She had seen him s.h.i.+rtless before, said Penny to herself. Was there something else in the wind today that had her face heating up to this extent? 

"Are you turned on?" she heard him ask for her heart to come out of her throat. This man...lacked the ability to be subtle, "Don't look embarra.s.sed. You have seen me like this plenty of times in the past." Yes, that is what she was telling herself right now. 

"I am doing fine," she said, shuffling the papers in her hand and staring at the words which she wasn't actually reading. 

"Mhmm," he responded back, looking her way, he took the towel with him and sauntered towards the bathroom, disappearing behind the curtain that part.i.tioned the room from it. 

Hearing his footsteps gone, she turned her head this time to see the room empty except for herself. She patted her chest as if asking to calm it down. Penny had never seen a man who was as fine as him. The man really took good care of himself. There was not a blemish on his skin. It was smooth and hard, she knew it because she had touched the muscles around his shoulder and chest with his s.h.i.+rt on. 

The people she had to compare Damien were the statues which were sculpted at some of the churches. The upper body bare and some of the statues which were bare or completely naked at the bottom. It would be an understatement to tell he looked better than all those statues which people especially women, idolized them. 

Wetting her lips, she gulped. It's okay. It was not a big deal, it was Damien Quinn. She shouldn't have expected anything less than how he looked. That's right, thought Penny as she continued her inner monologue in her head. 

Trying to put her mind back on the right track, she went to read the lines that were written in the parchment which she hadn't read through yet. 

'What we find is not what we seek. What we look for is only the mirror image of what we know. What we need is what another person thinks is right. Go at the end of the circle, after the trees of the dried wood. A place where we have the love that is only left in memories, if you go in search of it you will never come to find it.'

Penny read this paragraph another time wondering if it was some sort of riddle but then there were a lot of pa.s.sages which were written in a similar context, making one wonder what was written actually and at times they felt so random. But she doubted it was anything random. She continued to read,

'Life is more than we know, the people that exist and coexist do you think it will work or it won't? The greed of the human, the thirst of the night creatures, and the sanity of the witches, one will wield the power. If you were to know what lurks in the shadows, there is more than one who walks by. If there is a beginning, there is also an end to everything. Life circling back to where it all began.

That is what we all think. What if there is something more, beyond the walls we thought was all it was. Death is the end, but also a beginning. The guarded creatures of the world, the possibility where we are yet to explore and find. 

White witches have been theorizing the worlds but the word is only laughable when it is heard by another. There is something more than what our world runs in and on. We here seek power yet there's another who plays the puppeteer in the shadows.

We have existed for years before the vampires came to walk on these lands. The first of first, but none of us knew what we were getting into when the forbidden magic was given to us. Though the white witches walked on the land of the North, so did the black witches who had tricked the white witches to make use of the forbidden magic. 

They say everything starts with jealousy at times. To thrive and move at the front, it is the jealousy that people call it to be motivation. The jealousy to be better, and the black witches couldn't be any less from what they felt. Their appearance hideous, their very speech which was unrefined was compared with the white witches which led to the start of the destruction of the white witches who once used to be loved and lived in peace with the little humans who knew about them. 

Centuries ago when the revolt started, the black witches came to triumph over the lands of humans. Leaving a plague of fear which has been prolonged for this very day. If you are still reading it, it must be true that it still exists.'

At these last words she read, Penelope frowned. What did this mean? Her eyes continued to skim through the parchments again.

'What we knew and what we have predicted might come true but then it might not come true either. The world's riches have been exposed but the true riches have been hidden. If you seek it, you will not find it. Some things in this world don't like to be searched for and some like to present in front of you, to test you and turn you to the dark side where there is no returning back. There is a cure for everything but is it really a cure?' 

Penny scratched her neck. All these words written down were nothing less than a riddle. It made her question if anyone had ever questioned it and solved what these lines actually meant.