Page 128 of Cursed Shadows 5

The envelope unfolds into one sheet of parchment:

‘A letter to a dead bond and a distant love.

You don’t know the depths of my regrets, the turmoil I’ll suffer for you—my vicious, immortal punishment.

You can’t possibly know how far I would go to turn time, to change what I did, all for you, that I would crawl my way through broken bones and teeth and shun my gods all to go back to the field when I first kissed you.

I would have told you then, I am here for you.

I never would have allowed your shame or banishment to the Grott. I would have whisked you away, saved you from your father, and brought you here with me.

But I can’t turn back time. I can’t undo any of it.

I would burn all the worlds to ash if it meant undoing all our wrongs. My wrongs.

My love, my evate, my lost one…

But above all, my vicious one.’

I blink on the milky ink smears, tears I didn’t know had brewed spilling down my cheeks.

‘I will be gone with my unit a year in my life as it will be a year in the human realm. I understand that, to you, it will be three short months.

When I return, I will send a raven to you.

If you are willing to consider me as anything, as a mate, a love, a partner, a husband, an eternal groveler, or perhaps just a friend, then meet me at the stronghold upon my return.

Take pleasure knowing that for a whole year of war and battle, I will think only of that moment.

That question will torture me.

Will you show?’

The parchment crinkles in my fist.

I stare at the piles of folded clothes and neatly sorted accessories.

Then I toss the letter at Hedda.

She pounces on it, fast, and I watch its destruction.

I wipe the dampness off my cheeks with a sniffle.

The letter is meaningless; it is empty and lost to time. Daxeel took ink to parchment before the horror of the Sabbat. Those words don’t stand anymore.

And I am not even certain how I feel about that, that Daxeel’s letter matters none at all now.

Do I mourn his grovelling, his desperation? Do I want those words to still be true?

It is hard to feel much through the fog, through the grief. Even this, all around me, the tavern. It was Forranach who convinced me to bring this dream to life, the best way to manoeuvre life through my pain, but also to honour Eamon.

I don’t quitefeelanything for the tavern.

Hedda sparks a little warmth in me. I do care for her. But mostly I feel loss, a constant cold sensation aching my whole chest.

That drowns out all the other noise.

I prefer that.

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