Page 66 of Cursed Shadows 2

Now I know it is enough to secure a private alcove on the third level, because that is exactly where Daxeel takes me. It’s only when we are slipping through the gauzy curtains embroidered with black buttery wings that he lets my wrist go—and grazes the pad of his thumb along my palm as he does.

I tilt my head back. It hits the edge of the bookshelf, but I don’t so much as wince as I stare at the alcove ceiling if one can call it that. Rather than a ceiling, its rippling blue waters, so deep and dark that it reminds me of Daxeel’s eyes.

The water doesn’t spill, not a drop, it just ripples above this hidden bar in this cosy alcove, wall to wall.

And I can’t take my eyes off her—the ashray.

Eyes wide, my lips are parted around nothing but light breaths as I just watch her swim back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes she turns and twists, her pearlescent, ghostly legs kicking out behind her so leisurely that she makes it look as easy as breathing. Suppose it is as easy as breathing is to her. Ashrays are of the water, for the water, belonging to the water.

Her hair is as ghostly pale as her white eyes and translucent skin, but what really captivates me about this water creature is what her skin does. Each time she reaches the farther end of the water ripples, where the shadows are thickest and the light is weakest—sheglows.

Like the marble of the High Court, like the fruits that hang from trees, like the amethysts on the bridges, the worms and flies in the glowjars, this ashray becomes a source of light herself.

That is something I didn’t know about her kind. I knew very little about ashrays, since they belong to the dark lands. But I know that—just like the dark males—if ashrays are caught in sunlight, they die. But where the dark males burn, the ashrays melt into puddles of water and that’s them gone.

A strange death to have. Not so painful, but surely unfulfilling.

Then the scrape of a stool drags over the marble.

I blink once, twice, then throw my gaze to Aleana. She shimmies herself onto the leather, cushioned stool, then slams a now-empty glass on the bar-top.

The bartender is quick to make her a fresh one. It takes all that time for the traces of awe to fade from my face, to come back to the noise and company of the alcove.

On the loveseat tucked in the corner near the butterfly-wing-curtain, Eamon stretches out like a cat under the sunrays. Opposite him, Samick is hunched over a jar of live pixies, and he snacks on them one at a time.

It disturbs me enough that I look away, fast. And I find myself staring at Rune who runs his hands down his face, then drops into the armchair opposite Daxeel on a sofa.

But Rune wasn’t in the alcove a moment ago, and neither was Aleana. I just brushed her little disappearance off as a washroom break, but now…

I lean in close enough to smell the spice of her wispy drink on her breath. “Where did you sneak off to?”

We’re far away enough from the males on the couches and velvet chairs that I’m safe whispering to her, but I force enough of a punch to my words that she follows my implications just fine.

Her eyes widen—shame and… fear?

Fingers tense around the long-stemmed glass in her grip, and I’m certain she’s holding her breath.

“I took some tonic…” Her weak voice falters and she cuts her gaze down to her fresh drink that seems to float in the glass, not actually sit in it as it should.

“With an escort?” I press just as the bartender replaces my empty tumbler for a fresh one, filled with a faint pink drink that tastes of pureed strawberries and has sugar stuck to the rim. It’s the drink Daxeel ordered for me after he abandoned me at the entrance—and is a fast favourite.

Face hot, Aleana lifts her gaze to mine. Short lashes fringe her diamond eyes, the pain in them shuttering her expression. Though she blushes, something fierce and hot, the sickly pallor of her complexion fleetingly has me thinking of the ashray in the ripple pool above us, an eternal ghostly sheen to her tanned skin.

“I’m always to be with an escort,” she murmurs her words, and I sense she contains the truths she wants to speak.

My brow pinches with my mouth. I aim the suspicion on her—because when it comes to me and her brother, or divulging her family’s ancestry, or telling me much of anything, she’s all too eager to be loose lipped.

Now, I feel the cage erect all around her truths, and only slivers of it are escaping through the bars.

Before I can push her any further, shadows stretch up the gauzy curtains at the entrance.

As I look up at the rustle of the butterfly curtain, I see that Ridge finds us easily. He raps his knuckles on the wall before he dips inside.

He’s followed by the litalf female he was gambling with. Luna, the milky-skinned female who would be pretty if it weren’t for the sharpened tips of her teeth. A culture in the warriors from the southern parts of Licht. They file their teeth into weapons, and crimson tattoos down the sides of their faces—one small cross for each life taken in battle. She wears little more than a dozen of those crimson marks, but I think that’s not all too many.

Lilac eyes land on me from across the bar.

I lift my hand in a limp wave, and Ridge approaches with a smile. It doesn’t escape my notice that he doesn’t risk going for our custom of a kiss to my cheek. He just bows his head, and I know it’s because of Daxeel’s guarding of me in the Hall during Master Cup and how closely he watches me all the time.

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