Page 40 of Cursed Shadows 5

My mouth flattens,

My home in Licht is decrepit. It falls apart at the seams, it sinks into the earth, rooms are boarded up, too ruined to use. But I have never lived in a dwelling quite as bad as this.

I tug away from the bedchamber and wander to Eamon across the parlour, and I decide it is better termed a sitting room or a lounge.

Eamon looks out the black-framed window that stretches from the scuffed floor to the mouldy ceiling.

“Some sorting of the furniture,” I mumble, “and it will be a fine space.”

Fine, not grand, not pretty, but enough to be homely.

Enough to be home.

All we need is a place to stay for a short time, while we get ourselves sorted. How we sort ourselves, I don’t know exactly.

I’m hoping Eamon does. I mean, hedidsay he had a plan.

I look to him as though I will read that plan on his cheek. But his thoughts have him.

Lost in his mind, amber eyes reflect off the window. From my angle they look like streams of brown and gold.

So beautiful.

It brings a smile to my face.

I snake my arm around his and lean into his side.

“We have enough coin for a month here,” Eamon tells me, his voice a soft murmur. “But that does not include our meals or firewood.”

“We need” —my face crumples— “to find work.”

But what sort?

My mind is blank.

I have no skill outside of dance. That isn’t paid work.

I am decent in bed, but whoring isn’t to my taste.

“I have another idea,” Eamon says… and that is all. He adds nothing more, his thoughts are kept in his head.

Before I can ask, an impatient jangle of keys comes from the entryway.

I look over my shoulder.

The landlord loiters at the threshold, between the communal corridor and the door to the dwelling.

I eye him for a moment.

A dark halfling who wears a roundish weight to his middle and a swell to his cheeks that I think it a little odd for his fae blood.

He huffs a sigh and folds his arms over his brown sweater, a blotchy red hue warming his otherwise translucent cheeks as he throws his urgent gaze up and down the corridor, as though we take up too much of his time and he has a hundred other things to be doing right now besides showing Eamon and I the dwelling.

These dwellings are cheap enough that we can pay ahead with the monies in the pouch from Daxeel. With what we sell of our own belongings in the satchel, there might be enough to purchase food for a week.

But the affordability of this home comes at a cost, as it often does. The landlord demands that we are to caretake for the corridor, wash the floors and the walls every third Warmth, and if anything is to be fixed in the dwellings, then we’re to see to it ourselves. The black specs of mould on the ceiling, the skitter of mice in the cabinets of the small kitchen, the lean of the bedroom door that pulls off the hinges is for us to simply put up with. And the washroom is down the hallway, shared between all four dwellings on this floor.

Still…

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