Page 6 of Empire of Dark

“Then I have nothing to worry about. I trust you.”

He nodded and I stared at him for a long second. “You’re not rethinking the plan after last night, are you? It was a bar fight, nothing more. No harm, no foul.”

He sighed, looking down to his thumbnail digging into the black leather of the seat. “Honestly, I’m rethinking letting you help me with the plan. There are other ways I can move forward.”

I shifted on the seat to face him more fully. “No one has more at stake in this than me—you know that. You know this is the only way I will ever find peace.”

His shoulders lifted as his eyes met mine. “But I’ll be leaving you in a world of violence and debauchery. I don’t think I should do it.”

“No. You’re not going to change your mind now.” I tried to keep my voice steady when I really wanted to be yelling at him. I couldn’t let him take this away from me. The truth was, I needed this. Needed to be here if I was ever going to be right again.

“Except it’s you, Ada. You.” His look softened at me. “And I don’t want you messed up with the likes of Damen and the Folottos.”

“You made the commitment, Tri. I’m not backing out now. Nor am I going to let you back me out of it.”

His chest lifted in a heavy sigh, shifting the dark grey button-down shirt he was wearing. I wasn’t used to seeing him in nice clothes—usually he was dressed in simple black T-shirts and cargos, always ready for action.

A vicious pang cut across my right temple. The thunderous ache in my head from last night had mostly subsided, but just the mention of not going through with the plan tweaked a sharp stab into my brain.

Triaten caught my wince. “You are fine—well enough?”

My head still throbbed, but Triaten didn’t need to know that—it wasn’t bad and I could muddle through pain like this.

“I am.” I set a bright smile on my face and didn’t let it waver.

To avoid his scrutiny, I glanced past him to the sheer cliff face of the mountain across the tight valley. A mountain goat managed the impossible and scrambled up the side of the rocky terrain that couldn’t have more than an inch of hoof space. “This will be good, really—I’ll get some quality nature bathing in. Plus, lots of reading. And my lung capacity will probably double if this diabolical road leads us as high onto the mountain as I think it’s about to.”

“It is. And if you think this road is precariously attached to the mountain, wait until you see the castle.” He pointed forward.

“It’s an actual castle?” I looked through the windshield but only saw cliff-face in front of us. “I wasn’t sure if you were being facetious or not.”

He nodded. “It’s a castle. Netherstone Castle. The man is nothing if not ostentatious.”

“You must get along grandly with him, then.”

He snorted a grumble. But even with the light banter, I could see the concern in his eyes.

He really had to trust me on my lack of worry. My job over the next year shouldn’t be particularly hard.

All I had to do was resist every attempt made to seduce me—to impregnate me.

And when I wasn’t busy resisting grand seduction plans, I would be gathering intelligence as to where the rest of the Folotto brothers were hiding out so they could finally be wiped from the face of the earth.

A simple request, really. None of that would be too taxing.

Especially when I hated every Folotto that had ever stepped foot on this earth.

Not that I wanted to leave the Academy—my home for the last hundred some years. It was where I had found safety. Security. Where I had found what my place in the world was—ushering brash and hormonal males and females into their place in our panthenite world.

The panthenites and occasionally, a stray malefic—the flip side to our species.

Both sides were descended from the original gods—not that they were ever actually gods. Humans decided that curious little nugget and built temples to prove it. Sure, some of those original gods had probably encouraged the worship. It was a hard gig to pass up.

I got the lure—if someone hands you an apple, you eat the apple.

Our ancestors were special, had powers the humans did not, and were not quite immortal, but could live hundreds, even thousands of years. We had powerful quirks for sure, but were we ever gods? No. Not really. Just a divergence of the species.

But it was funny—in the sad, head-shaking way—how insidious those aspirations to god-status had bled downward over time through so many generations.

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