Page 3 of Cursed Shadows 4

Morticia encouraged other desires in him. And he is much happier in that life she crafted for him, to chase laughter and spill wine and roll down grass hills. She raised him in a way she could never have done in Dorcha, where he would have been stolen from her too young, thrown into the barracks, and turned to stone with a heart caked in ice.

So the dagger in his grip, the one he unsurely presents to his mother, is something he is acquainted with, but not familiar with.

That distinction will mean his life in battle if Lord Braxis has sent hunters after him.

An edge of premature defeat softens his voice, “How many arrows?”

Morticia’s mouth pinches. She fishes out three more bone arrows, then—lamely—touches her fingertips to the throwingknives that glitter around her waist, a black leathered weapons belt hastily fastened over the black of her nightdress.

Eamon decides, she mustn’t have had time to find more arrows or dress in leathers that might protect her, definitely protect her better than a nightdress. Four arrows, a weapons belt speckled with around five throwing knives, and a bag that she probably tossed random items into before running out to the carriage in a flurry.

It was as little time as he had before he left Nari on the porch—and decided to run.

The carriage was called in a hurry.

Melantha eavesdropped on his conversation with Nari, on his private farewell to his sister of the soul.

Melantha lurked in the shadows of the foyer, then rushed to call on the coach-rider she knew to be a warrior. An added layer of safety that does little to soothe the disquiet in the carriage.

Just four arrows. A dagger. Some knives.

Little skill between them.

And a last-minute rider that Eamon hopes can fight well enough that—if Lord Braxis has anticipated this escape and has prepared for it with warriors in waiting—they might survive.

His face tightens. “You shouldn’t have come.”

She scoffs. “And let my only child make this journey alone?” Her hand fists on the arrows, her other clenched on the curve of the bow.

Eamon’s shoulders sag with his deflated tone, “It is too dangerous, Mother.”

“That is exactly why you cannot be left alone.” Her fine nose seems to sharpen with her glare. “This is more than a mother’s love. Aleana is gone.”

A strike across the face.

A dagger in the gut.

A twisted fist in the chest.

That’s what the reminder feels like.

Eamon flinches.

Aleana’s glossed, balmed corpse on piled wood, a black flame dancing over her flesh.

A sharp breath cuts him, and he sucks himself back into the hard wood of the coach.

“Caius and Daxeel might die in the passage,” Morticia says, softer now, and turns her flushed cheek to him. “That will mean you are the last of the bloodline’s breeding generation. We cannot let the Sgail line die.”

His lashes flutter over dimming eyes, a gold melting into charred embers.

The carriage jolts, a sudden bump in the road.

And so they have passed the streets of Kithe, now at the edge where the roads are cheaper, less kind to the metal wheels and the passengers.

Morticia’s bony fingers tighten on the bow. Her nerves are betrayed in that gesture Eamon catches out the corner of his eye.

She says, evenly, as though her entire skeletal body hasn’t stiffened opposite him, “You have a duty, whether you rejoice in that or not. As I have a duty you, to give my life to protect my bloodline.”

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