Page 62 of Cursed Shadows 5

“Or now,” Dare suggests with a one-shouldered shrug.

The look Daxeel throws at him is withering. He diverts: “Have you talked to Eamon about the kinta?”

Dare arches a scarred brow. “Am I welcome to?”

Daxeel frowns on it a moment before the understanding clicks. To visit Eamon means to visit Nari. Dare must be avoiding anything to do with Nari. Perhaps even bringing her scent back into Hemlock House is something he avoids.

“That depends,” Daxeel says, “on how severe your need for revenge on that kinta is.”

Dare flashes a grin. It is false and tired. “Quite severe.”

“Then I suggest speed.”

There are some weeks before the Sabbat comes to flood the streets of Kithe. But Dare is never in Kithe for the Sabbat. He returns to his village down south, and Samick goes with him to tend to his forever-work-in-progress dwelling.

On the Sabbat phase, the summons come.

Rune will leave then.

Daxeel will leave a week later.

Samick and Dare will depart for the Royal Court directly from the village and meet their units.

Of time, Dare is short.

But before he can spend much of that time on the hunt for the kinta, Daxeel says, “We have unfinished business to tend to.”

Dare’s eye gleams. “I could eat.”

Daxeel gives a sharp nod, then—with a sigh—adds, “I must collect the faerie hound first… from Kalice.”

Dare’s brows hike. “Pardon me, but what the fuck?”

Daxeel’s face tightens, grim. “I purchased a pup from her. Don’t tell Samick.”

He won’t.

But his eyes are wide enough to exude all the silent judgements thrashing around in him. Those eyes follow Daxeel as he starts down the stairs.

But Dare says nothing.

12

DAXEEL

††††††

Daxeel reclines in the wooden chair, “A pound of flesh for each injustice against us.”

In the shadows of the dungeon, Dare wanders, his golden and blue gaze flickering aimlessly from cracks in the stones to the blood pools that he sidesteps. “And against Nari, of course.”

Almost as though the mere mention of her name aches Daxeel deep in his chest, his mouth tenses and his grip on the carving knife stiffens for a beat.

Shadows of darkness flicker over the honeyed hue of his face, but the darkness he held to him for a time in the Sacrament is gone from his body. None curve over his shoulders, no lashes to lick at his heels. Daxeel is again like other dokkalves, belonging to the darkness, melted into it, but not one to hold the strings.

It’s not the absence of the Cursed Shadows that has him feeling that empty ache inside, like someone has taken the carving knife from his hand and done to him what he is going to do to the prisoner hog-tied on the damp floor at his boots. It’s every intrusion of her, even the fleeting mention of just her name from Dare.

With a soft sigh, Daxeel braces his forearms on his thighs and considers the prisoner, the same one he has visited almost eachphase for a week, just to release a little of that pain in him. It’s what he finds himself most drawn to in this career. Thetransferof pain.

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