Page 73 of Cursed Shadows 2

It’s early in the Warmth, but whatever her errand was, she’s done it and returned to the house—just in time to catch me sneaking out.

She turns her fierce eyes on me. Like I was all that time ago, I’m faintly surprised they aren’t blue, like all her children’s eyes. Her irises are pools of stirred tar.

And there’s nothing friendly in them. Not for me.

“Melantha,” the softness of how I speak her name in greeting comes with a swift curtesy. I’m obligated to thatgesture, what with her status in Dorcha, that also applies to the Midlands, but also to show respect to Daxeel’s mother.

She doesn’t greet me back.

Her pointed chin lifts, and though she’s a level below me, she somehow looksupat medownher nose. From all angles, her cheeks are hollow, her nose narrow, her lips thin. But this angle thins her face even more, and I think of a dagger, an ateralum one since her sword-straight hair is spilled ink that ends with a blunt cut at her sharp jawline.

Tucking my gaze to the stairs, I start down the steps for the foyer. The laces of my boots are spindled around my fingers, and so my feet are bare on the lush carpet, and the satin dress I wear is all wrinkled from spending some hours as a lump under a bed.

“Tris,” Melantha utters the slave’s name with such delicacy that if anyone was in doubt of her status, then the polished glass of her voice would be all the confirmation needed. “Narcissa will be joining me for tea.”

I pause on the bottom step. My toes curl and disappear into the thick carpet, my fingers tightening around the laces.

Without another look at me, she lifts her narrow hand, and her bony knuckles tense as she gestures me to follow.

I do.

I’m suddenly aware of myself, of the blood that’s dried on my shoulder from a bite her son ripped into my flesh, and of his stink all over me, the wrinkles of my dress. I shadow her around the foyer, through a large sitting room that makes me think of being stuffed into a green phial, then to the paned doors.

Melantha waits for another servant—this one a bit on the frumpy side and I wonder how much they are rationed here—to open the glass doors for us. They lead to a small courtyard with blackwood beams above, wispy grey vines wrapped around them, and small orbs of fireflies and their soft orange light dangling just a reach above.

Light comes from nowhere else in the enclosed courtyard, not from the stones or the thick greenery enveloping us—only from the orbs and the vines. Casts a soft, pleasant dusk overthe courtyard, and I think this would be my favourite spot for an early coffee when I’m not quite ready to face the brightness of day.

Melantha cuts to the right—and it’s like she’s cutting through my thoughts before I can fully settle on them.

I follow her to the edge of the patio.

She drapes herself over the many cushions of what we call in my land a daybed, but since there’s no day in the Midlands, I don’t quite know what it’s called here. Her leather wrapped leg hikes, her boot resting on the foot of the table, and her arms are spread out over the cushions—a wolf sprawled out on the grass beneath sunrays on a pleasant evening.

I wonder that she might have been a warrior once. The muscle bulk is gone, her tone something like a dancer’s, that solid and lean and slim physique I’ve chased for years, but never quite achieved. The humanness of my blood keeps some fat around my middle, keeps my hips too wide, my breasts too full and not nearly perky enough.

And I feel all of that oddness, the humanness, as I step around the small table and sit on the metal chair. It’s hard on the ass, but I ignore the bite of pain, cross my ankles, rest my hands on my lap, and keep my spine straight.

More than this being Daxeel’s mother running me over so bluntly with her gaze, like she can read all my past behaviours and actions and current intentions on every fibre of my dress, but that she’s a viscountess, the wife of a general, and should be respected as such.

Like her gaze, this female herself is a bludgeon. I find that the moment she speaks, and I feel like I’ve been knocked over the head—“You don’t deserve him.”

The suddenness of her words, the plain manner in which she simply states them, strikes me silent.

My breath is choppy as I draw it in, but I say nothing. And the two servants come out into the patio, bringing a flourish of silver trays and golden painted teacups and porcelain plates stacked neatly with crustless sandwiches.

My silence holds in their company, as they pour teas, and it holds once they take their places against the wall.

Despite the hunger coiling in my belly, I don’t reach for a meat and goat’s cheese sandwich. Not even as my mouth starts to water.

“He told me all about you.” So different to how Aleana confessed Daxeel’s letters about me, Melantha rolls the words off her tongue with unbridled judgement.

I sense she judged me back then, too. This isn’t a new thing, this isn’t stemming from my slight. This came before. One of the reasons I avoided her like a cold around the court.

I have no mother, but I hear some can be this way, protective of their brood. Maybe too much so.

I suffer it in silence.

Her black eyes are pits of nothingness that she hooks me with. “A natural flair for luring in males… in your words and in your dances and in your smiles.”

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