Page 93 of Cursed Shadows 5

I start on putting away the inventory we did receive, save for the barrels which are tucked under the bar.

An hour passes before the bell above the tavern door jingles. It’s a faint sound to reach the kitchen at the back, but I hear it, distant, and still.

Crouched under the bench, drawers pulled open, I set down the last of the spice jars, then lift my chin to peer over the bench.

Still, Hedda sleeps. Her mid-phase rests are too long.

Before any sort of panic can lift through me, Eamon’s familiar voice calls out, “Nari? Are you here?”

I sag with a sigh.

“In the kitchen!” I call out and push up from the floor. My knees are quick to ache, as though strained beneath the cartilage. I double over and rub out the soreness.

The swing door to the kitchen turns.

I look up as Eamon slips through the gap.

His smile is slanted; exhausted, but relieved. It is warm, it is honey.

Not even a heartbeat passes before I’ve shoved from the bench and rounded on him.

Eamon moves to meet me, and the moment we collide, his arms come around me, firm.

“You are late.”

His smile twists against my temple. “I was held in Licht.”

I blink, once, then tug back a step. “You were held? Are you safe now? Are you hurt?”

My gaze sweeps him, from his dishevelled braids coming undone to the mud streaking his clothes.

“I am fine, I am fine,” he hushes me. Still, he doesn’t let me go, his hands soft on my arms. “I was held for only a couple of phases. I wasn’t harmed, they merely questioned me.”

“About me?”

He nods. “And Daxeel, and the Sacrament… and what Mother said to you on the summit.”

He doesn’t know.

I didn’t tell him.

I haven’t told a soul.

Not that there is purpose behind that. I just… want to keep on with my new life, not dwell, and frankly it was nothing that made sense.

Besides, I lost. So Mother’s nonsense means nothing.

“I saw Pandora.” Eamon slips his hands away from my arms, then reaches into his back pocket. “She gave me this—to extend to you.”

He hands me an envelope, wax sealed.

I eye it for a moment before, with a huff, I snatch it into my fist.

This is the last thing I need, to be reminded of my family in Licht, to be thrown into sudden awareness that they are still there, existing.

I prefer to go through my new life as though nothing exists outside of me.

It helps.

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