Page 107 of Cursed Shadows 5

“That is what happens,” Rune smirks, “when a male doesn’t take the seed.”

“Does that mean she finally gave up hope on Dare?”

Rune hums a tune of agreement. “About time. It’s been a decade of that, and she never quite learned that he will still go wherever the desire takes him.”

I lean my temple on Rune’s solid arm. We watch the parade pass us by, but I wonder about Tris, “Will she stay for the babe or come back to Kithe?”

“Melantha transferred her slave papers to Morticia. You don’t do that if you expect the slave back.”

A deep sorrow settles in my gut.

My mouth turns inwards for a beat.

“What?”

“It just…” I shrug, lame. “It’s all changing, isn’t it?”

On the other side of the parade, Eamon makes a gesture to the stall keeper at the table there, he lifts his pinched fingers to his mouth and dabs—a ‘do you have valerian stalk?’

Ah. That is why they have left us. A quest for stalk.

“We will return from the human lands in a few months,” Rune reassures me. “It will change, but not for long.”

“But Aleana is gone,” I say, soft, and Rune doesn’t flinch, but rather a small and sorrowful smile tugs at his mouth, “and Tris and Caius and Ridge… Doesn’t it feel just…different?”

Rune understands me. “Hemlock feels different. It will never feel the same again. But we haven’t lost all our family, and new family can be made.” To emphasise his point, he tugs on a thread of my hair. “Apparently.”

My smile is cocky.

“Narcissa Elmfield.” Rune shifts his weight back onto one boot before he dips into a bow. “It has been an entertaining, frustrating adventure—and an absolute pleasure.”

A too-wide grin smears my face as I lean in to plant a kiss on his cheek.

As I inch back from him, I reveal, “That is more than Dare got.”

Rune lets a laugh rumble him. “I appreciate you letting me know. I’ll be sure to use that against him in future.”

“I knew you would.”

His final bow comes short, curt, and in a heartbeat, he’s gone, melted into the parade dancing through the street now, the beat of the drums louder, the calls ringing higher.

I cast a glance at the lane across the parade—where Eamon should be and where Daxeel should stand with him. But neither of them are there.

Turning my cheek to the lane, I scan the faces packed into the parade. The turn above is sharp and sudden, the winding of this street around and into the next, and it has slowed the movement down. Faces crumple, sneer, loll their eyes, or look overhead for a solution.

There is no solution, not that I can see with a sweeping look over the bend of the street, congested at the turn.

And I don’t see either of them in those faces, not Eamon, not Daxeel, and Rune must be gone too far now and so I can’t see him either. Just strangers, unfamiliar and loud, loud in their calls, their shouts to the dead, the wails of grief—and even speckled shouts of impatience.

No amount of impatient shoving and neck craning is going to move the parade around the bend any faster. Besides, I’m in no hurry. The rush of urgency other fae seem to have, it doesn’t touch me.

I am in no hurry, and that in itself feels like a blessing, a luxury.

Before now—wandering the sidelines of the parade, biting into the crackling candy of my plum, and scanning the faces of the fae in search of my vanished Eamon who I suspect has gone off in search of the stalk—I was in a perpetual race against something, even time itself. Before this new life, I was racing against Daxeel in our battle, against Taroh, my father, the Sacrament…

I raced and rushed and lived in urgency.

Now, I wander, back and forth, back and forth, sticking close to the table with the candied fruits, and when I manage to breakthrough the hard surface of my plum, a purple grin steals my face, stained teeth and juices leaking out the corner of my lips.

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