Page 35 of Cursed Shadows 5

“I hoped. I wished. I had faith in you, please don’t mistake me. I believed in you. But I worried. So much stacked against you, every fae hunting you. I do not mourn Ridge’s death; I rejoice your survival.”

He draws back, his arms slow to slip away from me, like this is the last thing he wants, to let me go, even if he must.

We can’t hold onto each other forever.

I aim my watery smile up at him; his is soft down at me.

Without the shield of his chest, the drizzle hits me on the face. Droplets are quick to run the bend of my nose, catch on my lashes to merge with my own tears, fall onto my hair and sit a while as a mist.

I will smell like mildew soon.

The rainfall isn’t too heavy, and so I am not quick to wet. But it’s enough to bother me, and I throw a scowl upwards.

All I see is darkness, the kind that thickens the air to breathe and feels too much like a pressure, something of a weighted, woollen blanket draped over me.

I roll my shoulders against the sensation just as Eamon tugs away from me.

Panic flurries through me.

I need him close to me, even if he’s only taking a few steps back to his satchel left on the street, I shadow him.

“I went through your things.” Eamon bends at the knees to seize the satchel. It might be bulging, stuffed full, but it is light enough that he easily swings it over his shoulder as he rises. “There wasn’t much of value. I added some of my finer belongings.”

“Not your new boots, though,” I note with a curve of my mouth, and I gesture to the shine of fresh leather.

His grin is crooked, part shame. “A gift from Melantha.”

“She doesn’t strike me as the gift-giving type.”

“Only when she wants something,” he says, and the grin fades. “We are at a teashop,” he adds, and nods to the wall beside us, as though the entrance is right here, but it isn’t, it is around the corner. “Shall we?”

“I have no coin.”

None at all.

Not a shilling, not ascrapingto my name.

Eamon laughs a single note, then steals my hand in his. He takes me to the teashop.

The drizzle can’t reach us inside, but the sweltering blow of the fireplace does. Now, my flesh is cold and quick to dampen with sweat.

We snag the table closest to the hearth, since the hour is late in Kithe, and not many folk are out for teas.

Eamon orders for us, a pot of poppy brews and two buttered scones.

The server, young and halved, is fond of glaring, I find. She makes sure to let us know in those frequent looks how unwelcome we are at such a late hour.

She must be desperate to close up.

I am not.

I enjoy my tea and scone.

“I have plans for us,” Eamon tells me, running the spoon around and around his mostly untouched tea. I suspect he took me here just to ensure I am fed, not for himself. “But we don’t have the funds to pursue them.”

I muse, “A lot of dreams, so few skills to create them.”

He smiles and pushes the plate of his untouched scone across the small table.

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