Page 76 of Cursed Shadows 2

I’m one step away from the edge of the bridge when I hearhis faint response, his softly spoken words, “I do… every phase.”

When I look over my shoulder at him, face twisted and my boot slamming down on the street—he’s gone.

I decide now, this is not going to be a great phase. Already teeming with unwanted encounters, and this should be a lesson learned to not walk the darkness alone.

I doubt that blue selkie would have pulled tricks like that on dark females. Butoh let’s pick on the light halfling, she’s an easy target.

My mood has soured so much that my scowl keeps for too long, and so I will need extra skin firming lotion when I get back to my bedchamber in the garrison.

The longer I take to get to Comlar, the deeper into the Warmth time edges, and I just can’t take it much longer.

Since it’s almost an hour walk and mostly uphill, I need a cool change in the air. Especially now that tangled strands of hair are stuck to my temples and the cotton of my dress is darker in some spots with sweat patches.

But a half-hour into the walk, I’m still in town. On the outskirts now, but it’s the path uphill that’s the gruelling part—I just need to find it.

I don’t exactly know my way directly from the house to the uphill path, so I waste time wandering familiar streets, but so many of them look the same, and finally I turn onto a street I recognize by its broken black lantern, the one snapped in two and looks like it was kicked by a drunken dark fae—and I know where I am now.

The relief ribbons out of me with a sigh, one weighed down by the heat swelling around me, the humidity suffocating me.

I turn for the long lane. It’s the final one before the path begins, but that doesn’t ease how stiff my shoulders get as I push through the thick shadows lashing around me, thicker than the heat of the Warmth.

Sparse light affords pockets of visibility as I stalk down the lane, and I feel it goes on forever.

But forever is not my worry, not when the clicking of heeled boots start to echo around me. The sound bounces off thewalls and, in darkness, it’s hard to pinpoint the source exactly.

For a while, I think it’s my boots clocking on the stone ground.

But then I can separate the two sounds—my boots and another pair, not far behind me, and much more expensive than the hollow clacks of my heels.

Before I can even look over my shoulder, that familiar drawl snakes through the shadows of the lane, “Each time I see you, the stink of him is stronger.”

I let my eyes shut on the icy sensation of sheer dread trickling down me. A deep inhale through the nostrils, and my chest inflates, then I brave the dread and turn to see Taroh standing in a tender wisp of light that disturbs the darkness like a mere swirl of dust.

Hands stuffed into the pockets of his breeches, he has his head tilted back and he looks down his nose at me. The disdain shows in the wrinkle of his pursed lips, but the brewing rage is in the bulge of his pockets—his hands curled into fists.

Maybe it’s the exhaustion, the arguments I’ve been getting myself into of late, or simply that I haven’t yet had coffee, but whatever it is, I just sigh something weary at him.

“We are not yet married. I owe you nothing.” There is no bite to the lull of my voice. I merely state truths. “You cling to an old slight that is between you and him, but I pay the price at your hand. Why, Taroh?” I lift my hands, palms upturned, then let them slap back down to my sides. “Why must this be your vendetta against me? Can’t it be that I think you are unworthy of me? That you would make a poor husband despite your wealth?”

Lashes lower over fierce emerald eyes, eyes that gleam like their own light source in the dark. Slowly, a smile snakes over his pale lips. “Your slights bother me, yes. But they are insignificant, because you are insignificant. You are a mere bride to be, a womb to be used—” I flinch at that, the burn of sick in my throat. “—and you come in pretty packaging, but that does not make your voice important. You, Nari, are no threat to me or my intentions with you.”

He takes a step forward. The ivory leather of his bootflattens on a dark patch of the ground. He tips his weight onto it, prepared to pounce, prepared to run at me—but he is motionless.

I’m stiff as a statue. Every muscle ready to whip me around and spear me through the lane, up the hill, into the courtyard of Comlar, which I hope, I pray is busy enough to offer me protection.

But that’s all dependant on the bold assumption I can outrun him for that long. I might be strong, a dancer, and have a stamina he doesn’t possess, but I am running on some hours sleep, too much drink, drenched in my own sweat from the humidity, and tired out by Daxeel. Sprinting all that way uphill—I am not sure this is the right phase for it.

“Then why must you hate me so?” I switch my focus to a pleading whine in my voice and hope that does something, anything to get him away from me. “If I matter so little, and my low opinion of you is so utterly insignificant, then why—why,” I grit out the word through clenched teeth, “must you torment me?”

“You are my betrothed. Another claims you for all to smell. I am in a battle withhim.” He finally pushes his weight onto that boot, and he’s slinked out of the light. Still, he’s a shadow, and I see him well enough that I’m not yet running. “You are stuck in the middle, in a sense. But in another… you are all too willing to flaunt his scent, his claim, and slight me in doing so.”

“I love him, Taroh.” I shake my head with a sigh. “This is not about you, it has never been about you. I love a dark one, and I want to be with him. That is the core truth of it all, buried beneath these perceptions of slights and injustices, I simply love another.”

Another step and his shadow moves that bit closer.

I take a step back on instinct.

“How many others do you love?” The guttural sound of a snarl has crept into his voice. “Eamon, Daxeel—and now, Rune, is it? How they havealltaken to you,” he drawls the words in a near-song, and it’s warning enough that I’m staggering back from his advancing, slow steps. “I wonder if that’s what you are good for. Did they figure it out before Idid, just how lovely your mouth is when it’s full?”

---