Page 18 of Empire of Dark

“She is a relation of sorts.” That’s all I would give her. I didn’t talk about Oriane with anyone. Ever.

She nodded again, not asking another question until we moved into the dining hall.

“What do you think Oriane meant, saying I was death?”

I sighed as I pulled out a chair near the end of the long dining table for Ada. “Oriane doesn’t always understand what is coming into her mind through her power. The wires in her brain all crossed and tangled long ago. She misinterprets things all the time. Sees darkness everywhere around her.” I moved to my chair at the end, sitting with just the corner of the table between us. “What did she mean? Probably nothing. It was just her overactive imagination.”

Ada adjusted the skirt of her dress and set her cloth napkin along her lap, then looked up, her green eyes curious on me. “You think death is darkness?”

“You don’t?”

Her lips pulled inward for a moment, considering. When she spoke, there was a haunted echo in her words. “I think it is deliverance. I think it is light. I think it is reward.”

I paused, my head angling to the side as I studied her. That, coming from a panthenite, I never would have expected. Was Ada looking for death? Was that what Triaten had brought me? A suicidal womb?

He gave me Ada for a year only so she would die under my roof? What mayhem would that unleash? For it would certainly give him a reason to come at me, come at my daughter.

Devious bastard.

I fell silent, poking into Ada’s mind for clues, but her eyes narrowed as I did so, and I could feel her mind shuttering against me. Better to poke into her skull when she was off-guard and not so aware of me.

I set my napkin in my lap and picked up the wine bottle that had already been opened. I poured the red into her glass and then mine.

She made no motion to grab hers until I picked up my own glass and had several sips.

I waited until she drank half her glass of wine and our meals of canard aux cerises, whipped rosemary potatoes, and asparagus had been set before us, the dining hall clear of my staff before I broached the topic of Oriane again.

“About Oriane.”

Ada had just set her wine glass on the table, picking up her fork and knife as she looked over to me. “Yes?”

“She didn’t frighten you?”

“Should she have?”

I shrugged, then set my gaze on her. “Don’t get close to the witch.”

“Why?” Composed, Ada started cutting into her meat.

“She will set a mess into your head that you will never recover from.”

Her hands froze over her meat and she looked at me. “She’s an empath like you?”

So Triaten hadn’t told her about Oriane. Good.

I nodded. “And a telepath. She can dig deeper into anyone’s mind than I’ve ever seen. Unlock hidden secrets that people die trying to hide from her.”

Ada’s face shifted to a shade of white—telling, even as she tried to maintain her calm façade. “She’s that powerful?”

I sighed. “And that crazy.”

With a slight nod, she looked down to her plate and silently cut up her meat into little pieces, but she didn’t eat any of it. Making the appearance of eating while never taking a bite.

I pointed my fork at her plate. “You aren’t eating.”

She smiled sweetly at me. “Neither are you.”

I leaned over and jabbed from her plate several of the tasty morsels of duck she’d already cut, and popped them into my mouth. I chewed, swallowed, and looked pointedly at her. “Satisfied?”

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