Page 4 of Cursed Shadows 1

“I am a hybrid.” His grin is white and wicked. “You are a halfling. That is our most significant difference, Nari.”

His hand outstretches, darker under the shadows of the tower’s wall, hidden from the gleam of the moon.

I swig, long and hard, from the bottle before I finally hand it over to him. He’s quick to start working on vanishing all the honeywine down his throat.

He isn’t wrong about our differences.

He is a hybrid, born from light fae and dark fae—his mother a dokkalf, his father a litalf; I am a halfling, born of human and litalf. We are different. And so, he has to practice comfort for me.

Still, it’s not enough—not this night.

I can’t help myself. “But we are both halfbreeds,” I challenge with a raised brow and I step off the tower edge. My sandals slap to the stone and some of my braids whip against my rosy cheeks, flushed from the honeywine and the cold breeze.

“And is this what we should be doing as halfbreeds?” He polishes off the wine and, in a very dark fae manner, tosses it over the edge of the tower. “Wallowing in our own self-pity at such a wonderful, busy celebration with so many secret alcoves to lurk in and curtains to hide behind?”

I watch the bottle fall until I can see it no more. My upper lip curls with a warning snarl.Littering.

I know Eamon only did it to annoy me, he’s always toyed with me like that, and we both know there are human servants around the court tonight, cleaning up after us. But if it lands at the wrong root of the wrong tree, and that tree decides to swallow up the glass bottle—well, then that tree will be so offended that it will swat anyone within its reach until the next new moon. I’ve been victim to that once, cracked a rib.

“I’m allowed my self-pity,” I say and, with a throaty snarl, whip the chestnut braids that have come undone from my bun back into their rightful place, over my shoulder. I make for the archway. “You would wallow too, if it wasTarohyou were promised to.” I spit out the name like it is poison on my tongue.

Some truth finally flickers onto Eamon’s face, a grimace that is as quick to leave as it was to come. “Yes, news has trickled through the vines down in the court—so very fast.” He shadows me to the stone steps, keeping little distance as we start the longdescent. “I’ll be surprised if there is even a servant who doesn’t know of your engagement.”

That doesn’t concern me. Gossip, like the Sun, is to the litalves what the darkness is to the dokkalves. Everything and more.

“You must have expected it, Nari,” Eamon uses his rare softer tone, something that doesn’t come all too natural to him, given his darker nature.

The dokkalves have such little compassion and empathy, even compared to us litalves. It’s Eamon’s half-dokkalf nature to be callous, but not always, not entirely—not with me. Like I said, he practices.

He reaches out for a lock of my hair and strokes his fingertips down its smooth texture. “You were betrothed once upon a time—and are now again.”

My lashes flutter on tears I don’t dare allow myself, not when I’m heading down the steps into the heart of the High Court where it’ll be bursting at the seams with light fae and the unseelie, all gathered to celebrate the solstice.

“But that engagement was abandoned,” I sigh. And it was. Just ten years ago, Taroh withdrew his interest in our marriage. And for years later, the threat that this would come back together again, that my father would repair the damage and renew our betrothment, was just a threat… Until it wasn’t.

For a while I let myself feel safe in the hope that it wouldn’t come to be.

Hope is for fools. And what a fool I am.

“It was abandoned for good reason,” Eamon says, and there’s an edge to his tone, old memories rearing up like a sword through his nature. He growls out the rest of his words, “Did you tell your father what Taroh did to you?”

I swallow back a sudden lump in my throat and, as we near the lower steps, I start to stroke drown wind-frizzed strands of my brown hair back into place. “Of course not.”

That’s my only answer, because I don’t want to follow the conversation, I know where it will it lead. It will lead beyond Taroh trying to force his body onto mine ten years ago, all because he thought he owned me, he thought himself entitled to me, since our engagement was in place—and then the conversation will ultimately land on… him.

Daxeel.

Even the thought of the dark fae’s name clangs my bones and shudders my muscles. I stop at the bottom of the stairs and, loosening a shaky breath, wipe away the wrinkles in my sheer slip, like I’m trying to wipe away all those images of Daxeel invading my mind.

The dokkalf who heard me scream, found me, and stopped Taroh from raping me. The dokkalf I later gave my heart to just as I took his. And then I tore it apart in my hands with a smile on my face. Ten years ago…

I haven’t seen him since.

How he hates me now.

I don’t talk about Daxeel.

“I need more wine.” It’s all I say before I slip through the thick curtain of sleeping vines and into the open space of the High Court.

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