Page 60 of Cursed Shadows 2

I throw a look over my shoulder at him, seeing how he advances, the threat in each slink of his muscles, the danger storming in his eyes… and his ferocious eyes fixed on Pandora.

“You throw your sister to her death.” His words are a growl like no other I’ve heard from him. A growl laced with ice.

I shudder at the sound and step aside.

He moves to stand in front of me, a shield.

“Your apology is weak. Mere twisted words,” and the growl tenses my shoulders, pins me in place. “You think she cansurvive the trials? The first passage alone will annihilate her. If you were not able to commit to the Sacrament, then your first failure was signing up to compete. Your sister pays for your failures.”

My wide gaze is stuck on Daxeel.

For him to so boldly, so openly come to my defence in front of everyone gathered in the foyer, on the stairs, in doorways…

He’s announcing me. In the face of his peers, his fellow dark males, he is deflecting the slight I served him in the High Court and locking in his protection of me. This is more than an ex-love coming to my aid. This is a fucking statement.

My breath trembles with my hands at my sides.

His upper lip curls as he says, “You treat her like an unpleasant child, when she has every right to fear her fate—and resent you, who delivered it to her.”

Father pushes forward to stand at my sister’s side. Face slack with shock, his eyes burn with outrage. And it’s all fixed on me.

My retreat is instant. I take an instinctual step back.

My shoulders curve inwards as the icy ropes of fear turns into a blizzard in my chest. I want—need—to make myself smaller.

But as though smelling every bit of that panic, Daxeel transfers his weight onto one leg, shifting his body to shield more of me.

“Has this resumed, child?” My father’s voice is calm, but there’s a storm beneath it, one that sends a tremor down my cold spine. “Tell me now, have you touched thisdarkling?” he spits the word like the insult it is, and growls rumble through the corridor. “Tell me if you have sullied your body once again with this beast!”

“I am the beast?” Daxeel’s snarl is slow but utterly commanding. “You sell her off to a male who hurts her, send her into a trial she’ll die in, she begs for your help and you deny her the only one who would have died to protect her—” If my eyes could get any wider they would fall out of my head, but I stare at Daxeel as though it’s the first time I have seen him, because it’s the power of what he confesses.

He would have died to protect me.

And maybe he still would.

But as though I’m little more than a mere mouse hidden behind him, he goes on, “Is this how your family shows their love?” he spits. “Her ill fate in all regards can be blamed on her pathetic father and her woeful sister. You have no honour,” he says and turns his glacier look on Pandora. “If this is how you treat the ones you love—” he drops his gaze to her swollen belly “—your babe has my gravest sympathies.”

Behind me, Samick scoffs. He wears a lazy grin that I turn my wild, teary eyes on. But Caius is looking right at me, not at all distracted by the confrontation in the lobby. He looks only at me with a stare made of daggers.

Rising sobs carve out an aching sensation in my chest. It turns my breaths shallow and hoarse. The tears fall freely down my cheeks, and I don’t know what to do.

Run, weep, join Daxeel, or turn against him.

I know what I should do.

Go to my family and accept my punishment.

But I won’t.

I can’t.

Especially not now that Daxeel has made a very public announcement about me, right in front of my father. It’s something I’ll pay for, a punishment I can’t face.

So I’m sliding my boot back against the floorboards, my instinct preparing for retreat, for escape.

Daxeel is defending me, but I know that’s the evate urge taking over, not love. Not my ally, not the one I fell in love with all that time ago. I needed this from him back then. But now, it’s sullied because I know he doesn’t want me like I want him.

My kind devil is still a devil.

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