them. He couldn’t have…”

“He did,” Matt says. “We found several piles of dust in the room you escaped from. There was no trace of human blood, Ivy. We’d assumed it was the result of vampires fighting, but it sounds like Damon took out several vampires on his own and then disappeared.”

He fucking abandoned her to her fate.

He should have gone after her if he was so damn keen to keep her safe. Especially when he’s capable of exterminating the vermin from Rowan’s coven. Instead, he left Ivy unprotected, and it almost got her killed.

I’m going to find the fucker, and I’m going to kill him myself.

Even if he saved her life, he jeopardized her safety and I don’t give a shit what his excuse is. There isn’t one. Not one good enough to satisfy the anger raging inside me.

“It’s okay,” I say, half to Ivy, half to myself.

She whimpers and rests her head against my chest.

“We’ll find Damon.”

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