Page 1 of Cursed Shadows 4

THE PROEM

1

EAMON

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An indescribable unease thickens the air of Kithe.

The winds should be stiff, the temperature crisp, the air stagnant. Yet warm winds lash at the faces of the fae moving swiftly up and down the path to Hemlock House.

The Warmth teeters on the edge of invading the lands, battering away the last few moments of the Quiet. In the early intrusion of the Warmth, a hushed panic rushes the front porch of Hemlock.

Melantha heaves a case over the gate, tattered, scraped and peeling brown leather.

Morticia catches it with a tightened grunt. Before she can twist around to shove the case into the arms of the waiting coach-rider, Eamon comes rushing out of the shuddering front door, a door that seems to whine and hiss with frustration.

Eamon yanks the strap of his satchel over his head, his boots smacking on the stone path, his blouse billowing in the winds.

He sweeps past Melantha, the winds growing harsher the further out of the tree-lined coverage he ventures. His pink cheeks are raw against it, and his fine braids that whip at his face.

His steps don’t falter. He marches straight for Morticia.

He snatches her by the arm. “No, mother.” His growl is as terse as the look she gives him. “You must stay. It isn’t safe.”

Morticia yanks her arm free.

Her lip curls over her teeth. “You forget who the parent is. I will be by the side of my son, and a son in danger is all the more reason to accompany him.”

Eamon lets a snarl break through him.

He turns it on the coach-rider who wrestles Morticia’s lumpy luggage onto the carriage roof. The dokkalf is dressed, prepared, for the long ride through harsh weathers and morke infested darkness. His old black leathers are muted from age, too long gone from Dorcha armies, a warrior turned coach-rider over the centuries.

How much gold he was paid to come for this ride, this assignment, Eamon doesn’t ask. Doesn’t want to know, because he can’t pay the Taraan House back.

And he knows it will have been Melantha who paid the fee, his mother’s sister.

She comes up behind him in two, silent steps. But she stops at the wrought-iron fence.

“Do not argue it.” Melantha hisses, her hands turning to fists on the arrowheads of the fence. “The Warmth is coming. You are losing the advantage of time. You must go,now.”

Eamon tenses all over. His muscles turn to lead, his jaw clenches, teeth grinding to dust. None of that helps. None of that removes the danger lurking over him like a storm cloud. Danger that he’s about to take his own mother into, all because of her stubbornness.

The rider disturbs the family spat.

The case is fastened to the roof of the coach, and so he jumps down onto the road, his boots smacking too loud, and he yanks open the carriage door. The old wood groans and snares the glares of the dokkalves gathered around the fence.

The rider throws his one-eyed gaze to Eamon, a bite of impatience on his scarred, twisted mouth.

Eamon yanks out of his stillness with a throaty snarl.

He turns on Melantha.

His aunt arches a dark, thin brow over her ink-blot eye.

Eamon fishes out a crisp envelope from his pocket. He pushes it into her bony hand. “For Ridge.”

Her gaze cuts down as she takes it, then she gives a single, deep nod. “I will have a servant run it to him.”

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