Page 98 of Cursed Shadows 5

Without a word, Samick exhales another billowing cloud of black smoke into the darkness, then offers the grimroot.

“Dare wrote. Did Melantha tell you?” Rune asks, then his chest swells with a deep inhale of smoke, a hunger for numbness.

He will never have that numbness he seeks, the one he yearns for, the quest that drives him into brutality and violence just to silence the pain for a moment.

But the pain of losing evate is eternal—and cannot be muffled, no matter how much grimroot is in the realms.

Samick shakes his head, the frosty hue of his hair disturbed. His voice is distant ice, “Where is he?”

For phases he has been waiting for Dare’s return to Hemlock. His little quest over a meaningless kinta has cost Samick time in Aiteal. Together, they are meant to depart Kithe and, while Dare spends time with his family there, Samick means to work on his unfinished home.

At this rate, it won’t be finished for another year.

“Dare was held in Licht for questioning,” Rune says. At the flash in Samick’s eyes, he adds, “He is well. But he was of short time, so he left directly for Aiteal. He messengered a letter ahead to tell you.”

“He did not say his farewells.”

Rune loosens a ribbon of smoke. “He said them in the letter.”

Samick is quiet for a moment before, “I’ll leave shortly.”

Gleaming yellow gaze cut aside to Samick. “You could stay, for the Sabbat at least. Go to the village after that.”

“I could. But why would I?”

Rune’s smile is tight. “You’re not that short on time. The house will still need work done the phase after the Sabbat.”

“I have nothing to say to the dead.”

That response, spoken with sheets of ice, shuts down the discussion.

Rune thins his lips before he turns his attention back to the grimroot. “Did you speak your farewells?”

The human realm will be an easy takeover. Yet the threat of war, violence, battle, it risks lives even if they are fae. It takes one human to learn the differences in their anatomies, and that a well-aimed knife to the neck of a fae is more effective than a poorly placed explosion that merely might make a dent.

There is no certainty in war.

The farewells of soul family is a custom upheld by the dark warriors.

Dare’s letter is a meagre goodbye. It is arrogant.

Samick spoke his already. So his answer is a nod.

Rune says, “I will give mine at the Sabbat.”

That constant pain in Rune that snakes through the air, silent to fae not of ice, it ebbs with something fresh, something new.

Samick lets the sensation creep around him for a moment before he decides, “You are nervous.”

Rune throws him a dark look. “How do you do that,” he mumbles the question without inflection, mumbles it in a huff, then flicks the ash over the side of the roof. “I am nervous about Daxeel.”

Samick turns a blank look on him.

“He is weakened by loss. I wonder if I should have chosen another path… another general to follow.”

“General Caspan has been your choice since the barracks,” Samick says with a slight shake of the head. “As Raske has been mine. Dare will be in Daxeel’s unit—he will watch out for him.”

“Loss does things to the mind,” Rune argues, soft, and looks down at the scuffed, damp stone of the roof. “If Nari… If she gives him the chance he yearns for—before we depart, I might feel more assured.”

---