Page 24 of Cursed Shadows 5

I do not want to hear any of this.

And yet, I want to hear everything.

I ache to know every detail of Daxeel’s health, of his escape from Comlar, of his condition. I also yearn to tear myself away from this path and never hear the name of my once love ever again.

Dare is unlucky to be caught in my conflict.

The sneer I aim at him isn’t kind. “Oh, and how is he now? Better?”

“Daxeel is being treated at Hemlock,” Dare says, but then he looks at me, he sees the sneer, and his words falter. He realises the sarcasm in my question. His tongue darts over his ointment-smeared lips before he sighs the words, “Samick was sent to find you in the collapse. We didn’t know then if you’d made it out or not.”

We didn’t know if you had left Daxeel behind.

That’s what he really means.

A grunt catches in my chest.

Our bootsteps, out of sync by a mere moment, thud on flattened cobblestone.

“He isn’t at Hemlock,” I say after a beat. “Daxeel was in town earlier.” Not even an hour ago.

Dare slides a frown my way. “He has been unconscious since the iilra stripped him of the magick.”

I shake my head. “He was right behind me.”

And I walked away.

Dare’s mouth pinches. “It couldn’t have been him.”

My tongue runs along the gloss of my teeth. The distant thought passes me, that I am dire need of charcoal and a brush to scratch the film off my teeth, to scrub my tongue clean; I needa stone and sand in my hands to attack every bit of my flesh I can reach; a bath to fill with scalding water to immerse myself in.

I need to wash away the Sacrament, Daxeel, blood and death, the loss, the shadows…everything, until I am clean again.

Dare turns us off the street into a lane lined with overflowing bins. My nose crinkles under the assault of the acidic stench, a rotten stink that surely comes from old wines and overripe fruits.

His fingers finally slip from my wrist.

There are no fae crowds down here.

“So you sent Samick to find me?” I say and watch a voder skitter behind the bins. “And here I wondered if he had a heart underneath all that ice.”

Dare smiles small, but it’s quick to morph into a grimace. His eye flickers, a quiver of his lashes.

It hurts him, the gash that’s balmed down his face.

“He has a heart,” Dare’s voice is soft. “But it is awfully selective.”

His unmarred cheek turns into my line of sight as he pauses at the mouth of another lane, a narrow alley whose dewy, stone walls are littered with uneven, crooked doorways. A cheap, hollow end of Kithe where visitors don’t roam.

I follow him down the alley. “He hates me.”

Dare is unflinching. “For what you did to Daxeel. You have to understand, Nari,” he says and steps over a toppled wicker basket, empty and stained with mould. “Rune and I met Daxeel at the barracks. We can see what is best for him from a distance. We have the outside perspective. Samick can’t see the way we do.”

My answer is a frown as I side-step a leathered ball, peeling and frayed at the seams. Younglings have left it out.

“Samick and Daxeel grew up together.” He stops at the end of the alley, where a tall and wet wall looms up as high as three stories. He turns to look down at me. “When you harmed Daxeel,” he says, “Samick felt it as though it happened to him.”

My lips suck inwards.

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