Page 33 of Cursed Shadows 2

He shrugs, all elegance and slinking muscles. “Marriage is for the validity of heirs and nothing more.”

It is true. Marriage is no thing of love. It is for lineage. But still, litalves are romantic, we are dreamers, and Eamon is half that.

I do wonder sometimes, how much he sacrifices to be in our realm, how much more he would need to sacrifice to be in Dorcha. Either way, he loses, doesn’t he?

It’s sad, it tugs on my heart and my downturned mouth. “Would you marry Fern?”

His grin dazzles me. “I would sooner bed a cactus.”

A laugh escapes me, and I fall back onto my creaky chair. To marry a woodlander is a wild thought indeed, they are so unpredictable and untrustworthy. Might just eat their spouse in the middle of the night because they pulled the blankets toomuch.

I wouldn’t wed an unseelie. Even if I had a say in who I will marry, I would never marry one of them.

Before we can speak anything more of useless dreams—of same lover bars and choice in marriage—my moodiness returns like a storm cloud coming home.

I pucker my lips as the waitress pushes through the sticky door, an empty tray balanced perfectly on her flattened hand. Ignoring the other patrons out here—the humans—she heads straight for us at the back of the terrace.

Eamon turns his chin to watch her advance, and I do not like at all the way they smile at each other. A mutual smile that, if I did not know Eamon at all, I would think was a flirtation, the smile shared before a bed is.

But it is secrets that they share, not lust.

Bee, her name is. And as human as she looks—with her mousy hair that’s brightened by the tones of icy blond highlights and her dim green eyes that border more on grey if you ask me—she is not what she seems.

Bee is kinta.

A halfling bornbroken; a halfling who should have been born like me, but instead came out as a fully human babe.

They are a great shame among all fae races.

Most are banished as newborns, so that they do not taint the future bloodlines with more breeding. Some are traded for healthy human babes, the changelings.

But Bee is unusual that way. Her mother, a fullblood litalf, did not banish or abandon Bee. She kept her until Bee decided to move to the human realm and stay with her mortal father.

I find it strange.

Stranger still, that she is friendly with my Eamon.

I don’t like to share.

Bee lets the empty tray clatter onto the table. Her smile turns on me, then she glances around at the empty beer bottles, all of them on Eamon’s side of the table.

“Not a fan of it, then?” she asks, and there’s nothing unkind about the way she addresses me, but I still don’t like her. “What’s your drink at home?”

“Honeywine,” Eamon answers for me, a teasing drawl to his tone.

“Good stuff.” Bee starts collecting the empty bottles. “I know what to bring you,” she says and nods to herself, satisfied. “You’ll like it, trust me.”

I say nothing, and she leaves with the tray of bottles. The moment the door creaks shut behind her, Eamon tuts at me but his eyes glitter with amusement.

I frown at him. “What?”

“You and your mood tonight,” he scoffs, shaking his head. “Remind me to not bring you along ever again, Sour Nari.”

I huff and kick my shoe over the floorboards. I have no answer.

“Are you jealous of Sunni-Bee?” Eamon asks after a beat.

“Yes.” The honesty strikes through me before shame sags me in my chair. “Not just because her mother still loves her though she is kinta, and not only for her freedoms, and not only for her beauty despite her humanness, but because she is your friend… and I did not know about her.”

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