Page 30 of Cursed Shadows 5

There were many halfbreeds in the Sacrament, but I don’t chance the sass with this older male. I doubt his patience extends very far.

He looks me up and down. “You are alive.”

Again, my answer is a faint nod.

I guess he didn’t keep up with the Sacrament to the end. He knows enough to understand my name, connect it to Rune, and the second passage, but I bet he was in bed asleep for the finale that tore down Comlar.

Considering the stink of tavarak drifting off him, I throw a wild guess that he got all his information on the Sacrament from tavern talk.

Forranach considers me. “You must have tricks,” he decides, that thick black furrow of his brow shadowing down his face. “The light females are always full of tricks.”

“Halfbreed, so I am only half-full of tricks,” I say, and my words should be accompanied by a smile, but the fatigue of the phase—themonths—has me sagging on the spot.

His hand fists around the paper before he knocks himself on the chest. “Forranach.”

I know because Dare told me his name.

Still, I bring my hand to my own chest. “Nari.”

He shoves his weight into the door and the crutch drags along with him. “Come.”

The breath that shudders through me is nothing short of relief. I rush into step and follow him inside.

Forranach is not a talker.

That is fine by me.

He sends me off into a narrow room that might be meant for storage, it’s so small and dusty, or perhaps intended for servants, the likes of Knife.

But I am in no position to scrunch my nose at a bed. And this one has a thin pillow, a sheet thrown over it, and then Forranach adds a lumpy quilt before he leaves me in here.

Fully clothed, I kick off only my boots, then fall onto the bed.

Sleep is quick to come.

I stir, hours and hours later, the Warmth pushing into the narrow, dusty room. I wake to Niamh’s arrival.

Like her husband, she is no talker.

They don’t even exchange a word between them, and the tension steeling them both would draw my interest if I had energy to spare. I don’t.

So I am still as the healer treats me with the black powder.

Before she departs the cupboard-bedroom, she leaves me with a praise I don’t like:

“Special halfbreed.”

Special.

There is nothing special about me.

I am merely a victim of a male I loved. It is the same story of many other females.

Nature didn’t respond to me because I am unique. It answered me just as it answered any other litalf who asked.

I was merely collateral. But I was a victim who went down fighting—and got away with her life for it.

Paint it different ways on a canvas, the same colours will be used. I am just like every other female. Tricked and lured and broken… by an ugly male.

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