Page 11 of Empire of Dark

“And also what scares me about your plan.” He turned to me, his eyes lasering in on me. “If, by some chance, you do manage to woo Maude, the child is ours. Panthenite. It won’t be raised by your kind.”

I shook my head. “Believe me, after what my kind did to my daughter, I want my offspring nowhere near my kind.”

“On that we agree.” Triaten inclined his head toward me. “One year. One year and Maude is free to leave. The debt paid, no matter the outcome.”

I flippantly waved my hand in the air. “Already agreed. If she doesn’t produce by one year, then she isn’t of the caliber that you promised.”

“She is.”

“Of course.” I met his glare, noting his spike of defense of the female.

Triaten started toward the door, but then paused to look at me. “One more thing about your daughter.”

The muscles along my shoulder blades instinctively tightened. “What of her?”

“You know I’ve been keeping tabs on her. I also know what happened in Tibet, just in case you believed that escaped my attention.”

Dammit. My mouth went to a thin line. Ihadhoped that had escaped his attention.

There hadn’t been any reprisal, so I’d assumed he had missed it.

“I made what she did disappear before the elders learned of it. But that was hard enough, and done only by the grace of Charlotte pleading the child’s case to me.” His mouth closed, his lips twitching like he never meant to say her name in front of me. “So keep her in check, Damen. That was the deal. Keep your child in line or we will have to do it for you.”

My eyes went to slits, my voice thick with venom. “You threaten her, you threaten me.”

“No. Not a threat.” Triaten shook his head casually. “Just an acknowledgement of the situation. I thought it needed to be spoken out loud, just in case you’d forgotten.”

“Consider it spoken.” I grounded the words out through clenched teeth.

Triaten nodded and left the room.

Asshole.

Chapter Four

{ ADA }

“How long have you worked here?” I asked the maid that had walked into the drawing room with a tray of tea.

“My whole life, miss.” Her mouth crinkled to the side. “Well, not my whole life, but it seems like it. Since I was fourteen.”

“Fourteen, but what about school?” I didn’t know exactly where in the Alps I was—Triaten hadn’t disclosed that information—but the educational system in this general area should be up to par. Fourteen seemed far too early to quit school.

I could just ask the maid, Josie, where exactly I was, but I could only assume at this point that everything I did or said would be relayed back to Damen. He didn’t need to know that I’d been sheltered to suffocation by Triaten.

My exact location was just another tidbit of information Triaten had decided to keep from me.

For my own safety, of course. Always for my own safety. A line that had been used far too many times on me.

“I left school early,” Josie said as she arranged the tea and biscuits on a side table next to the fireplace in this drawing room that was weirdly stuffed full of sheep.

I could tell she was a sweetie in the few minutes she’d been in the room, with wide brown eyes and gorgeous dark hair thatshe’d weaved into two thick braids that wrapped back from the edges of her temples. She had only the slightest accent in her English—an accent I couldn’t quite place.

“Why did you stop school?”

She shrugged as she poured a cup of tea for me. “My family has always worked for the Folottos. Has always worked at Netherstone. It’s the job that I had been raised for, so school didn’t much matter. I was always only going to be coming to one place, and that was here.”

That took me aback. This was a castle, sure, but it also wasn’t 1820.

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