Page 12 of Empire of Light

I tried not to breathe, but it was already in my head. Already relaxing my muscles into nothingness. Already sending darkness along the edges of my vision.

His face above mine. His amber eyes glinting, shredding me into tiny pieces, terror unleashed.

A breath I couldn’t stop and that was it.

My eyes slid closed.

His voice in my ear, raging penance making the words quiver as they drifted high away from me. “Sweet dreams, little Judas.”

Words that turned my spine to ice just before I dropped fully into the blackness.

Chapter5

{ Ada }

Cold around my ankles.

Cold around my wrists.

The cold of metal.

Shackles. Heavy.

Without even moving, without opening my eyes, I knew I’d been chained to a cold stone floor beneath me.

On my back, I shifted slightly. Hell. Every one of my muscles ached.

I’d forgotten how brutal Damen was capable of being. Forgotten that a monster lived inside of him.

Didn’t want to remember really.

I only wanted to remember the way he’d looked at me in Sardinia under the moonlight. Softness in his eyes that I never saw in him with anyone else. Happiness. Peace. So visceral, I felt it because he felt it, that weird energy that had always flowed between us a conduit to what was happening deep in his soul.

That was the face I had chosen to remember, because the alternative was unthinkable. Crushed me each and every time it wormed its way into my conscious mind. Because his face before I had run out on him at Netherstone had nearly destroyed me. Like he would disintegrate me to ash if he could do so with his glare alone.

My eyelids were still heavy, but I managed to crack my eyes open.

A ceiling above me of curved weathered stones. I blinked. Had to blink again. Stones I recognized.

What the hell?

The same.

The same fucking cell deep in the undercrofts of Netherstone that I had once hid in. Same exact bricks above me.

I knew because I’d studied that one rectangularly cut stone directly above me for hours on end when I had been in here the first time. The time I had hid away from Damen as my head took to torturing me.

I’d stared at that exact stone for hours, the surges of pain twisting wicked in my head. The exact same holes were in the stone, pockmarked by moisture collecting and dripping down. Holes spaced just so that they looked like the Orion constellation. Belt. Sword. Club.

How was this even possible?

I’d walked through the rubble of Netherstone crumbled down on the valley floor with my own feet. Pulled Venetia from the debris.

“You’re awake.” Damen’s voice. Bored. Frigid.

I couldn’t quite lift my head yet, for it still felt like an elephant was sitting atop it, so I rolled my head over to the side.

Damen stood near the arched entrance to the undercroft, leaning against the stone wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Dressed in his customary casual attire, dark pants, crisp dark blue button-down shirt. All of it tailored exactly to mold to his frame. Not one dark hair of his out of place.

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