Page 17 of Cursed Shadows 1

“Got a flame?” I ask, as though he wasn’t just eyeing me up like his new favourite dessert.

He lifts his gloved hand and, with his other, tugs out a match from the wrist of his leathers. He pauses for the shortest of moments to strike it over the ground, then lift it to me.

Tucking the rolled valerian between my swollen lips, I lean forward and puff a breath, two breaths, three, and then it takes light. My inhale of the spiced smoke is generous.

I manage to hold it deep in my chest all the way to the edge of the last street, to the mouth of the path that’ll take me to my village. I pause there and release a winding sword of smoke.

I don’t look at him as I ask, “Who are you?”

Beside me, he crosses his arms over his chest. Even in my peripherals, that somehow only makes him seem bigger. “Daxeel.”

I scoff and hand him the rolled stalk.

He takes it, brings it to his full and rosy lips, and it’s a practiced kiss.

I watch too intently as he smokes, and the vapours cloud his face, but not his eyes, never those piercing eyes.

“I was asking more than your name,” I say dully, then start down the path.

He follows at my side. “I am Daxeel, son of Viscountess Melantha and General Agnar, from the House of Taraan, and the bloodline of Sgail.”

Blankly, I stare at him.

His face firms as he hands me the stalk.

Hardly the answer I was looking for; my question waswho are you, notwhat’s your family tree.

My eyes roll to the back of my head.

He catches the rude gesture and hisses at me, “What?”

The snarled look of irritation echoes his earlier words in my mind,‘You vex me.’

“You dokkalf males,” I explain between inhales and paint a smarmy smile on my bruised lips. “Even the smartest of your kind… You males always think with such brutish, ineloquent minds.”

His eyes glint like glaciers. “Apologies for not thinking in poetry as you so clearly do.”

My face is moody as I blow a puff of smoke at him. He doesn’t so much as blink. “Maybe you should try to bring more poetry into your thoughts. You might find beauty in it.”

“I find beauty enough around me.” His eyes rake over me and his hand reaches out to steal the stalk. “When it’s this bountiful, I see no use in looking for more elsewhere.”

My cheeks burn hot, but I look ahead and pretend he said no such thing.

Silence clouds us for a beat before I say, in a small voice, “I find beauty in words.”

“And dance,” he says quietly then inhales. “But also poetry and words,” he adds. “You want to add to the scriptures?” He flicks ash onto the path. “Write more ballads to collect dusk in archives?”

The snark in his tone doesn’t go unnoticed. A looked-down-upon career in his realm, I guess. But the dark fae always keep their highest respect for the warriors, for the diplomats and nobles, the royals, and the males who spill the most blood. I know enough about them to recognize something he considers a silly passion, one for a female.

“I want to preserve them,” I answer, my mind flickering to the home library with only a few sparse ballads in scrolls, since mostwere lost in father’s old study. “Protect them,” I add in a whisper. “But I’m no ballad spinner, even if I wanted to be.”

He considers me for a heartbeat. “If you had the words to spin, how would you write my ballad?”

I suck in my lips to bite down on the smile daring to brew on my face. I read between his words.What do you think of me?

But I’m not so ready to give up that information just yet. “Yours?” I arch a brow at him and steal back the stalk. “You underestimate my obsession with myself. You would be a mere side character in my ballad.”

That ghost returns, the small and haunting smirk on rosy lips. “And what your ballad be?”

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