Page 14 of Cursed Shadows 1

But I only manage to take a single step before, with his fierce gaze swerving to me, the gentle touch of his fingertips presses to my middle. He applies force, then pushes.

I stumble back into the statue.

His eyes blaze like blue flames devouring cities, and only the slightest trickle of his black dokkalf blood runs down his forehead to his nose.

The warning is enough to bolt me in place.

It wasn’t a hard shove—in fact I’m certain that with power like his built into every piece of his body, he had to intentionally push lightly so that I wasn’t thrown through the damn statue—but the shove was enough. It was unspoken words, ‘Stay right where you are.’

As though I can hide from it all, my hands come to my face and hold. Peering over my fingertips, I slide down the statue until my bottom hits the podium… and I stare at the dark one.

“That is my female,” Taroh spits, but his snarl falters in the face of a warrior, and not just any warrior—a dokkalf.

Shirt blooded and ruffled, Taroh tugs at it as though it’ll fix it somehow, and staggers to his feet. His wild green eyes spear intome with accusation, but he looks absolutely wild with all that blood gushing from the break of his nose.

I shrink even further back into the statue, and I know my spine will be black with bruises come morning.

Taroh looks back to the dokkalf, but he takes a notable step back.

Blood coats his tongue as he spits, “That ismybetrothed.”

How he says it…

Let me rape her, it is my right.

I loosen a shuddered breath.

I have no words to speak to him, not with the fear bolting my muscles to my bones, coiling through my stomach like a writhing pit of snakes. And not with the violent urges still lashing through me,tear out his tongue, claw out his eyes, rip off his male-hood.

My attention is pulled back to the dark fae.

He lifts a black, crooked dagger, longer than my forearm—and I wonder when the fuck he removed that from the weapons strap on his thigh, because I hadn’t seen him move at all.

He aims it straight at Taroh’s pointed chin.

A red bead of blood swells on porcelain skin; I think fleetingly of the marble statues that weep crimson at the palace.

Taroh doesn’t dare another step or chance another word. He’s as still as me. Frozen. Like me, he knows he’s no match for the dark one.

Black hair falls over the dokkalf’s tanned face, falls into the gleam of his blue eyes—eyes that burn darkly with the thrill of the fight. He wants this, the blood to be spilled, death at his feet.

Like all dokkalves, he needs bloodshed.

Roughly accented, his voice is a deep tremble of rage, the sort of growl that comes from only the fiercest wolves, “Whethertoday, tomorrow, or a thousand years from now, the war between our lands will resume.” His upper lip curls around a contained snarl, but his grip on his black dagger is so tight that his leather glove creaks. “The feeble treaty you cling to will crumble. It’s notif, it’swhen. Will it be now, starting with the spill of your blood on my boots?”

My spine presses harder into the stone statue, but it’s my head that promises more bruises to come. The fleeting thought drifts through my mind,how will I hide them from father? Still, I can’t help but recoil from the shudder of danger in the dark one’s voice.

I’m no fighter, no warrior, and of courage I know little.

I want to run from him, I want to scream out for help. But I’m utterly frozen in place, tucked up at the foot of a statue, like I can make myself small enough that he’ll forget I’m even here.

Taroh releases a harsh breath. It tells of his reluctance. But he knows who he’s standing in front of—whathe’s standing in front of.

With a scathing look aimed my way, Taroh takes that purposeful step back. Retreat. Then he’s turning his back on us and storming up the path.

Wild-eyed, I stare at his retreating back.

He leaves me here with the dokkalf.

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