Page 75 of Empire of Dark

“Dammit, Ada—you didn’t need to do that. I believed you.”

“No. You didn’t. You’ve been holding back this whole time. So I set my arm in front of your blade on that swing.” Her left hand flickered at my face. “Please, let the color come back to your cheeks, Damen—I did that. You didn’t. And you didn’t hurt me.”

The thudding of my heart reappeared in angry, savage thuds. Half of me wanted to strangle her. The other half wanted to throw her up against the rock face of the mountain and drive my cock relentlessly into her until everything my body had just suffered dissipated.

She walked over to the sheer wall of rock that extended upward from this area of the mountain and leaned her sword against the granite, then picked up the water bottle. Taking a sip, she walked to the edge of the outcropping and sat, dangling her feet but not the whole of her legs off the edge of the cliff. She still couldn’t stand to look down deep into the valley.

Setting my sword next to hers, I joined her, plopping down with a thud beside her.

She handed me the water bottle, her eyes squinting on the mountainside to the right of us. “Is that a lynx above that ibex?”

Drinking the water, I followed her sightline to the right across the canyon, spotting first the lynx stalking along a tight edge it probably shouldn’t have been on and then a distance down, the wild mountain goat. The hairs on the back of my neck spiked. Predator versus prey and I was captivated, waiting to see what happened next.

Ada looked away, grabbing the water bottle from my hand. “Nature sucks.”

That it did.

What she hadn’t seen, and what I hoped she wouldn’t notice, was the kid a distance away from mother ibex in a fairly accessible spot. The adult moved farther away, making a good deal of noise sending rocks down the cliffside with every step. The mother was attempting to pull all the attention down and away from her baby.

I commandeered Ada’s attention away from the scene before she could look back to it. “If it’s any consolation, the goats are wily on those rocky footholds and that lynx is already out of its element.”

“It isn’t.” A shudder ran through her body and my fingers went down, tracing along the pink line on her forearm from my sword that had almost disappeared. Needing to touch the skin that I should have, but didn’t sever—needing to prove it was still intact. Unmarred.

Ada took another sip of the water and set her gaze solidly on the mountainside directly across from us where it wouldn’t stray to the right and the scene unfolding with the lynx and ibex.

“You had me,” I muttered.

She looked to me. “I had you what?”

“You had me right.” My thumb rubbed over the pink line on her arm as my heart still thudded hard and irate in my chest. “I didn’t believe it. Not truly. But that blow, it was hard, it should have taken your arm off.” Just saying the words out loud made my stomach churn.

She set the water bottle down and wrapped her fingers over the top of my hand on her arm. “But you didn’t. You need to trust me on this, Damen.”

“It’s just a lot to wrap my mind around.”

“I know what you mean.”

“How?”

“This.” Her hand motioned out in front of us downward toward the castle. “Me being here. Me falling under your spell so easily. It’s been hard for me to right my mind to it.”

I grinned. That may have been the highest compliment she’d ever paid me, even if it wasn’t exactly a compliment. “You weren’t expecting me to disabuse you of your notions of my kind?”

She scoffed. “That is generous—as the only notions of mine that have been disabused have been the ones that specifically apply to you. I still despise your kind. But yes, I did have a very different agenda when I stepped foot into your castle.”

“And now?”

“Now…now I feel different.” Her eyes closed, she remained pensive for a long breath. “The energy in my body. I don’t know if it is this—us.” Her hand motioned back and forth in the sliver of space between us. “Or if it’s something else.”

“Like what?”

Her eyes lifted to me, hesitant with her words. She wasn’t going to admit to whatever was in her head.

“What? Tell me. We’ve already managed to forge pathways over the chasms between us, so there isn’t anything you could say that would shock me.”

To my amazement, she actually appeared reassured with my words. That alone was testament to how far we had come.

She took a deep breath, then blurted words out. “I wonder if the energy that I feel is because I’m pregnant. Are you able to tell with your power?”

---