Page 105 of Cursed Shadows 5

He spins around to face me, his eyes alight with fiery embers, a sheen of surprise glistening him.

I attack.

In a heartbeat, I’ve lunged for him. my arm loops around his neck, and I swivel around to sit on his back like a youngling clings to its mother.

I hold, tight, then nestle my chin on his shoulder. “You should not underestimate me, Eamon. In case you didn’t know, I am something of a warrior.”

His laugh chortles in his chest. He slaps his hand to my folded ones around his neck, then grips.

“Hold on,” he tells me, then heads back into the crowd.

I do hold on.

For a while, we move with the flow of the crowd, and I piggyback through the festivities.

The taste of chalk and burning parchment is thick enough that it tinges every breath I take; spilled sweetness in honeywines, bitterness in the ales, inkiness in the tavarak, it all floods the air; I even taste the occasional tear through the musk of cooked ox meat on the tables.

We tug out of the crowd again, this time for honeywine, before slipping back into it; and we follow for so long that, eventually, we are nearing the town centre, where the paintbombs still erupt, but this time they stain the tall, handsome faces of buildings neither me nor Eamon can afford.

I plant a smacker on Eamon’s cheek before I slip off his back and the dirtied soles of my feet smack onto the chalky cobblestone.

“This—this is magic,” Eamon calls over the songs as he tugs me out of the crowd with him. “I want this!”

A frown pinches my brow. “A festival?”

“A place to honour the dead. Not to rouse them from rest, not to disturb them, but to love them,” he pauses as though unsure of his spiralling thoughts, or even simply unsure on how to articulate them. “In Licht, it’s not a disturbance to speak of the dead, to feel them—it isn’t a harm to do this outside of the Sabbat… so why not at the tavern?”

My fingers are still threaded through his, firm, and my steps shuffling to stick close to him in the push-and-pull of the crowd.

Eamon’s grip on me doesn’t loosen as he draws us closer to the edge—and I sense that he’s taking us to the stall with the candied plums, the sugared pears, the sauced apples.

He flaps his free hand in a gesture all around. “This is what I want the tavern to be!”

“I don’t think everyone would fit!” shouts a familiar, buttery voice—and my heart skips a beat as I push up on my toes and look over the heads for yellow eyes.

Rune ducks out of the shadows clinging to a particularly paint-blasted lane, whose walls run with all the colours of nature—and Rune wears the same, a rainbow head-to-toe.

His grin flashes like a white light. “Didn’t think I was going to leave without a farewell, did you?”

A smile splits my face and, ducking under a fae’s outstretched arm as he reaches for a passed bottle of honeywine, I scramble for him.

Eamon is quick to overtake me.

I scowl at the back of his head.

Eamon doesn’t notice but Rune does, and a faint laugh catches in his throat before he brings his arms around Eamon.

Their embrace earns an added, scathing look from me. My rushed pace dims to a wander as I approach the table lavish with a banquet of fruits.

I eye up the sugared pear slices, the kind that have humans on their backsides with just one bite. Me, being a halfling, I can have a full pear and stay standing. But the lights are brighter, the glitter whispers, faces distort with laughter, and it’s all so wonderous and magical and terrifying.

I lift my gaze to the stall keeper—and startle.

Behind the wispy female who reeks of rotten fruits, a broad and muscular silhouette comes out from the shadows. His steps are slow and cautious, blue eyes gleaming at me from the swallowing darkness of the lane.

My throat bobs.

I should have expected Daxeel to be with Rune.

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