Page 150 of Cursed Shadows 5

Unflinching, he meets my gaze and fastens his breeches. “Am I invited?”

I give him no answer before I’m pushing into stomping steps for the door.

He follows, a shadow at my heels.

35

††††††

Daxeel is quiet behind me, a soft-footed shadow. He keeps to that silence as he follows me through Kithe.

I leave the tavern in Forranach’s hands, Rune’s, too, and Hedda with Leif.

I don’t have a direction in mind—and I don’t need to know where I am going for Daxeel to follow me. He simply does, and my steps take us all the way to the dirt path that winds up the hill to Comlar, the ruins of it.

Daxeel hasn’t once asked why we are going there, he hasn’t asked anything at all, not spoken a mere word. Gods, he hasn’t even breathed too hard or stepped too firm on the ground.

He is quiet, and I sense he is scared to disturb my peace, scared tospookme—because it might mean that I push him away again.

That hush keeps as we reach the ruins.

I stand at the border, debris all around my boots, and I take it all in.

A place I came to with so much hope in me, now a dust-smeared field of debris. I flick my gaze from the decomposed bodies, mostly bones now, to the mound of sloped stone.

The tower.

What’s left of it.

I push into a careful climb.

My boots are cautious with each landing on uneasy stone, my measurements calculated as I jump to higher piles of rubble.

Daxeel is close behind me, the glowjar in his grip swaying through the darkness.

I feel it, I feel him, so near my back—as though prepared to catch me if I fall.

I don’t fall.

I climb the sloped remains of the tower without a slipped boot, and I find a levelled edge to stand on.

I look out at the destruction of a place I was once so thrilled to come to.

That life, that version of me, seems more than a lifetime ago, it seems so much like it never happened at all. The memory is so faded, so unrecognisable that I can hardly grasp it in my mind.

I recall, faint, that I had to lie and hide my excitement from Father, that we were to come to Comlar, that I would see Daxeel—and I would win him over with petulance and sex.

“I should have told you,” I say, soft, and run my gaze along the bones protruding from a tall rockpile. “When I first came here, I came with strategy.”

Daxeel perches on the edge of the stone, next to my boots, so close.

“My strategy should have only been the truth.” I scoff, and my shoulders jerk with the bitter gesture. “If I had just told you then that Father forced me to betray you, that he beat me that night—and locked me in the basement and that I faced the threat of the Grott… That might have changed everything.”

Daxeel is quiet for a moment. Then, soft, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about your scars?” I hit back at him, but it is less of a strike and more like a lifted mirror we both are forced to look into. “We kept parts of our lives hidden from the other. I think we both painted versions of ourselves and hid the ugliness.”

Daxeel lifts his chin—and looks up at me.

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