Page 75 of Cursed Shadows 5

I hum, curt.

After a heartbeat or two, he threads out a needle-like weapon from his thigh holster, and I will be horrified to know its purpose. He uses it to pick his already clean, neat fingernails. His fingernails are very litalf, trimmed and only slightly greyish, not black like a dokkalf’s.

He watches his work as he says, “Rumour has it, Eamon must make a bloodline babe with a human.”

I’m quiet. My jaw tenses, but no words come.

“Bargained,” he edits himself.

Melantha mentioned something like it.

I didn’t consider it too closely afterwards, because I am selfish, and I only thought of me in that conversation.

Perhaps I should have brought it up to Eamon, asked him of his visit with his mother, the expectations they are pushing onto him to continue the ancient bloodline.

But with Eamon, it is the tavern or nothing at all. He speaks little about anything else.

I know him, and I know he is hungry for it, hungry to fulfil a dream, one he wasn’t sure was ever within reach, because while he had hopes and plans, everything was pinned on the outcome of the Sacrament, pinned on the survival of his loved ones.

“Would it have been easier for you—” Dare lifts his sharp gaze to me, and now I know this is his payback for my earlier, cutting words “—if your father always made it clear that you were a bloodline babe, not a loved one?”

Before I can retort, he jumps off the side of the bench and his boots smack down too loud for Dare.

It jolts my bones—exactly what he wanted—and I lean back into the cupboard’s edge.

Dare closes the distance in one, slow step. He leans into me, the sweet bread on his breath. “You still haven’t thanked me, little Nari. For saving your life so many times—or for taking out the threat of Lord Braxis. Shall we start small? Thank me now for removing your betrothed? Or…” he grins, but there’s nothing warm or friendly about it, “should you be thanking Daxeel for that one?”

Silent, my brow tugs together once, twice—and before I can ask anything about it, or even let it sink in that Daxeel and DarekilledTaroh, before I can feel the gratitude or the shame, Dare slinks closer.

He drops his mouth to the shell of my ear, and his whisper is so gentle that not even Eamon will hear it from the bedchamber, “You won’t see true family around you when you are too focused on their flaws.”

He draws back a step and makes a point to touch his fingertips to the pup resting in my embrace.

Hedda doesn’t growl. Doesn’t stir.

And so she knows him.

She knows Dare—trusts him.

I shift my gaze up at him.

Dare turns his back on me and stalks for the lounge. He moves fast. Like a shuddering shadow, he’s at the windows, just a moment before Eamon steps out from the bedchamber, a satchel slung over his chest.

I frown at Dare for a beat, his words slowly sinking into my mind… then they sink into my heart.

I think I hurt his feelings.

Uncertainty weighs me down, tugs my mouth into a frown, but still, I drag myself over to Eamon for a hug I draw out too long—before I turn on Dare.

He watches me.

I reach out my fingertips for his face.

Still, he just watches.

Slowly, my hand fists in front of his nose, and I press my middle finger to the pad of my thumb—I flick him on the nose.

He blinks.

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