Page 3 of Empire of Dark

Then I sliced him across the chest and darted around him.

“Bullocks.” He caught my sword arm, spinning me back toward him before I could escape him. “This was my favorite suit.”

I glanced down at it. Blood seeped along the cut into what I imagined was very expensive fabric. Who participated in a melee in a suit like that?

I shrugged. “Not anymore.”

His look went murderous.

A whistle. Triaten’s whistle.

It’d been forever since I’d heard it, but it would also be forever locked into my memory.

Time to get out of here.

Lifting my left arm, I spread my fingers wide and drew a metal stein into my hand from the table to my left. My fingerswrapped around the thick handle. I didn’t usually resort to using this power in a battle, but alas, no killing.

Before he saw it coming, I smashed the stein into the malefic’s head.

He reeled back a step and it gave me a sliver of space to get my leg up and kick him in the belly.

His eyes squinted closed from the impact and I disappeared.

Outside into the night, I gulped a mouthful of the clear, crisp air, trying to stop the right side of my head from starting to pound. I didn’t expend enough energy inside the pub. I’d created a damn surge of energy and let it run free through my body, but now there was too much in me buzzing around—a hornets’ nest under attack.

I had to get control now. Breath in. Whistle it out. Breath in. Whistle it out.

Out of nowhere, Triaten grabbed my arm and pulled me down a side alley. I looked for the line of his and his men’s vehicles. There. I aimed straight for them—as much as the haphazard cobblestones would allow.

One step. Two.Breath in. Whistle out.

One street down and Triaten shoved me into the back of one of the black SUVs, jumping in behind me.

“Drive.” He barked out to his man at the wheel.

I leaned back on the cushions, my eyes closed. Good. The pain of the manic energy wasn’t so bad I couldn’t move. Wasn’t frozen in place.

It was sometimes.

Sometimes for days.

Filling my head. Torturing me.

But this. This I could handle.

“Ada—your hands—they’re shaking. Are you hurt?”

My fingers curled into fists as I opened my eyes, steeling my look before I glanced at Triaten. I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Thisis the first time I’ve been out in society in more than a century, and then not even a day in, I’m in a battle. That’s all.”

His dark eyes narrowed, his stare running over my body and scrutinizing my face hard—too hard.

“Tri, I’m fine, I swear it.”

“Are you fine? Tell me now or we abort this plan.”

I held his stare. I couldn’t afford to give him the slightest reason to pull me from the mission. I hated the Folottos and I was determined to be the one that was going to dive into the den of them.

“Tri, if this is how we find out where all of the Folotto brothers are so that we can wipe them from the earth, then I am fine.” My voice vibrated with intention. “I will be fine. I will make this happen.”

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