Page 76 of Cursed Shadows 1

Raindrops trickle down my cheeks like tears. “Then I would die.”

Against my back, his chest expands with a deep breath, one I don’t hear him exhale before his arm comes around my middle. “Though tempting, it is not your time.”

He yanks me away from the edge of the tower.

Pinning my back to his chest, he holds me up and takes me to the pile of cushions that circle a short and round coffee table. My boots dangle above the tower roof until, without warning, he lets me go.

On my feet, I land with asmack, my boots hitting the stone. Turning on him, I right myself and let the scowl twist my damp face. “Don’t you have a whore to visit?”

He’s some steps away from me, but close enough that I have to angle my face up to aim my scowl at him. He blinks his long lashes over eyes that stir darker under the black skies above. Droplets of rain fall on him as they do me, and I watch one droplet in particular slide down the natural fullness of his mouth.

A step closer to me, and his hand shoves into my middle. It’s a hard enough push that I fall back—and land with a grunt on my bottom. The cushions soften my fall, steal away the pain of my landing.

Yet I scowl up at him all the same as he looks down at me.

Towering there, his eyes gleam from the natural kohl shadows that line them, and his damp hair falls into his face. Leathers glisten in the drizzle that chills us up here.

“Is that not what I’m doing?” His voice is cold. He lifts the tavarak bottle to his damp lips and swigs, never breaking eye contact with me, and it’s only now I realize he still has the bottle from the Hall.

I don’t bite back at his calling me a whore.

Instead, I tug my gaze from him, then let defeat slump me on the plush cushion that almost eats me up. After a heavy sigh, I fish out a rolled valerian from my bodice. I use a firefly from the nearby glowjar to light it.

From the vapours of silver smoke, I watch Daxeel move for the coffee table opposite me. He lowers himself onto its edge, his thighs and boots spread to keep from disturbing my outstretched legs. If I were to sway my feet side to side, the nose of my boots would touch the inner edges of his.

And I’m so utterly aware of that—as though to have him so close to me, without sex, without others around us, means something. Or maybe I’m just letting myself fall back into the nostalgia of our shared moments, the memories of what I wish was still my life.

Resting a forearm on his thigh, he leans forward and drinks again from the bottle. He watches me. Always watching me.

“Are you even trying to do anything about it or are you content wallowing?” The gravelly undertones of his voice speak of weariness, of exhaustion.

Now that I think on it, it’s around time he is to leave the garrison for his home in Kithe.

He doesn’t.

He stays up here on the tower—with me.

I’m quiet for a moment.

I lick a raindrop from my bottom lip before I draw a short inhale from the valerian. His eyes hang on the movements for a beat.

My voice is so weak, hitched with unshed tears, but he hears me just fine, “The iilra won’t help. The scribes can’t. And my father doesn’t know what else to do.”

At the mention of my father, his eyes gleam like drawn swords fashioned from the depths of the ocean. “But what canyoudo?”

I frown through the cloud of smoke escaping my lips.

Daxeel finishes off the last of the amber liquor, then tosses aside the bottle to a cushion. Not once does his gaze leave me.“You might have a talent you can use,” he says. “Beyond your skills of seduction,” he adds with a bitter look, like he aches to be angry with me in this moment, but can’t summon the energy for it.

“Like what?”

He reaches out for the valerian stalk.

I lean forward and let him steal it from my fingers.

He smokes, one puff, two, then with a steady exhale, says, “Your sister has wings—had.” He gives a dark smile, as if to mock me for the loss of my sister’s wings.

Her grandmother was a sprite, which shows in the torn dragonfly wings my sister has permanently curved around her shoulders like a shawl since they were shredded in combat. So translucent, one has to look extra hard to spot them—and that’s if she doesn’t have them covered by blouses or armour, which she often does.

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