Empire of Light, A Creatures of Sin & Seduction Book 2, (EBOOK)

{ Chapter 1 }

~ Ada ~

I reached out, my fingers crawling over jagged stones.

Darkness.

Darkness all around, the air thick with the dust of destruction a castle with half a mountain’s worth of rock crumbling down had caused. The particles nothing but mud in the air, mud sucking into my lungs, and I still couldn’t see the moon that had crested over the jagged mountain peak before I’d entered the thick of the fray.

That had been hours ago. Half a night spent crawling in the darkness over the rubble of Netherstone. The air putrid with dust and death and smoking lava. Huge rocks and stones shifting every few minutes as the crumbled castle found seating at the bottom of the valley.

Hours spent searching for my only saving grace.

My foot slipping, my knee cracked into the sharp edge of metal from who knows what, and I heard it.

A crackle. The smallest whimper.

A whimper I knew.

Frantic, I started tossing aside stones and shards of wood and torn bedding and shreds of dresses and sharp cuts of glass.

There. Huge outer stones of the castle wedged against each other. I squinted, my night sight not as good as it should have been with the ash and smoke in the air. The angle of the stones precarious, but I didn’t give a shit. Not now.

Stretching my arm down into the crevice, my knuckles brushed skin.

I could only pray it was the right skin.

“Venny?” My voice cut a scratchy whisper for all the crap that had collected in my throat.

“Ad—” A pathetic cough drifted up, racked in pain, like air was being crushed out of lungs. “Ada?”

My insides turned to goo. Thank the stars.

“It’s me, Venny.” I flipped my hand, finding her wrist—no—elbow. “I’m getting you out of there. Just stay still.”

My hands went into a frenzy, my veins straining against my muscles as I found footing and shifted one of the huge stones to the side, the grinding of the rock echoing coarse into the night.

Finally. Space. Little of it, but enough.

I went flat onto the cracked stone I balanced on and reached my hand downward. “Venny?”

There. In the darkness, a flash of white. Her eyes. “Ada.”

“You have to come with me, Venny.”

I stretched down, my fingers extending out to her. Trembling and bloody, Venetia’s hand reached up to me.

Our fingertips touched and a shock of energy from her tore through my body, sending all my nerves to fire. Painful, but I was an expert at ignoring pain.

Fingertips. Palms.

Her hand wrapped around mine.

I pulled, dragging her up and toward me, praying she didn’t have a limb caught under one of these stone monoliths.

Her torso twisted, rubble skittering off her body and crashing about her as I pulled her free. More. More. More.

A gasp from her lips, and she was free, her other hand finding my arm, and I pulled her up the rest of the way onto the stone next to me.

I wrapped my arms around her. The surge of relief so brutal through my veins I didn’t think I could move.

But we had to. Time wasn’t on our side.

I pulled away from her slight frame, my hands finding her face and feeling the wetness on her cheeks, blood and tears. I clasped her head, forcing her look to me. “Do your limbs work?”

“Y—yes.”

“Then we need to leave. Now. You know what that means?”

Her head bobbed in a nod between my hands.

I let go of her face and grabbed her hand.

We had a mountain to escape.