Page 133 of Cursed Shadows 5

That was before the blood of the Sabbat.

So no, he won’t write. Not until his last moment at the stronghold, and the raven will out-speed him to Kithe—but he will be only a handful of hours behind it.

Because the last thing Daxeel can face right now is the truth, the truth of how deep her indifference runs for him.

33

††††††

The boy perches on an uneasy stool.

My bones brace for failure as I watch him manoeuvre into a crouching stance on the stool, from bottom to boots, then slowly rise to stand.

“Lief,” I start, teeth bared against the threat of his fall, and if he does fall, his head will smack right off the bar, and he will be another dead. “Get down. I will do it.”

“No, Miss Nari,” he grunts out the words as he stretches and stretches all the way up on his toes to reach the plaque bolted to the top shelf. “I got it.”

“You don’t,” I say and, sidestepping Hedda who chases flickering lights from the glowjars all over the wooden floor, start for the bar. “You will fall.”

“Only if you keep willing it,” he grumbles, low enough that I suspect he didn’t mean for me to hear him.

I arch a brow and turn a blank look on Forranach.

His smirk is small, hidden by the list of orders he works on, and he only meets my gaze for a brief moment.

I find I can’t so easily turn my cheek to a young boy barely balanced on an old, flimsy stool to reach the plaque on the top shelf.

So I watch, as though that’ll somehow stop him from tumbling to his death. But I don’t interrupt again.

I let him delicately sweep the cloth over the names of his parents.

It is our way here at Eamon’s.

Above the hearth, his name is cursive on a plaque stuck to the wall; Lief’s parents on the top shelf; Aleana’s name gilded along a blackwood slab over the cosy corner sofas.

Those plaques aren’t the most special part of our tavern.

It is the black vase on the centre table, a table without chairs, but rather an array of candles to light for the dead.

The idea came from Eamon himself.

At the Sabbat, he said he wanted his tavern to be special, to be ‘a place to honour the dead. Not to rouse them from rest, not to disturb them, but to love them…’

I took that—and put the vase on the middle table.

Patrons write small stories about those they have lost. And throughout the Quiet, two stories are plucked from the vase and read aloud to the tavern’s patrons.

Forranach has taken to reading the tales. It is a duty he snared into his grip.

I am glad for that, because I don’t quite have the stomach to address the dead yet.

I stick to the kitchen in those moments.

I didn’t know if it would work when the idea first came to me, if it would offend the beliefs of our patrons, the locals of Cheapside.

But since, in the Quiet, we are packed full, I would say it offends very few Cheapside locals. But success in this business is never guaranteed.

We might only be busy because we are new.

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