Page 36 of Cursed Shadows 5

I take it without argument.

Forranach fed me again after he woke me, this time with cheese and cured ham on a stiff piece of bread.

I haven’t gone without since the end of the second passage. Between a pastry and a pie, soup and bread, and cheese and ham, and another piece of bread, I shouldn’t feel as though my stomach is entirely empty.

But I do.

So I am quick to scarf down the scone.

“Even if we sell everything in the bag,” Eamon kicks the toe of his boot to the satchel; it thuds under the table, “for a fair price, it is barely enough for a week’s worth of food. But I do have this.”

He tugs a blue velvet pouch out of his pocket and sets it on the table, next to the teapot. It clinks, and so I know coin is in it, a healthy amount by the look of the lumpiness.

“Daxeel,” Eamon says, soft.

My gaze flares on him.

“He is awake,” he starts—

“I don’t care.” I hold my hands up, as though to defend myself. “I don’t want to know.”

Eamon falls back into his seat. The chair creaks under him. “He only means for you to afford a healer.”

I choke on a bitter sound, a scoff, a laugh, a fucking misery. A healer to tend to the damage he caused.

“I will hear nothing at all about him and his wants,” I say, firm, and my gaze is unwavering.

Eamon sighs, a gentle unribboning of air that sags him. He nods, once, twice, then, “Still, we should keep the gold. I checked, and it is enough to afford a dwelling for us while we… find our starting point.”

I eye the pouch for a moment.

We do need it. But to touch it seems dirty somehow.

“I won’t take it.” I decide. “But you should.”

Eamon agrees with a nod, then slides the pouch back towards him. He tucks it away in the pocket. “Can I use it to pay a healer fee for you?”

I shake my head before I bite into the remainder of the last scone. Through a mouthful, I tell him, “I ‘ave un.”

Eamon frowns, but that wrinkle of his brow is quick to smoothen with understanding. “Forranach’s wife.”

My answer is a grunt.

“She is coming to treat you?”

I nod, wiping my finger along the bits of butter dotted onto the plate, then dragging it over my tongue. “Did Dare tell you about… about Ridge?” I ask, because I only told Dare in the Sacrament.

Eamon’s smile tightens his face like a grimace of pity. “Melantha.”

It takes a moment to catch up in my mind, to sit with the truth of it, that the spectators saw these things we did, these grisly uglythings, that they watched us betray each other, fight to the death, fight for our lives—and couldn’t do anything about it.

Melantha watched me.

It shouldn’t be a striking thought. But it is.

She found me in the images flashing over the portal’s tarry mirror, the window to the other side. She watched me. Like so many others did, I am sure.

“I saw some of it myself,” he confesses.

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