Page 49 of Cursed Shadows 1

The snarl of my lips, the snarl up my throat, it just comes naturally, and I don’t bother fighting it.

Daxeel’s eyes flash black for a beat, then he’s pushing up against me, lifting me further up the wall until our noses touch, and he hisses—literally hissesa sharp warning in my face.

“Put your fucking fangs away, halfbreed.”

My hands have found their way to his wrist. I clutch on as if to balance myself, but I don’t tear at his grip on me. It’s firm and solid, unmovable—but it isn’t cutting off my air.

I heed his warning. My upper lip slips back into place and hides my sharper teeth from him. But my eyes… Always, they are mud brown, or in the light, tree bark. Now, I think they must look like swamps reaching out to him, all to drag him deep and drown him dead.

Our first words to each other in ten years.

Bedder.

Put your fucking fangs away, halfbreed.

My heart splits in two. The ache turns to agony as it shreds within my chest. I yearn so deeply for him—but he looks like he cares nothing for me at all.

The rage isn’t in his eyes or his hard, schooled face. There is coldness in the way he regards me, a bite of danger but not a frenzied rage. Even how he holds me by the neck, his fingertips dig too hard into my flesh, bruising me, but he doesn’t even care enough to add pressure, to hurt me.

It might be the bargain that keeps him composed.

And since I know about the bargain stopping him from killing me, and that Rune and Samick just stand some steps away, watching, but not on edge, maybe the bud of courage and foolery within me burns a bit brighter than it should.

Daxeel takes a single step back, but keeps his grip on my throat, keeps my back pinned against the wall. His boot flattens against the floor, a near-silent move, as he considers me.

The way he looks at me—

That ache in my heart splits through my whole body like an ice-cold sword severing me into two halves.

That’s his gaze. A sword. Detached in his cold expression, but disgust in his eyes as he looks me up and down.

His hand flexes on my throat before it loosens entirely, then his grip is gone as he steps back.

My boots thud on the floor as I land, but I don’t look way.

Distantly, I’m aware that—out the corner of my eye—Rune and Samick share a glance, then head down the corridor. They stop a bit away and wait.

I narrow my eyes on Daxeel. “Nohello?” I spit at him. “No,how have you been Nari? You look well?”

His upper lip twitches. His gaze drops to the tear in my skirt before throwing back up to me—and pinning me in place. “Do you think you look well?”

“You do.” I’m undeterred.

I move for him, one step only, but enough to force a reaction from him. As thoughI’ma threat moving in onhim, his muscles clamp up one by one.

“And if we were kind to each other,” I add, “maybe I would tell you I missed you.”

His hands clench at his sides. “Your pestering letters said as much. The ones I skimmed at least.”

My mouth flattens into a hard line.

So he did receive the letters I sent all those years ago, foolish letters from a foolish girl who thought she could write apologies and let her tears fall onto parchment, all to stir some sympathies in a dark fae.

None of those letters got a response.

So I stopped.

And we lived the rest of a decade in silence.

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