Page 104 of Cursed Shadows 4

Dare’s dark, steel gaze returns to the meat. He’s a statue, marble and dark, hair that strikes against the pallor of his skin like ink down bleached parchment.

But his hand gives him away, fisted firm around the stick, a grip too tight.

I tuck my arm under my head like a pillow. “What is it you are thinking about when you are plagued by her?”

His mouth slants. “I think of all the ways I might get my revenge on her.”

I scoff.

It draws in his glare, a flash of gilded danger.

“Can it not be forgiven?” I ask. “It was only a small slight.”

Not to mention, I sort of like the kinta.

Without Aleana, there seems to be a gaping hole in my life, not closing in, not swelling wider, just… there. Like it will never leave.

I don’t mean to replace her, I never could, it is an impossibility. But I learned that I liked to have another friend. And Bee is amusing. She is sass and rebellion and trickery.

Yes, I like her.

I suspect Dare does too. More than he would ever admit.

Shadows seem to arch over him.

The gold-painted gleam of his eyes warns me. “To intoxicate me, drug me, lure me, trick me—and thenstealfrom me…” his tone darkens with his eyes. He sighs a gravelly sound, a threat. “That is no small slight.” His grim smile turns on me, and at themere sight of it, I decide I would hate to be the kinta. “I will not turn my cheek to that.”

If I was a gambler, I would bet coin on Dare’s obsession.

Not necessarily a thirst for revenge, a hunger for retribution—but a true, soul-constricting obsession. The kind that eats a fae inside out, the kind that leaves behind trails of blood and organs.

It’s that or…

Mateship.

Evate.

I ask the too-blunt question. “Is she fated?”

His brows shoot up to his hairline. The look he lifts to me is a startled one. His gaze hooks mine—and holds.

For a long moment, he just stares into me.

I don’t flinch. I don’t back down.

I am secure in the truth that Dare won’t harm me.

His tongue rolls over the inside of his cheek for a beat. Then, with a jerk of the chin, he gestures to his packed, leather backpack. Flatter and longer than mine, the sort that moulds to his back as closely as his leathers do.

“Parchment,” he says, a simple word spoken, and yet it’s both an order and a dismissal.

I slip off the log and reach into his unfastened bag. The parchment crinkles under the weight of my wiggling fingertips and gives itself away.

I lure out two sheets, then place them flat in each palm.

As I advance on the fire, my gaze keeps downcast. “I sometimes ask what I shouldn’t.”

“A wretched apology.”

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