Page 103 of Cursed Shadows 5

Her cheeks flush, and Daxeel could swear she scoots that bit closer to Melantha.

Tris is a worship slave, and this is a role she volunteered for.

Better her and Eamon than himself.

He turns his cheek to the slave and watches the fae with flutes dip under the rotten pears that spear over heads.

“Go.” Melantha’s voice is distant, at ease. “And take the moment to enjoy the festivities. This is a celebration of those we have lost.”

The breath that sighs from Daxeel is soft, and it sags his shoulder into the doorframe.

To find Eamon means to go out there, into the paint and cheers of the parade winding through Kithe.

It means to findher.

That familiar ache spreads through him; a cold flooding his chest. It chills his lungs and makes it harder to breathe all of a sudden.

But he masks it in the company around him.

Rune kicks from the fence. “I haven’t farewelled Eamon and Nari yet,” he says, and that decides it, he’s coming along.

Daxeel nods, faint, an understanding of that support Rune offers him.

Melantha stirs a spoon in her teacup, clang, clang, clang. “When do you leave?”

General Caspan called his warriors the Royal Court early, and so this now is the last phase Rune and Daxeel will see each other for some time.

“An hour,” Rune says and considers the parade clogging the street. “Sooner, if the roads clear.”

Daxeel starts down the path to the gate.

And his chest constricts more with each step closer to the parade—closer to encountering Nari.

21

††††††

Hedda is home with a juicy ox bone for the Sabbat. The foot traffic alone would trample her if I dared be stupid enough to bring her out into the heart of the festival.

And the heart is where Eamon and I have ventured.

Not everyone has sent their messages to the afterlife yet. Parked at the mouths of some lanes and alleyways are tables that house iron bowls of eternal flames and parchments and quills and inkpots. A few folk peel away from the thick crowds and splinter off for those tables—to write to the dead.

I feel freer now that I have written mine.

Aleana is the only one I truly wished to speak to. To tell her I won, tell her I fought to the bone, that I walked away from her brother and his anguish, that I am free of the bond—and that I miss her. I would have liked to keep her, selfishly, in my new life.

Taroh I simply wanted to suffer more.

I do not suffer.

Not this phase.

Hand in hand with Eamon, we walk with the swell of the parade, dancers and screamers and singers all around us; colours blasting overhead.

My chin is lifted, and I search the streets for treats.

Every lane that forks off from the streets is blocked by something. A few of the tables are for the messages to the dead; but others are stacked with fresh fruits for a small price; some have ales and honeywines and tavaraks; most are selling paints, the body kind and the chalk bombs that are continuously blasting above the bobbing heads of the crowds.

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