Page 70 of Cursed Shadows 1

My face twists with a silent snarl that I throw over my shoulder at him. But the effect is weakened by the harsh breaths that escape me, and the daze of my eyes.

Daxeel stands by the other wall, but not relaxed. He’s as rigid as a warrior on the verge of attack. Hands fists at his sides, the ink on his right hand gleams like dark fae blood, those fingers slick with my elixir, and his eyes burn blue from the shadows.

Fight me, kill me, fuck me—seems he just can’t make up his mind.

But then he makes a decision.

Glowering down at me on the floor, smelling the excitement and climax between my legs, he lets a murderous look settle over his face. “How easily you’re brought to your knees. A perfect whore.”

Those words strike through me, and I think of that night. The one I ruined him, the night I made it clear to the court that hekneltfor me, that he whisperedmyname, and I mocked him for it.

Revenge.

But there’s more to it than that.

I don’t read into the hardness of his cock straining against his leathers. Most males would react to a moment like the one he just took from me. It’s the clenched fists at his sides as he fights the obvious desire burning in his eyes to throw me to the ground and fuck me.

He just can’t let himself do that, because then—I win. That’s what he thinks, even if it’s far from the truth.

So I say nothing. I look up at him, letting him see the defeat in me, letting him drink in his victory.

Daxeel steps back and disappears into those thick shadows entirely. They swallow him up, and I’m left here on the floor, feeling every bit the discarded whore in love with her client.

15

††††††

I scrubbed myself raw.

Daxeel left me in that corridor, his familiar and alluring scent all over me, and I raced back to the washrooms to bathe every fleck of him from my body. Not because I wanted to.

As much as I want him on me, all over me, inside of me, his scent will bring problems. Father will pick up on a scent I wear that isn’t my own, though he won’t pickwhoit belongs to. And Taroh might react if Daxeel’s far away enough that he feels safe to attack me.

I’m glad I did wash our secret moment away, since it was only an hour into the start of the Warmth when the knock rattled my rotted wood door and stirred me from memory-flooded dreams.

It was just a garrison boy, a human servant to run around and do odd jobs here and there, like this Warmth to deliver a message to me.

Father wants to see me. Pandora is back.

So I’m fast to pull on black breeches and a white sweater. My boots aren’t even laced up all the way, abandoned after I grunted something frustrated at their lack of cooperation with my shaky, still-sleepy fingers.

Now, the laces whip at my ankles as I scurry through the lower corridors to the offices.

The sheer size of the room gets me every time I push through the one door that opens, the one that groans louder than storms in the skies. The entrance to this once-ballroom comes in two heavy wooden doors. One of them is stuck after a dokkalf kicked it off the hinges, and the servants had to bolt it back in place.

I’m certain this grand space was once a ballroom, or maybe just intended for that purpose when the two lands came together to build this place.

Father’s desk tells of his position here. Among the fifty-odd desks and tables, his is one of the few at the back of the giant hall, tucked behind bookshelves and the tea station. The heels of my boots clack against the aged marble, all scuffed and scratched from neglect, as I rush between the rows to reach the backend.

Before I make it to father’s desk, I spot three shadows lurking beyond the shelves—and then a face pops out from behind the spine of the chair I always slump myself into. Cinnamen eyes that darken under the blue-tinted lashes that fringe them, coffee skin marked with tiny scars, and dark hair braided in such plain fashion that I itch to tug them off her head.

Pandora’s face splits with a crooked grin—and I mirror her in that fleeting hesitation, that one moment before I push into a run.

She’s fast like the warrior she’s destined to be, sweeps out of the chair in one fluid movement, her arms ready for me.

I slam into her, hard enough to hear a hiss come from father. I almost think the wince was concern, like I’d hurt Pandora or something, but I forget it the second her arms come around me.

She’s taller, much taller, so my face is buried against her collarbone. But after some moments, I turn my cheek to get a fresh breath of air, and that’s when I see the others.

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