Page 22 of Cursed Shadows 5

“Why?”

I hesitate.

My mouth parts around an answer I don’t have. Then, I shrug and steal the parchment back.

Truly, I don’t know why she wrote this address for me, why she sends me to her husband, her home. I only know she meant to help.

“A place to stay,” I guess.

Eamon’s mouth twists with a frown.

Out the corner of my eye, Dare stills. The knife tip is tucked between his flesh and fingernail, but it doesn’t move.

Eamon parts his lips as if to speak, but shuts them, then again before he slumps with a sigh. “I do not know why I assumed you would return to Hemlock.”

A quiet drifts over us, as though the realisation of our new realities has finally taken the moment to settle. The adrenaline surge and the panic, it’s muted now—and so the truth can creep in.

I am without a home.

Daxeel and I are done.

Aleana is not at Hemlock House. She is gone.

It will never be the way it was before.

Eamon is replotting his thoughts, deciding our next move together.

Dare slowly starts to push up from his lounging posture.

I cut a glance at him.

He forces a tight smile in return, but it’s grimaced by the wound slashed down his face. “I can take you there.”

I blink at him once before my slothful mind catches up. He will escort me to the address on the paper.

I nod, firm.

“Us,” Eamon says, soft, a worry-frown digging deep into his honeyed features. “You can takeus.”

“I wasn’t offered for us both,” I tell him. “I think perhaps I should go alone—” Eamon’s chin lifts with an edge of tension. “—and you return to Hemlock until next phase. All my belongings are there. You will need to gather them for me, gather whatever has resale value, and we should meet next phase.”

It isn’t a lie, what I say. The healer didn’t open the offer to anyone else, didn’t tell me to bring along a friend to her door.

But maybe I avoid a moment with Eamon.

Maybe that flicker of worry in my chest drives me to avoid him. I can’t,I can’tbe around him when he learns of Ridge’s fate at my hands.

I can’t see the pain on his face, pain that I caused.

And if he chooses not to meet me next phase, then I will know how alone I am.

Eamon thinks on it.

The tension in him is stiff.

Dare waits, pushed up into a slouched-sitting position, and his gaze swerving between Eamon and me.

I loosen a breath and look out at the sea of bobbing heads. Too many fae still wandering the streets of Kithe.

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