Page 19 of Cursed Shadows 1

A sudden light flickers through the cracked glass of a broken window. It’s up on the third level, far on the left. Orange candlelight, too faint for most litalves to make out, but as clear to him as though it was the match he struck on the street for her.

If she is to go to that window and look out to the hill where she left him, she won’t see him there, not even as he steps forward and slinks into the light of the moon. The sensation is as instant as it is uncomfortable; the light that touches his skin, that he feels cascading over him, down his shoulders,lickinghim. It’s enough to steel his body, to repress a shudder.

Stare fixed on the window, the one that curves around the side of the house he can’t see—the one that tells him her bedroom overlooks the barn—he pinches the light ember of the stalk. It extinguishes before he pockets it, not to smoke later, but to keep.

He turns his back on the window and on the village.

He leaves with one thought.

If I bite you, will you scream?

5

††††††

To think about how it started between Daxeel and me, how we let something blossom that should never be birthed, and how I crushed it in my hand—it’s a pain I’ve lived with as my punishment.

I broke his heart. I shamed him.

How cruel I was to him.

My heart splinters at the thought of life without him, without ever being with him again. I could throw myself at his feet now and he would drive his sword into my back, cut me in two.

I ruined it. I ruined him.

And in doing so, I ruined me.

Now, in one meeting with father, in the two months I’ll spend at Comlar in the Midlands, there’s hope. This changes everything.

So I let the tears stream down my cheeks as I burst into my room and slam the door behind me. The first thing I do is race to my wardrobe and rip out the trunk from under it.

I don’t know what clothes I’m grabbing and throwing into it. I just snatch and toss at random.

Before the lunch bell rings through the house, I’ve packed most of my garments and a wicker basket full of broken baubles. I need another trunk.

Just as I think to ask Pandora for one of hers, her familiar firm knock rattles my door. I know it’s her, I don’t need to look over my shoulder as she lets herself in without my say-so.

She finds me sitting on my folded legs buried in a pile of books, scrolls and sandals. My back to her, I sift through the ribbons for my corsets that I rarely wear. I’m more of a sheer dress or satin slip lover myself.

Pandora is a ghost at my door for a heartbeat, still and silent. Then she moves for me, her pace wandering,cautious.

I speak first, “I need to borrow a trunk.”

“Borrow implies you’ll return it.” She sits on the edge of the copper washtub in the middle of the room. “I have some to spare.”

I just throw her a dead-eyed look. No thanks, no gratitude. And then I start to wind the ribbons around my fist to better pack them, else they get all tangled.

“Will you join the dancers at Comlar?” she asks. Her sleek dark hair is threaded into two braids that curve along the shape of her head, then join at the nape of her neck for a tight bun.

Dance at Comlar…

I always thought it funny that the isle was so disliked by both lands that it shows in the names; that the garrison and stronghold are Comlar, and that union of two crowns meant a better name than the whole isle itself, plainly called the Midlands.

“What else is there to do?” I keep all the hope within me out of my voice. Can’t risk Pandora picking up on it. “I know allthe dances, and outside of spending days in the scripture hall, I don’t know how I’ll fill my time there.”

In answer, she’s quiet.

So am I.

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