Page 47 of Empire of Dark

“She destroyed the wing that houses any of my children when they are here visiting.”

Instant understanding surged in my chest. “She was jealous?”

“I don’t know what in the hell she was.” His hand ran over his face. “But she can’t control her power, when I have done everything—everything—I could think of during the last five years to help her learn to control it.”

I nodded, because I couldn’t do anything else.

Because that was when the pain hit.

What had been building in my body for weeks. Energy unspent. A wrecking ball into my skull, it sent my knees weak and I had to catch myself on the wall to stop from falling.

I needed to disappear.

My sight blurring in front of me, I spun from Damen without a word.

I had to hide.

Get to safety.

Chapter Twelve

{ DAMEN }

I found her.

I’d been pissed, so hadn’t gone looking for Ada for two days.

I hadn’t wanted to see her and all the judgement in her eyes.

Judgement that sliced straight through me, knowing exactly what I knew in my core.

I was a fucking failure.

I’d failed Venetia. Year after year after year.

My daughter still couldn’t control herself, no matter what or who I’d stuck in front of her to fix her. The ancient half-breed, Leander, deep in the Himalayas. More old men on mountains. Drugs—so many drugs. Mushrooms, poppies, synthetics.

Nothing helped. Nothing quelled the rage and the power that came with it.

I was a failure as her father.

And now this.

I should have come looking for Ada earlier. Should have demanded she dine with me as usual.

It wasn’t until today when I couldn’t find her in her room, on the grounds, or in any of the common areas of the castle that the hairs along the back of my neck had spiked.

She couldn’t have escaped the castle. It was too well guarded. My security team would have known.

There wasn’t a marmot that took a step on or off my land that I didn’t know about.

It was only in a last, desperate search from rafters to sub ground that I finally went deep down into the undercrofts.

Delivering me here.

I stood at the threshold of a stone arched doorway to one of the storage rooms that used to house grains and liquor a hundred years ago.

Bile searing into my throat, I stared at Ada curled into the dark, dank corner of the small stone vault. Her body lying on the filth and cold of the wet stone floor. The only light from an opening high in the stone foundation behind me, just barely lighting her form.

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