Page 26 of Cursed Shadows 1

I just sleep off the fatigue in this surprisingly cosy bed.

I dream of him.

7

the night we kissed and more

††† TEN YEARS EARLIER †††

Golden sandals are discarded and forgotten on the lush grass. The soles of my bare feet rest on the wild daisy flowers, but my gaze is sharp and homed in on that one yellow spider skittering through the shade of the petals.

It thinks it can hide from me.

But I see you. Oh I see you.

Gently, I lift my foot from the grass and—eyes never straying from the spider—I bring my toe down on it. My head tilts as I add some pressure slowly, more and more, until—pop.

And it’s dead.

My mouth puckers with a pout as I wipe the dead spider off my toe along the thick grass.

I look up at him from beneath my lashes.

Daxeel is studying me as he often does, like I’m an opponent, a foreign one he’s trying to figure out. But we’re on no battlefield.

We’re tucked away down a small peaceful row of midnight willow trees, under the moonlight and dark skies, not a half-hour from my village. Here, we’re hidden enough that we won’t be seen.

It’s where we come to spend time together, without my father finding out, and without any others around us. Daxeel throws small stones at my window. I climb down the vined lattice. And we come here.

Sometimes we just lie on our backs and look up at the thick leaves of the willow trees, or at the skies. He always stays in the shade, out of the moonlight.

Sometimes, we talk.

This night is different.

Sat in the shade, he faces me, his leather-wrapped leg stretched out alongside mine, but he didn’t kick off his boots when I tore off my sandals. His other leg is hiked up, his muscular forearm resting on his knee, and he watches me closely. His eyes seem darker in the shade, his hair blacker, his skin tanner.

I look paler I think, since I lean back on my elbows and let wisps of moonlight flow over me. But I return his stare from beneath my low lashes.

There’s a frown on his face. “Why did you kill it?”

He’s confused. Perplexed. Desperate to know my motivations, why I do anything that I do.

All I say is, “It got too close,” and I’m not even sure if that’s the reason I killed the spider. I don’t quite know why. I just… did.

The whisper of a smirk touches his full mouth.

I itch to touch it.

“Will you try your hand at executioner?” he asks, and there’s a mocking glint to his tone, one that makes me think of a sword’s edge.

I shift on the grass, move from my elbows to the heels of my palms pressed into the dirt, but I don’t look away from him. I see his gaze shift to the slight spread of my legs, where the split ofmy cotton chemise has fallen aside and now reveals the meat of my thigh.

He doesn’t hide his long, lingering stare. It only shifts to my other leg, the hemline riding up too high.

“I don’t have the stomach for that,” and it’s no lie.

The raw truth of such an admission, aconfession, is too vulnerable. It snaps his gleaming blue eyes up, and he looks at me,reallylooks at me.

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