Page 138 of Cursed Shadows 4

And yet, he brushes the tip of his nose against mine. Nothing mocking about that gesture, it’s as sweet as it once was under the willow.

I whisper against his nearing mouth, “Why did you hide them from me?”

Daxeel’s answer is a frown, faint and shrouded in the shadows of the cave.

“Your scars.”

He did hide them from me.

It was with intent that he kept himself covered in his leathers, so long ago, and hid the shredded bumps that smear his back.

I guess when the end is near, and one knows it, all sorts of questions find a way to be asked.

I wonder if he knows what I really ask.

Why did you hide your true self from me?

As I did you?

Why did we deliver each other into pain, derived from the deceits we crafted for one another?

We brought ourselves here.

That is a cold, striking truth.

I am as responsible as he is.

“It was not your pain to bear,” he says after a long moment. His murmur is soft. “I did not want you to fear my kind more than you already did. The violence would have—”

“Spooked me,” I finish in a soft whisper, this faint little lie that we share.

Daxeel leans closer to me, his arms firming around my body, and I’m drawn in closer to him. His mouth moves against my hairline. “Yes.”

I almost laugh, and perhaps I would laugh if I had the energy.

“Of all the things I have seen from your kind and mine,” I manage, the croak of my voice betraying me, “the violence I’ve witnessed your hands create, the cruelty you deliver to me…” A bitterness ebbs into my weary smile. “And I am still not spooked.”

Silence is his response for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, until his whisper snakes around me, “Then what are you?”

My lashes are lowering. Heavy, weighted, the black powder crawling back over me to drag me under.

“Sad,” I whisper. “I am sad. As are you…”

“Yes. But it is only the bond,” he says, soft, to keep his words private from any fae close by, but not to spare me from the tears that prickle my eyes. “Once it is done… I will be free.”

“Of me.”

His mouth flattens into a grim line. I feel it against my forehead. He has no answer for me, no response beyond his silence.

The final wave of darkness comes, and I wonder if the next time I awake will be my last.

Then in the darkness, his answer finds me, “Of the pain.”

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††††††

Samick’s glacier voice frosts the cave, “The mountain can throw us back through the portals at any moment.”

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