Page 8 of Cursed Shadows 1

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I’ve not so much as gripped my chalice before Pandora leans across the small, round table in the gardens—and shoves two parchment scrolls in my face.

Bound in string, the bow tickles my nose.

“You have to sign today,” my sister snaps at me, always snapping at me. Guess she thinks she’s all sorts of superior, not just because she’s older than me by two decades, or that I’m halfling and she’s fullblood; but also because of the details written onto those two scrolls.

The Sacrament.

Pandora’s a warrior destined for the armies. I’m a female who whines when there’s not enough cinnamon in her morning coffee or the right snacks aren’t by her bed at night.

I know how she sees me, but she doesn’t quite judge me for it. She only thinks she’s better. Slightly.

I smile and raise my chalice above the scrolls. Fresh, hot coffee with a few twigs of cinnamon and a drop of honey, it all swirls in the metal cup.

“Get that out of my face or say goodbye to your scrolls.”

She wants me to co-sign them. I know this. But I also don’t want to deal with any sort of business before I’ve had breakfast.

“You said you would be my second,” Pandora levels her voice like she levels her stare. Brown eyes like mine, but hers are different—hers are like the cinnamon sticks in my coffee where mine are plain old mud. “I need a second, otherwise I can’t enter—”

Before she can start berating me, I roll my eyes back as if to pray to the Gods for patience, then exhale with a sigh. “I will. I just want to drink my coffee, Pan.” I make a face to punctuate my snark. “Why are you so excited this morning anyway? I know you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

I don’t sip from the chalice, I gulp. It’s cooled enough now that it only stings a little as I down it like I downed the honeywine last night. And that’s exactly what has me reaching for a refill from the metal jug—the constant ache thrumming in my head.

“Not all of us need to sleep the whole night away,” she says and falls back in her chair. The metal groans in protest, but that’s because of the weight she’s gained since leaving the base where she completed her training. Still, she’s got that muscle packed on, the kind of muscle you’d see on a slender male. She worked hard for it too, so why she let herself get a little belly is beyond me.

Not to shame her, of course. I’m a little on the curvier side myself, but I don’t quite know if that’s because of my human heritage, or that I overindulge on all the cakes and sweets that our cook makes, or even that I drink honeywine like it’s water and I’m dying of thirst.

“Oh, Narcissa!” Pandora bites my name like an insult. Her wild stare is on the chalice I hold in my grip, the one I pour more coffee into. “That’ll be your third. That’s plenty. Sign it now, and I can send it off before the entries close.”

She scolds me like a mother would. She always has. Since I was birthed twenty-nine years ago, and she was already in hertwenty-third year at the time, she’s taken the role of a mother figure in my life. So easily she forgets she’s a sister, not a mother.

I just wave my free hand at her, a flapping gesture filled with impatience.

She doesn’t spit any words at me as pushes out from her chair, advances on me, and unravels the scrolls. She sets them down in front of me, next to the plate I left bare. Coffee first.

“Quill?” I flap my hand again—and very much want her to place the quill in my hand, not on the table. She knows this too, but she says nothing of it, nothing beyond a grim set to her thin mouth, and she does just that.

I smirk behind the hair that falls over my face.

Where she points her finger, I sign my name.

Narcissa Elmfield.

Narcissa Elmfield.

Narcissa Elmfield.

Narcissa Elmfield.

Narcissa Elmfield.

I’m entirely bored of it by the time she steals back the parchment scrolls and blows a steadied breath over the wet ink.

I toss aside the quill and turn back to my precious coffee. “It’s just on paper, right?”

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