Page 99 of Cursed Shadows 5

Samick’s jaw tenses; a fistful of knives.

“Yes, we all know how you feel about her.” Rune tosses him a withering look. His shoulders slump with a weighted sigh. “It’s… I sense that something terrible is coming.”

Samick lifts his gaze to the outline of Kithe.

Yes. He feels that, too.

Something wrong in the darkness. That same wrongness he marinated in, silent, alone, before Rune came to disturb him.

There is a niggle in the Cursed Shadows, a thicker blackness than what was before. It is serrated, it is dense, it is godly—as though a part of Mother resides in it, weaving new fates, a tapestry of fresh schemes.

The arrogance of the dark fae astounds Samick.

Though he allies himself with Dorcha, fuels his bloodlust through their means of conquest, he does not bend his soul for their ways of thought like Alasdare does.

Samick sees through the lens of all, not one.

And one thing he cannot settle in his mind is Mother—and her children.

The humans are her children as much as the fae are. Strange that she accommodated their end in such a way. Who’s to sayshe wouldn’t do the same to the fae? Her children, the dark fae, the light fae, seelie and unseelie, human, beast, the witches, the ferals. All life.

Is Mother a mother who loves her children?

“Dare should sense it, too.” Rune’s jaw rolls. “So why would he run off and waste his time on a kinta?”

“Perhaps that is the very reason why,” Samick considers. “Dare chases fate in ways we do not understand. Fate’s hands are on his shoulders, guiding him. We cannot question that. He is a puppet of fate, not a weaver.”

“And you?” Rune snaps, that sour mood settled. “Does fate demand you leave us before you must, to do what—build a home that is never done?”

The look that Samick slides to him is dark.

His home in the village is something of a running joke with his brothers; a tail that has no end.

The home is a dream he tries to mould in the awake. He takes great care to build it with his own hands, stone by stone. Each time he is released from duty, he travels there, and he works. And he accepts no help. Not even from Dare.

But each time he finishes something, this time the windows overlooking the wild gardens yet to be planted, he knows it is wrong. He must try again.

And again.

And again.

For years.

A gruelling process to perfection; a dream taken to a sketch then into hands.

Is it fate?

Or is it that he has no home beyond Hemlock, not the way that his brothers do?

Rune has his blood sibling, his brother, and his parents in the Blood Court; Daxeel has his home in the Royal Court, his mother with him; Dare with his parents in Aiteal.

Samick had that home. Just one door over.

Not anymore.

Rune offers the grimroot, pinched between his fingertips.

Samick shakes his head, then takes a small step back from the roof.

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