Page 48 of Cursed Shadows 1

And so Daxeel will be coming.

I leave with farewells—and agree to meet Aleana on the tower tomorrow for lunch. Eamon’s smile is small and pleased. He just winks his goodbye at me.

Then I’m back in the garrison, making my way through corridor after corridor, down staircases and around banisters.

The hour is late, and so the drunken fae from the Hall have started to spill out. They try to make their ways back to their shared rooms. A litalf warrior throws up black sludge into a leafy plant. The plant I don’t recognize retaliates and starts to whip his back bloody.

My eyes are wide and I take care to scoot along the opposite wall, far out of the plant’s reach. It’s too busy, it’s too boisterous and loud, so I wonder if it’s worth a stop at Pandora’s room. It’s closer, and I can always fib and say I meant to check in on her again before bed, see how tightly this illness holds onto her.

Secretly, though, I wonder if she’s afraid. If she got one look at the contenders, the dark ones, then at the battle block—and faked nausea to get out of it.

I would.

And then all thoughts of what I would do evaporate from my mind.

I turn right into the corridor with the portraits who watch me pass by with eyes that follow, the corridor that leads from the main halls and atriums and stairs to some of the private quarters… and the harem.

It clicks in my mind the moment I spot him.

Daxeel comes up the way—headed towards me—flanked by Rune and Samick.

I blanch at the sight of them.

Daxeel looks put together. His black sweater is woollen enough to protect him from the cold of the walk he’ll take back to Kithe. His combat trousers are dusted with drops of dried blood, some black spots and some red, blood from both seelie kinds.

But his hair betrays him. It’s always tousled, always some strands fallen over his forehead, but it’s a mess right now—a mop dipped in tar.

Rune and Samick don’t help the scene much either. Not with Samick’s un-stringed and rumpled blouse and loose belt; and certainly not with the lipstick stains on Rune’s neck and chin and gods know where else.

I draw in a sharp, icy inhale.

The harem.

I fist my hands at my sides as if to steel myself and push onwards.

Rune and Samick make no attempt to hide how blatantly they stare at me. The three of them and the one of me, walking to meet in the middle of a dark corridor off the main stairwell.

But Daxeel’s gaze is the only one I focus on. If violence is blue, then that is what his eyes promise. They spear through me, into my soul, but it’s the curl of his lip, like he’s disgusted by me, that has me sucking in a sharp breath of anger.

We’re coming closer now. The portraits watch, Rune and Samick watch—but Daxeel and I only have eyes for each other.

I don’t back down.

He expects me to. Expects me to tuck myself against a wall like any halfling with a brain would do, or to bow my head and make myself small, or even turn and run the other way.

But I walk right at him, as though I expecthimto move forme. I’m spitting in the face of any scheme I had—all because he wears the scent of a harem girl, and I hate him so much for it.

I’m here in Comlar, near you for the first time in ten years, and you go fuck a whore?

The growl crawls up my throat as I reach him. It comes out with a word that I spit, “Bedder.”

Whore, whore, whore.

Definitely not a word to throw around at any male, let alone a dark one. If I thought there would be no retaliation, I’m proven wrong, fast.

His hand shoots out so quickly I barely see it move at all. I barely seehimmove, not until his hand has me firm by the throat, and I’m shoved up against the cold, stone wall.

His body follows, a ripple of rage pulsing through each of his muscles, and I feel it—feel the ice seeping from him.

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