Page 27 of Empire of Dark

But that stare sank into me, like it did every time. The stare that told me he would get what he wanted out of me. And I would enjoy it when he did.

That was the worst part of that stare.

The promise it held.

The promise that my insides would flip, my body drawn to him just the same as he was drawn to me.

Only he’d not bothered to obscure the matter. He knew exactly what he wanted out of me—to be in his bed. The exact thing I needed to resist—even as desire dripped from his stare, it still drew me in, enticed me, sent quivers down through my core.

Resist. Resist at all costs.

It was turning out to be harder than I imagined it would.

I cleared my throat. I had to redirect this away from where his mind was clearly shifting. “Is Venetia a half-breed?”

“You know her name?”

“She told me.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “She is a half-breed.”

“Half human or half panthenite?”

“Panthenite.”

“Holy shit.” My breath caught in my throat, and I turned from him, walking over to the window and setting my fingers on the stone sill. Though I pretended to stare out at the cliffside of the mountain, my eyes had glazed over and I couldn’t really see what was outside the window.

Venetia was a panthenite-malefic half-breed that could destroy the world. No wonder the mixing of our species had always been forbidden.

I tried to dislodge the breath clumped in my throat before I spoke, but the air stayed in place, making my words wispy. “She’s the reason, isn’t she? She’s the reason Triaten even agreed to bringing me here in the first place. You want another half-malefic half-panthenite at your disposal. You want the power.”

“Both Triaten and I want a balance of power in the world, yes.”

Well…fuck me.

It would have been nice if Triaten had told me the full of it before dropping me off here. Not that he was ever forthcoming with information.

Always thinking for me, he was.

It’d always been that way between us. He knew best. And I let him know best.

I nodded, staring out the window as my vision came back into focus. A labyrinth. This window overlooked the evergreenlabyrinth sprawling out below on the grounds that I had seen but had yet to venture into. I stared at the pattern, trying to commit it to memory. “What happened to Venetia that you would need to hide her away here on a mountain?”

“She can control the ground, or more exactly, the lava flowing deep under the ground and with that, she tried to destroy the world—or at least California. That was to be the start of it.”

“When?”

“Five years ago.”

“Why?”

He heaved a sigh. “It wasn’t her choice. She’d been forced into it by my asshole brother and his clan. I don’t think she even knew her own power at that point. The damage she could do.”

A chill shuddered through my body at the mention of his brother. Which brother was it? Instant fury started to twist about in the deep recesses of my gut.

Keep it at bay. Hide it away. Clamp it down.

Refocusing my thoughts, I stared at the far end of the evergreen maze. “What did they do to her?”

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