Page 23 of Cursed Shadows 5

They don’t all have a place to go.

So many of the warriors, most of them, and their families have been staying at the garrison. That’s gone now. All that’s left is a stream of rubble and broken stone powering through the spiral.

The uncertainty is found in every other face. The faces of those who haven’t a place to stay but the fallen stronghold. I wonder if evacuation tents are being set up around the town or in the woods, and that is why the full medical tents haven’t been pitched.

“If it must be,” Eamon finally says, and his voice is clipped. He is displeased. “Where shall we meet next phase?”

“The tea shop down from the scripture hall—at the start of next Quiet.”

“Next Quiet?” he echoes, sharp. “That is a whole phase away.”

“I need rest. A lot of it.”

Eamon’s sharp features soften. His throat bobs before, dropping his gaze in shame, he nods. His cheeks flush.

I almost reach out for his hand, tell him not to feel the shame of forgetting my circumstances, to reassure him. But I find I am eager to slip away now.

I lean for his face.

He meets me halfway.

I brush a ghost of a kiss over his high cheekbone. And that is my comfort, my farewell before I slip off the side of the carriage.

My boots smack down on the rough stone road.

The pain thrums through me, instant. But it comes without the dizziness that plagued me down to the town centre, it pulsates in my head,thrum, thrum, thrum, but doesn’t throw me off balance.

I close my eyes and let the spell pass.

As I blink back to my surroundings, Dare is a blur of black and gold at my side, he’s taking me by the wrist.

The pace he takes is unhurried, and I suspect that is for my comfort, but he keeps me close.

He leads me through the throngs of folk, winding us around lampposts, weaving us through the standing carriages and ducking us under the steamy huffs of the kelpies.

His grip on my wrist doesn’t loosen.

The scent of leathers and blood and metal is thick in the air. It’s a suffocating cloud that surrounds us all the way through the crowd, even after Dare turns us down the slender, bending street that’s too narrow for any carriage to squeeze through. Plenty of fae have spilled into the street, though; there is still a shortage of fresh air.

I stick close to Dare’s shoulder, his grip on my wrist, as he weaves us around fae after fae.

“You are too proud to ask, or you are too selfish to consider it,” Dare starts, then pauses to peer down a street lined with bloated homes, at least six levels tall, “so I will tell you.”

His fingers flex on my wrist bone before he drags me alongside him, down the street with the bloated homes.

The fae crowd is thinner here, but there are still enough folk scattered around that my bad shoulder is knocked once, twice, and by the third time violent urges are crawling up inside of me.

“Tell me what?” I ask, but I know the answer.

Above, an elder male leans out of a curtained window, watching all the folk move below.

“Daxeel is fine,” he tells me. “Wounded, but is recovering.”

My teeth clench so hard that the bones in my gums ache. All I manage is ahmphin answer.

Undeterred, Dare goes on, “Rune and I got him out of Comlar in the collapse.” He scoffs, bitter. “The iilra—those who survived—left him behind. We thought he was dead,” he adds with a side-glance my way. “He wasn’t.”

My nod is stiff. But the gloss burning my eyes betrays me.

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