Page 151 of Cursed Shadows 4

So I nod. “Then I will go.”

His lashes flutter, only slightly.

“I will go,” I echo, stronger. “I will survive this, and I will leave. I will leave you… and Taroh… and my father and my sister. All of you.”

Daxeel tilts his head to the side and studies me. “You have declared this before,” he says, soft. No mockery, no accusation, but mere observation.

“Not with the understanding I have now.” I take a step closer to him and raise my chin. “I do not think I lied when I said I do not love you anymore. I wonder, Daxeel, if that is the truth.”

A stricken look passes his face. But in a blink, it’s gone, and I’m staring at a male as unfeeling as any boulder.

“All this time of knowing you, I believed as deeply as my soul that I loved you.” I smile, bitter. “But it was only ever my soul that wanted you. My heart, my mind—they are not so convinced. I can be without you all. I hoped before coming to this mountain—but now Iknow. I can do what I doubted I was capable of. I can survive on my own.”

The look I give him is one made of steel.

His mouth flattens.

“I have skills and talents and determination. I don’t need you, any of you. The best part is… I don’twantyou. You touch me and I feel an echo of what I once did. You speak your lovely almosts to me, and I hear them for the silliness that they are. Empty—like you.”

His lashes shut on a defeated dimness to his eyes.

Standing before me now, he can’t hide the pain in his face, or the anguish that calls to me through the bond. But that is only evate, and not his true love, not his true feelings for me.

So I ignore his pain, just as he has perfectly crafted then ignored mine.

A shadow carves into his dimpled cheek as he turns his chin aside. “It will be different to not have you crawling after me each phase, to not have you begging for a taste of me. It might be something of a reprieve.”

I scoff on his blatant lie. A lie he tells as though I don’t feel him crumbling in my own heartspace.

A dark smile dances on my mouth, bitter and disgusting. “For a taste of me, I will see you on your knees.”

“If you survive,” he adds darkly and slides his cobalt gaze back to me.

“Yes. If I survive, Daxeel… I will make sure you suffer as you have made me suffer. But not with intent. I will not live my life to hurt you or seek revenge. I will go on as though you do not exist, because once our bond is broken, I will also be free of you.”

His jaw is clenched too tight, his teeth might shatter.

“This bond is the lie between us,” I say. “You and I, under all this fate and gods business, we do not love each other.”

He flinches as though I struck him.

I push into step and throw aside the leafy curtain. My legs are unsteady under me, my thigh—already knitting together—screams with each step. I grit my teeth against the sharp pain.

I make it out from under the drapes before Daxeel has caught up and moved to tower over me.

I slew my narrowed gaze up at him, a curl tugging at my upper lip. But he wipes the snarl from my face in a second.

There’s sincerity in the way he watches me, like he knows as well as I do—this moment, this phase, is our last chance to ask what burns us.

And so he does.

“Why didn’t you ask me for help that night at the court?” His throat bobs. “You could have asked me then, in the midst of that celebration, to save you—and I would have done. I would have stolen you away on a steed and taken you home with me.”

“You never made offers, Daxeel. You never told me that we were more than a fling, a first love—you didn’t tell me anything that mattered, that I am your evate, that you wanted to be with me, or that you would save me from my wretched little life.” I shrug with the same dullness that dims my eyes. “You gave mealmosts. You kept me in the dark, and so I made my own way through it.”

He looks away.

Shadows unfurl at the wrists of his leathers, coiling around his ink stains, lashing at his fingertips, as though seeking to comfort him.

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