Page 83 of Cursed Shadows 2

The blood on his hand, like every other smear he wears on his cheek, or down the marble tone of his arms, is dried. But there is a lot of it, and Daxeel would guess that he recently killed at least one litalf and maybe two dokkalves.

But Dare looks entirely unaffected by his particularly cruel bloodlust—or the extent of the bruising that purples his clavicle, or the healing gashes that scatter his hands. If anyone could make a battered fatigue look dangerous, it’s him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he drawls and there’s nothing apologetic about him, not in his disinterested tone or in the wink he delivers to Aleana.

Tendrils of his dark hair are crusted with dirt, some ends dipped in dried blood. The pearly flash of his grin brightens the moonlight gleam of his skin. But it’s his eyes that glitter like clumps of gold freshly carved from a cave—and they hone in on Aleana. The fatigued female slumped on the couchlike a wilted flower.

“A sight for tired eyes, as always.” Paying no mind to Dax or Samick, he moves for the sofa. More of a predator than most dark males Daxeel knows, Dare slinks for Aleana with silent bootsteps and a hungry gleam in his golden eyes.

He swoops down to brush a kiss over her sharp cheekbone, a protruding feature that betrays how her condition worsens, but Dare speaks nothing of it before he falls back onto the sofa.

Dare hikes up a leg and rests his forearm on his knee. “Now who,” he starts with a flashed grin aimed at Aleana, “is that pretty thing out front? Don’t tell me that’s little Kalice all grown up.”

Daxeel would roll his eyes if he had the energy. Dare knows all too well who that neighbour is, since she was around nineteen years last time he was in Kithe.

Dare just likes his females more grown than that. Fuller, wider, older. But he does love to get under Samick’s skin.

At the table, Samick has hardened like an ice sculpture. The coldness radiates from his sudden shift, and it’s enough to draw in Dare’s glittering gold gaze.

Aleana frowns something fatigued for a moment. “Leave her be, Alasdare.”

A darkness settles over Dare’s ivory face, but the excitement of the challenge forever burns in his eyes. “She’s got quite an ass these days.”

Daxeel worries sometimes, worries how far his old friend will take his hunger for the hunt, the chase, the conquer. If he would take it far enough to cross his brothers when all else became too dull.

But then Dare just winks at Samick and slumps into the feathery cushions. He turns his golden gaze back on Aleana. “Miss me terribly?”

“I managed.” She smiles small, then uncorks a phial of steamy purple tonic. “With so many light males around, most of them in love with themselves, it was as though you were never gone.”

Dare’s grin splits his face. The whiteness of his teeth matches the tone of his complexion, made so much starker bythe pitch-black hue of his loose curls. Looks just about ready to snap a bite out of anyone who gets too close, and it’s not often that hybrids have that about them, the threading of savagery from both races blended so seamlessly in their bond.

But it’s the glitter of his eyes that stirs Daxeel.

Narrowing his eyes on Dare, he growls a warning, “That is my sister—save your flirtations for another. Preferably not a female who lives on this street. I don’t want the nuisance of their wrath on my doorstep when you discard them.”

It’s happened only once, but Daxeel lords it over his head, and he’s right to do so.

Before the Fae Eclipse, before Nari, when they were very young and all shared barracks, Dare messed around with a pair of sisters. Naturally, when the sisters connected the dots, there wasn’t much sleep to be had in the barracks for a week or so, not with morke being thrown through the door at all hours, or kelpie skins buried under their bedsheets, and—thanks to one sister in particular—their entire room being set ablaze with the white flame.

That last one excited Dare so much that he retuned for a second chase, just to see if he could get her again. He did. Then more weeks of suffering plagued the barracks once he tossed her aside.

Decades later and Dare hasn’t changed.

Slumping in the sofa, like a lazy prince would drape himself over a throne after too many drinks and not enough care, Dare watches as Tris bustles over with fresh pots of coffee.

She fixes him a serve, and as she does, he takes great care in his gilded gaze running over the laces of her beige corset, then the swell of her poufy skirt. “Am I to be abstinent in my time here?”

“Abstinent in terms of don’t fuck anyone in this house,” Daxeel decides, throwing a blanket of safety over the red-faced slave. “Whatever you do in brothels or at Comlar, I don’t care.”

Daxeel watches as he finally tears his gaze away from Tris. Behind all those flirtations and jests, he sees the exhaustion clinging to his old friend.

Daxeel says, “We expected you two phases ago.”

Dare runs his pale hand over his tired face. He is a hybrid, born of light and dark blood, so he tires quicker than a fullblood dokkalf, but it’s the litalf side of him that makes him such a coveted assassin, spy, and tracker.

“My mission took longer than expected,” is all he offers up, then he sweeps the mug of steamy coffee into his loose grip.

Daxeel studies the bruises smearing his left hand, rips in the flesh of his knuckles, gashes down the insides of his palm, and he wonders if those injuries extend to the flesh beneath his dragon leathers.

---