Page 17 of Cursed Shadows 4

Pandora.

My heart slingshots into my throat.

I twist around, my gloved hands sliding over the stone rubble for a solid grip—and I just blink up at her, not so far above me, almost as though I could reach out and touch her fingertips.

Our gazes lock.

Pandora loosens a breath, a relief that unribbons through her. She slumps and a small, cautious smile tugs at her mouth.

I just blink for a moment.

Something is quick to thrash in me. My heart twists, my insides writhe, and I’m torn. A part of me aches to rush up the stands and throw my arms around her. The other wants to take a bite right out of her.

It’s her fault I am down here.

But then—

Is it?

No, it’s Daxeel’s fault.

He orchestrated it all.

This moment was moulded by him in his hands, all the while they touched me, entered me, caressed me, and shaped my fate.

My shoulders sag.

The look I give Pandora is grim.

I can’t see her belly from the courtyard, not with fae in the row down waving their hands and shouting out to their loved ones.

But the weight of it is in her face.

Once oval, now round and full, her face is enough to tell me that she’s at the end of the gestation. Time in the Midlands has warped the speed of it all, and I don’t doubt she’s just about ready to fall to her knees with the agony of labour.

A grimace steals my face.

Just the thought of birth is enough to steel my bones.

A grisly fate, maybe even more than my own of a bloody Sacrament in which I am certain I will die.

In the distance between us, Pandora mistakes my grimace for something kinder. And she mirrors it back to me in a timid smile. Her movements are slow, and so I follow them as she presses her thumb to her mouth—then flicks her hand my way.

She throws me a kiss.

For a beat, I stare at her with as much focus as I can summon, as though a small part of my mind has taken over and I’m now determined to sketch every detail of her face into my heart, to keep the ghost of her with me.

Before I can memorise her completely, she turns her cheek to me. Her mouth moves, but I hear no words.

She speaks her silence to the one beside her.

The one I didn’t look at.

Until now.

Father’s eyes are sad.

He watches me. Mute and numb.

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