Page 105 of Cursed Shadows 4

Despite his words, his smile is small as he stabs the stick into one hunk of meat at a time, then places them on the parchments.

The heat is quick to turn my hands clammy and sore. I wince through the growing burn and rush over to the log.

Dare is my shadow. He drops onto the log beside me, then steals his parchment plate from my hand.

The flesh of my hand is scalding red. Flexing my fingers, I blow a cool, steady breath on the boar cuts and pinkish flakes of fish. Too hot to even try and bite into just yet.

Torture of the worst kind.

If my mouth floods any more, I’m sure I could fill a stream.

Dare sets his parchment plate on his thigh, a frown carved into his face. A heartbeat passes before he murmurs, “I did not experience evate.”

I throw him a bewildered look. “What?”

“If the kinta was fated for me, then I would have experienced evate when I first saw her.”

I pick at the fatty lumps on the parchment, the worst part of any meat, those translucent lumps of fat. But starvation means I would eat dirt if it had any nutrition.

I tear off a chunk. Through a mouthful, I ask, “Is that something you would experience?”

Dare is quiet.

He carefully peels apart the flesh on the parchment into little strips, each one a half-inch wide.

He knows what I’m really asking.

I would gamble that he is thinking the same:

Do hybrids have evate?

Are you dark male enough that this will happen for you?

Or are you so diluted in blood that it will only ever be a fantastical fate?

There is pain in the smile he wears.

As though not to disturb his pain, I gently pick up a piece of meat and sink my teeth into it slowly. My chewing is subdued, when really, I ache to rip into the cooked flesh like a savage unseelie.

“I have felt this pull before.” He bites into a strip. After a swallow, he adds, “Though it was not born of slight.”

He slides a look to me, one that punches his words, reminds me of his desires for Bee, to punish her, not to love her, not to be kind.

And maybe I fall away into fantasies of love conquering all, to never-futures where the males forgive the wrongs of their females, and all is easy and lovely.

That is his look.

“Who was this crush?” I ask, meat rolling around my mouth. Already devoured the first slab. I’m quick to pick up the second.

Without a glance my way, Dare plucks two strips of meat from his parchment then places them on mine. “She was a maid.”

“You felt this pull,” I start, then force a thick swallow down, “for a maid? Was she human?”

Most are.

Some enslaved, others serving out bargains, but many of them—like Tris—volunteer to serve us. They seek us out, follow the lore and our call, and worship our kinds.

But not this maid.

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