Page 106 of Cursed Shadows 4

“She’s a halfling of dark,” he tells me. “Worked in a manor near my home in Aiteal.”

“Aiteal?” I know it.

A seaside town circled by villages. Must be about a three-hour carriage ride from Kithe down the coastline. Through the barrenlands of the morke. A dangerous journey if one isn’t of full dark blood.

Dare arches a brow. “You know it?”

“I spent much time with scripture.” It’s the answer I offer, when the truth is that I read so much because I had so few friends to fill my days before Eamon came into my life. And even then, I still had time without him that felt so empty. Reading and dancing became my crutches.

“I was born and raised in Aiteal,” he says with a small smile, a touch amused. “The Midlands is my home.”

A frown cuts deep into my features.

Of his village in the Midlands, I knew. But I didn’t know he wasbornhere, raised here, in freelands.

Being of freelands, Dare is of freedom itself.

Dare owes nothing to Dorcha. He wouldn’t have been required to enter the warriorship for the dark lands.

“But you met Daxeel at the barracks?” I press. My parchment is empty, save for the oil stains soaked deep into it.

I hope Dare gets up and cooks more from the cadaver that lies gutted and skinned across the camp.

He nods, faint, and polishes off the rest of his meal. “I always knew I would serve Dorcha. I always knew where I belonged. Since I was a youngling, I felt the call of battle in my soul. I only had to wait until I became of age before I could finally follow it.” He scrunches the parchment in his fist, then chucks it into the fire. “It led me to my brothers.”

I mimic him and toss away my greasy parchment. “And away from your crush.”

I reach for the waterskin and uncork it.

“That was dead years before I left.”

Pressing his hands to his thighs, he pushes up from the log and wanders to the cadaver.

I pry on the matter no further, because to interrupt him, distract him from another serving to fill my belly, is to betray myself.

I watch him work in silence until he’s carrying back just two cuts—two for me, maybe; two for him, perhaps; or one for us each.

He cooks the cuts on the hot metal slab, glowing red in its centre now. Silence has him enveloped for a long while, past the flip of the meat onto the raw side, until he gestures for more parchment. Fresher.

I dig out another two sheets from the backpack.

“I meant to marry her,” he says.

I blink at him.

Marry her.

Marry his crush, the maid from his village, the dark halfling. Takes my mind too long to catch up, and so I think the fatigue has really worked through my body and mind, and after this meal, I hope Dare lets me get some sleep before moving us on.

“I mistook the pull I felt for something of the soul,” he says and plates up. “Mateship or evate or a mere whisper from Mother.”

He drops onto the firm soil, the grass a lush cushion beneath him, and leaves the log all to me.

I reach out for my parchment-plated cut. He keeps one for himself, but just picks at it.

“It wasn’t a soul-call?”

He shakes his head slightly. A loose wave of inky hair falls into his face and brushes over the thick length of his lashes. “For a year, she haunted my waking thoughts, consumed my dreams—until I had her in the hay barn. Then…” He shrugs one shoulder. “It faded.”

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