Page 64 of Cursed Shadows 1

Mydark one.

Daxeel drops his eyes to me for a moment. Nothing kind in the way he watches me, and there’s no thanks in my returned stare. There’s only blank confusion on my face, stunned at how he sensed Taroh, and my unease, and that he moved some steps closer to me, all that he needed to do for Taroh to receive the warning loud and clear. But why bother?

Still, he studies me, his mind working.

Those eyes dim with shadows of doubt. His mouth tightens as though he considers me—and Taroh.

And I realize with him. How the dark ones can always smell the scents of others—and so he’s been smelling a male’s scent on me.

Around Comlar, each time we have seen each other, he has picked up on the scent of a male all over me. Taroh’s hands on my legs, my breasts, his tongue on my pursed lips…

Daxeel sensed it. But didn’t pick the exact male who has been smearing his claim all over me.

So he’s reassessing.

Do you realize it’s Taroh’s scent always on me?

Daxeel figures it out, and as his face hardens to stone, and so I know that he’s also realizing my consent to Taroh was not given.

We watch each other in our moment of understanding. Maybe I see a crack in his stone mask, the clench of a dimple on his cheek, and I wonder if this changes anything.

My gaze finally pulls away.

I turn my back on him just as a blur of black moves up to my side.

Aleana appears beside me.

Her diamond gaze pierces into mine at eye-level, and I think we’re almost the exact same height. Somehow, though, she just looks smaller. Might be the difference found in our shapes, hers being slender and perhaps a bit frail in that netted, metallic dress that hangs off her, the one that would fit tighter at my curves, a shape that reminds me something of a growing pear.

She stares at me oddly for a moment.

I don’t get the feeling she’s studying me, like her brother just did. More than she’s waiting, expectant, and maybe her socials skills aren’t all that sharp.

I don’t mind.

I only need to utter one word for her grin to mirror mine, “Hall?”

I don’t recommend the tower this Breeze. We’re nearing the start of the First Wind, when the fae will pour into the Hall and steal all the good seats closest to the fireplaces, and I want in before them.

Eamon—and, to my faint surprise—Samick lead the way.

Aleana and I shadow them through the courtyard, then the corridors of the garrison. All the way to the Hall, I say silent prayers that father doesn’t spot me with this many dark ones. He must know of my friendships in Comlar, but he certainly hasn’t said anything about it yet. To see it, though, will bring him a sense of dishonour, and I won’t avoid a shouting.

Thankfully, the gods are on my side, and I make it to the Hall without incident. We steal the leather sofa and two armchairs tucked close to a roaring hearth, one that doesn’t help with the residual humidity of the Breeze. But soon the First Wind will come, and with it the bone-chilling cold.

I tuck myself up, small, on the overworn armchair. It has the plushest cushions, so I’m cosy when Aleana wanders to me—and squeezes into the same armchair, pushed up beside me, like we’re sisters.

Opposite, Samick chooses to perch himself on the edge of a blackwood side-table, and the fireflies in the lantern shudder away from him. So it’s not just me that has that reaction to him.

Eamon seems perfectly at ease, though, when he falls onto the sofa and lifts his hand lazily. He calls over one of the harem workers with that silent gesture. It’s a duty of theirs here. Serve the harem and the Hall.

None of them are slaves at the garrison. The whores are sought out across lands, offered good prices, and given the two-month contract to be concubines at Comlar. How much gold they are actually paid, I wouldn’t know, but I bet it’s enough to buy silk over satin—because that’s what I see on the harem worker who comes to us. Silk. A floor-length, ivory silk dress, pale to match her hair, but soft against the snowy hue of her skin.

She’s striking in her beauty.

And I hate her for it, because as I look at her, and she looks right back at me with her mouth parted in what looks to be mild shock, I see she’s like me. A light halfling. Only, she’s much prettier.

Harems, I have never liked. But I never had a whole lot of judgement for the whores. I only ever judged the males who haveharems, or the ones who frequent them. But now, I decide I don’t like her, not one bit, and I judge her deeply.

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