Page 56 of Cursed Shadows 2

“Daxeel—” I start, but Eamon cuts that down, fast.

“Even if my cousinwantedto wed you,” he reminds me of that abyss, that truth that guts me, that Daxeel wouldn’t marry me, “your father wouldn’t have let you marry him back then.” Eamon’s mouth turns down with a frown. “What makes you think he would allow it now? He is a racist male.”

My lips push out with a heavy sigh, because I have no answer.

It’s true. Father doesn’t even let Eamon into the house. Servants have to come tell me when they spot Eamon coming across the hills or fields, and I run out to meet him.

Before Eamon, I held the beliefs my father gave me. Of course I did—I was raised to believe these prejudices as absolute truths. Then I met Eamon, and he peeled them from my mind, strip after strip. Then the Fae Eclipse came, and Daxeel stole my heart.

Beyond the truth that the dark and light fae are always at odds, always look down on the other, have always suffered a great divide, my father has his own experiences that has fostered this hatred in him. A hatred that runs so deep that he’ll never be rid of it.

Father’s first wife died in a fire-arrow attack from the dark ones. She was in the now-gone village near the border of the Wastelands, long before my time. When father received news about the attack on her home village, where she was visiting, he rode two days straight to reach her. But she was a charred skeleton by the time he got there, only recognisable by the copper band around her left wrist, a worthless piece of jewellery her favourite human servant gave her. It was the only piece of jewellery that—when the dark fae invaded the village after the sun went down and looted from the dead—was left on her burnt corpse.

Father loved her. His mate. So rare, such a rare thing for thelitalves. A mate. Where every dark male has evate, so few light males have mates.

But his mate had status in life—and duties that came even in her death.

The daughter of a governor, the governor of that exact village that burnt to ash.

As her husband, even in her death, father was forced to fund all evacuations, funerals and relocations.

The family’s wealth was weak then, but it was ruined by that attack on that village by the dark ones.

Father lost his life to their kind. All that mattered to him, the mother of his six-month-old babe, his mate, his status, his wealth—everything.

It’s not only his pure hatred for them that pushes father to separate Daxeel and me, but fear. He fears for me at the hands of a dark one.

“Father is blinded,” I whisper the words like a confession I shouldn’t speak.

Eamon steals another step towards me. His hand slides closer on the banister, and the fear glitters in his smooth eyes.

My voice is uneasy, “He steals my life to protect it. I won’t marry Taroh.”

Eamon frowns at me.

Behind me, Aleana’s uncertain voice reminds me of her presence, “Don’t you mean youdon’t wantto marry him?”

She thinks I lie. The starkness of the truth, the unrealistic nature of my declaration, confuses her.

I shake my head, my gaze unfaltering from Eamon’s. “I won’t marry Taroh. No matter what happens. I refuse.”

Eamon’s mind shifts to thoughts of the Grott, the place of punishment, and it shows in the sudden pallor of his normally golden skin. “And what other option do you have, Nari?” He doesn’t mean to push me into it, but he steals away a fantasy future I’ve been building in my mind, a future with Daxeel. Eamon steals that from me as he adds, “You’ll be banished or disowned. Without security, what will you do?”

I lean against the banister.

For a beat, I consider him, consider his words. My face hardens against the anger prickling up inside of me, against the tickle of tears in my throat, like icicles sprouting beneath my flesh.

Then my words exhale with a whoosh, “I don’t know.” I drop my head and stare down at the toes of my boots. “What if father just listens to me? If I tell him everything, father might… he might sever the engagement.”

Eamon steps towards me, his hand coming for my cheek. He cups my jawline and tilts my face to align with his. Sorrow dims the golden hue of his eyes. “I wish that were true, Nari. But the reason you haven’t done it yet is because you know he won’t save you from that fate. You are a pawn to your father. I am sorry.”

I don’t know a tear spills down my cheek until his thumb brushes it away.

“I am sorry,” he echoes those words softly and it’s enough to twist my face and summon streams of tears.

Eamon makes to drag me closer to him, to hold me through my cries. But I jerk my chin out of his gentle hold, then step aside.

“No,” I whisper.

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