Page 50 of Cursed Shadows 1

“Hard to miss me,” I start, fighting the snarl off my lips, “when you’re up to your cock in whores, right?”

A hiss draws through his bared teeth.

Towering over me, he leans closer, shadows of the corridor licking up his bronzed face. “What business is my life of yours?”

I’m pushed back into the wall. Still, I manage to angle my face upwards, to meet his fierce gaze. “Your bedding habits are as much my business as mine are to you.”

The kiss. I hold onto the kiss.

Ten years ago, he kissed me, and to his kind, that’s the ultimate declaration of eternal love. Fae love doesn’t fade. Hekissed me, a declaration of devotion, a declaration of priority. My mind clutches to the memory of all those kisses, and it helps keep my chin held high, helps stop me from backing down.

His face is cold. “Vicious one…” My heart twists at the cruel whisper of the pet name from his tongue. He tilts his head, a faint frown wrinkling onto his brow. “What else could you possibly have been, but entertainment to fill my spare time in a foreign land?”

Those words are swords through my gut.

I blink, a flutter of the lashes, and I do what I fought against:I waver.

Tears prick my eyes. “You can’t convince me I don’t mean anything to you, Daxeel. You can lie.”

“You believe that I am lying to you?” His boot flattens on the floor, not quite a step closer, but the threat of one. His eyes burn like blue blazes destroying cities. “Those memories you clearly cling to—those are the lies. I noticed a pretty face and a fine body on a seductive halfling.” His full lips curve into a cruel grin. “And I got her on her back, her legs spread, all with some promises of love.”

Tears are flowing freely down my cheeks now. Feels like my heart is lodged in my throat. The breath I suck in is a shuddered one.

“Lies,” I hiss through the tears.

His grin fades into a small smile, and it’s somehow more vicious. He leans in, his hand pressing flat against the wall, and towers over me. His head dips to brush a hot breath over the shell of my ear, and speaks almost lovingly, “I only intended on fucking you that final night, and then to leave you behind. That was your worth. Now, it is none at all.”

A shout rips through me.

I scream something rageful and savage at him, but all he does is draw away with that smile still twisting his lips. Then—without a lingering glance—he turns and walks away.

The cloudiness of my eyes murks my vision. Still, I watch him go, watch as he leaves me in this corridor, as Rune and Samick leave with him.

Then I pull away from the wall and run through the corridors. I race to the sanctuary of my private bedchamber, and the moment I’m through the door, I throw myself onto the bed and scream into a pillow.

Eamon’s words whisper through my mind, ‘What did you expect?’

So many things, and nothing at all. Yet, even through the knowledge that Daxeel holds onto his anger at my slight, his shame, I never imagined it would be this. I never once believed Daxeel didn’t care about me back then, that I was a challenge, a game, something to toy with just to fill his duller hours.

One-sided love.

That is what he tells me our relationship was. I’m a conquest, so he claims. My mind spirals out of control, to thoughts of him winding up to be the one who shames me in the end, but I beat him to the punch, and that’s his anger.

I did it first, and that makes this so much worse, because if I truly was insignificant to him, I have no hope at stealing him back.

Dark fae can lie. But I fooled myself into his words back then, too easily, because I didn’t expect it of him. The dark ones don’t often lie, not the way he did with me. It’s an honour thing, not a restriction. A dark fae will tell you to your face they will kill you, there is more honour in facing the enemy than sneaking up behind his back.

My name…

I realize it now with a hollow scream carving through me.

The kiss was a lie. All of them were lies. Just like the touches, the looks, the comfort and the trust he nurtured between us.

My name is just another on a long list.

11

DAXEEL

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