Page 42 of Empire of Dark

Instinct demanded I fly onto my feet and track him down to yell at him again, but the last time I’d done that, there had been things I didn’t understand. No need to make the same mistake twice.

I tried to calm the rage rising inside me and, instead, I cringed a smile, trying to calm her. “Why should no one be around you?”

“Because I hurt people around me.” Her eyes glassy, she was one blink away from crying.

“Hmmm.” I held her gaze. “But you haven’t hurt me and you don’t hurt your father?”

“No. I suppose not.”

“What is he afraid you’re going to do?”

Her shoulders lifted. “When I can’t control myself, I hurt people around me. I kill people. I always do.”

My breath hitched in my throat.

Control.

That’s what it was with me, that’s when it all went terribly bad—when I didn’t have control of my energy. I understood this girl far better than she could imagine.

And she needed my help more than I imagined.

I shifted several inches toward her on the bench. “Well, I may have a solution for the me-being-near-you part of the equation, but it requires me telling you a secret. A secret you have to swear to keep.”

Her amber brown eyes lifted to me, her curiosity piqued. “What is it?”

“I can’t be hurt.”

Her brow furrowed as her head snapped back. “What does that mean?”

I reached down to grab the blade I always kept strapped to my calf. In Damen’s hand as I walked away from him yesterday, it had appeared on my bedside table overnight.

While I was sleeping.

I made the conscious choice after I opened my eyes and saw it to not think about the how and when that had happened.

I lifted the dagger and angled my opposite forearm in front of me. “This is what that means.” I pulled the blade hard against my skin, sawing at it. The sharp blade didn’t break skin.

Her jaw dropped slightly and she reached out, her fingertip running against the point of the blade. “It’s a trick.”

A drop of blood appeared on the pad of her fingertip as she pressed it hard into the augentrum steel. I kept my dagger scary-level sharp.

Her finger snatched back to her belly and she nodded toward my arm. “That doesn’t hurt?”

I sawed at my skin a few more times for effect. “No.”

“Do you feel it?”

“Yes. But it is just pressure.”

Her head shook, her gaze glued on the blade cutting across my arm. “But I don’t understand.”

“There are so many powers that our kinds can have.” I leaned over to slip my dagger back into its sheath against my leg. “This was just one I was born with. I can’t be hurt. The swords don’t break skin. I have just one spot on my body that is vulnerable.”

“Really? Where?”

I reached over to my right arm and unclamped the titanium clamp that I always had wrapped around my bicep. “Here.” To prove the point, I pulled my blade once more and pushed the tip of the dagger into my skin and it drew a bead of blood. “I wasborn like this. One weird vulnerable spot. It’s why the clamp is made of titanium—to withstand most anything.”

Her nose wrinkled, her eyes huge. “That is bizarre. You are bizarre.”

---