Page 74 of Cursed Shadows 5

I frown through the sleep that swells my face and dulls my mind. My first thought I should probably be ashamed of.Who is Bee?

But that’s quick to pass, and then I find in all mywoken-in-the-middle-of-a-deep-sleepfatigue, I don’t care where she is.

I lift a shoulder. “Home?”

“Ah, but which one? The home in Licht…” Dare lowers his gaze to the silent Hedda in my arms who’s fallen half into her slumber again but tries so hard to keep awake for me, “or the one in the doomed human realm?”

“I don’t know,” I snap. “Either one. Who cares?”

“I do.” His look darkens into something of a warning, a soft smile that is anything but kind. “I care very much, moody Nari.”

“It’s the middle of the Quiet,” I mumble, but sink back into the corner of the pantry, the bite of the edge pressing into my spine. “It’s no proper time for visitors.”

Dare lowers his lashes, that lovely, awful smile still painted over his lips. “Will you hold onto your sense of propriety all your time in Cheapside?”

I blow a raspberry. It’s all the answer I can summon in my fatigue.

Eamon pushes from the cupboard and runs his hands over his face. “I’ll go with you.”

I throw him a bewildered look—one that he ignores.

His words are muffled by a stifled yawn, “We’ll search her flat in London first.”

“Wha-what about the tavern? We still need to finish painting, the tables aren’t sanded yet—and we haven’t even started on the kitchen.”

“I’ll return in a phase or two.” Eamon sighs and cuts me a weary look. “Bee is my friend. I happen to care that she’s safe.”

“She won’t be in the human realm,” I say it as though it is obvious, because, well, it is.

Dare arches a brow, and the gilded sheen of that one eye glides over me. The other eye remains pale, sharp, and it fills me with an unease. “Oh?”

“She’s obviously in Licht, right? At her mother’s?”

Dare suddenly loses all interest in anything I might say, as though he was hoping for something to go on, and I gave nothing.

I gave logic.

It isn’t enough to soften Eamon as he considers me. “Nari, she isn’t there. She isn’t at her dwelling in London. No one knows where she is.”

My mouth flattens.

“For all we know…” Eamon trails off, but I understand as though he spoke the words beyond a look, beyond the implication.

I nod something stiff and say no more.

Eamon leaves us for the bedchamber to dress himself.

Dare watches me. He makes no secret of how closely he studies me, and if I didn’t know him, I would think he was sizing me up before making a move on seducing me, or killing me, but I do know Dare, and he has other thoughts on his mind when it comes to me.

Suppose he was something of a friend for a while there. But since the Sacrament, since he left me at Forranach’s door, we haven’t spoken, not once.

I ask the stupid question, “How did you get in?”

He lifts his chin in a gesture to the double windows across the lounge.

I scoff. “Don’t you use doors?”

“Mostly not.”

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