Page 143 of Cursed Shadows 5

The belt clatters to the floorboards.

I cast a flickering glance around at the faces angled at us. It is a quiet hour, just a dozen fae in the tavern—and that includes the workers.

But all are watching.

Rune’s face is flushed from the burn of the hearth, but his unease shows in the way he shifts in his chair, the way he thins his lips and rubs them together.

Daxeel’s coarse voice lures my attention back to him, “Of all the things I apologise for, of all the things I regret—I am ashamed of so much, Nari. I am most of ashamed of not seeing you.”

I frown.

Standing here, a stupid look on my face, all I can manage is a frown as Daxeel pushes into slow, gradual steps.

Yet there is nothing soft about the way he looks at me, a stare that burns through the worlds.

I am silenced by it, the stare, the intensity, the weapons belt discarded on the polished floorboards, his advance.

Those tears I strained to fight off in the kitchen, they return with a crusade against me.

I am fast defeated, and the wetness spills down my cheeks in a heartbeat, tears curving into the corners of my mouth and salting my tongue.

“Look at what you do—look at what you have accomplished. You stood on your own, in the grief of loss, and you built. You, vicious thing, are a warrior like no one I have ever known.”

He reaches into his sleeve and threads out a blade. His fingers release—and it hits the floor.

He discards his weaponry right here, under the stares of old warriors.

“A formidable opponent...” He drops to a knee. “The one I follow.”

The one I follow…

I turn my wet cheek to him. Not to reject, but to shut my eyes and reel myself back in.

The sobs are bubbling in my chest, too raw. My mouth quivers around them.

I blink my eyes, my sight distorted by the tears. The swallow that bobs my throat is thick,loud.

I find my watery stare met with the shock on the faces of the patrons.

Not many this hour, but the ones who are here are of old age and proud mind.

Their faces give them away—the sheer disapproval for what Daxeel is doing: Publicly denouncing loyalty to anything but me. Dorcha, war, bloodshed, none of those matter, not if he doesn’t have me.

I look at him, there, kneeling on the floorboards. A forearm braced on his knee, a boot planted, and his head bowed. Dark tendrils brush over his face, and his eyes would gleam up at me through them if his gaze wasn’t latched onto the floor—in submission.

I slide my boot back; and that one move has Daxeel’s body tensing in his bow.

Knee planted on the floorboards, he keeps his head dropped, and he waits—but I see it on him, the tension tightening his muscles beneath the leather, that a flurry of panic is thriving in him… because I might walk away.

I want to.

A part of me aches to forever turn my back on him.

I loathe all that he has done.

I loathe so much of him.

But the other part of me, it aches for another path, to throw myself into his arms, to have him hold me in my tears, hold me through my pain.

---