Page 46 of Cursed Shadows 2

Seventeen years here means that in their realm, sixty-eight years have passed.

So mother is likely long dead.

Daxeel keeps his frown aimed at me. “What other reason do you have to visit?”

A smile lifts the corner of my mouth. For a beat, I just watch him study me.

Then I take a risk—one that might be a grave insult, but one that comes from my heart—and I reach out my hand for him.

Let me share this with you.

Do not strike me down for a perceived slight.

“Come with me.” The words are little more than whispers with a blush on my hot face. “Let me show you what’s worth visiting.”

His jaw tightens. Dimples carve into his cheeks so deeply that it’s as though the shadows of the night took daggers to him.

He looks down at me with blazing eyes and a twitch to his lips, like they fight to twist into a snarl.

But Daxeel plays a gentle game with me.

To let himself snap would be to risk all we’ve accomplished so far. His kiss—his declaration of love—is what keeps my hand steady in the air, lingering there between us, waiting for his decision.

Of course he hasn’t been to the human lands before.

He’s dokkalf.

It would be to them like a king visiting a cheap-end brothel. Not the brothel itself, but more the pig pit out back.

I know it as firmly as I know my love for him. Daxeel has never set foot in the human realm.

Eamon goes sometimes. But that’s on business. His career as a recruiter.

I like it there, if only for a night sometimes.

Not to stay, of course. Never to stay.

“Nari,” he starts and there’s hesitation in his husky voice.

“So don’t come.” I drop my hand to my side with a slap. With a smile, one that assures I’m not slighted, I say, “Tomorrow is our night.” I turn my back on him. “I will see you then.”

I head up the hill.

This hill might as well be a cliffside for how steep it is, and I need to grab onto the right boulders, the ones I’ve learned over years, to climb all the way to the split tree.

Among the other willows, this one blends in. It’s sagged, looks struck in its centre by lightning, so there’s a gaping hole in its bloated middle, but other than that, the midnight willow tree still shudders with the breath of life, and its navy, glitteredleaves rustle in greeting as I move for it.

I don’t make it to the cavity of the trunk before boots slam down on the ground, right behind me.

Daxeel lands on the foliage, and he doesn’t so much as slip on a damp rock.

I look over my shoulder at him, the hardness of his face, the firm set of his mouth, the gleam of his leathers. I don’t quite know if he jumped the full distance from the bottom of the slope, or if he climbed then propelled himself up.

But I do know he’s coming with me.

“Bridges,” I tell him because I think he hasn’t been through one before, since he hasn’t been to the human lands, “feel like liquid ice raining down on you. Not cold water,” I add with a steady look, but he is unflinching, “liquid ice.”

There’s a difference. One has to feel it to know it.

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