Page 66 of Cursed Shadows 5

Is it Nari who learned from the slight… or was it himself?

Daxeel slumps in the chair.

Against the muzzling, Taroh’s screams scrape and claw up the dungeon walls. Daxeel listens. Dare cuts. And when the faerie hound wakes, she devours the flesh until there’s nothing left but bone. It takes a long time, longer than a phase. Then bones are broken and scattered deep out in the bogs.

No one will ever find Taroh, not him, not his bones, not his scent. What does remain is a faerie hound.

†

Daxeel holds the pup to his chest; it is perched on his arm, bouncing with every step he climbs up the narrow staircase.

The stink of mould burns at his nose.

He pushes through a slim door without a handle. Looks torn off, but it swings with a groan, hinges in need of oiling.

He takes the corridor to the third door, the one to Nari’s dwelling.

For a beat, he stands there.

The pup draped over his forearm pants softly, but the sound is irking him. He tosses the pup a dark look before he lifts his stare to the door—and stills.

He opens his senses. Pries them apart.

He listens; he smells; he feels… He waits for any sign of a fae in that dwelling beyond the door.

Nothing comes. No footsteps, no splash of sink water, no rattle of chairs. No steady breaths or rustling of clothes.

No one is home.

His intel comes from all over Hemlock House. Melantha, Morticia, Eamon who visits, Rune, even Tris, when she wanders to the shops to pick up some things, she even returns with whispers of things she saw.

So Daxeel knows that Nari could be in one of four places in Kithe at any given time. The dwelling, the tavern, Forranach’s home, or the strip of low-quality shops just three streets from here.

Given that it’s the middle of the Quiet, and the shops won’t be open, and the hour is inappropriate for visits, he suspects she is at the tavern.

Eamon, too.

The silence beyond the door is still; no one inside.

Balancing the drowsy pup on one arm, Daxeel reaches out his other hand for the grimy doorknob. The scent of decay, of rust and dirt, is strong.

He grips it, firm, then twists—and the door pops open.

A soft huff deflates him.

Both Eamon and Nari should know better than to leave their door unlocked. Not that a trained killer, an assassin the likes ofDare, could be stopped by a locked door. Still, it irritates him enough that his jaw rolls before he steps inside.

A swift glance around the darkness flooding the dwelling, and the disappointment tilts his mouth. Dishes are piled high in the sink, a balancing act of mugs and bowls and spoons, even two pots that are grimed thick with dried oats; crumbs all over the counters; the lounge is dusty and dense with the thick smell of smoke from the sooty hearth; and the floorboards are streaked with filth tracked from outside.

Daxeel has lived in the barracks, he has survived out in the wild for years at a time with his training unit, he has known lives without comfort. It isn’t pretention that has his mouth pinched, but rather that he does not like thatshelives this way.

His aim in coming to this dwelling was to bring the pup and leave. He has no speech prepared, no words to offer her—because what can be said?

I am sorry.

Those words ring through him.

Words that will never be enough.

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