Page 6 of Cursed Shadows 1

Anyone looking from the outside might think that Eamon is jealous. And they would be right—but also wrong.

Eamon wouldn’t mind terribly if Prince Affay stole a kiss fromhim. His bachelor lifestyle is not for the females, but for the males. He can never marry one of his own, and so he lives as he does with males in his bed, their sweat dampening his sheets.

Suppose that’s why he stays in the light lands. In the dark lands, he can live no such way.

“It’s what he does,” I say with a shrug.

Prince Affay is a lover. We call them, in a less kind way, abedder. How he likes to steal kisses, but how he loves to court… then move on.

He spent time courting me in Taroh’s absence. Father even started to expect an offer on my contract from the prince. But then Igaveto Affay, and the courting stopped.

I have given him more than a kiss in those curtained alcoves of the court over the years, during those wilder nights of mine. The ones powered by heartbreak at crushing Daxeel’s love into pulp, and I wanted nothing more than to feel something that wasn’t pain.

Affay means little to me, and I mean even less to him. Beyond the fun of the fumbles we’ve shared, we don’t talk outside of the court. We’re just… halflings. We find some comfort in each other sometimes.

“If I myself was partial to females,” Eamon says as the stone walls of the Royal City start to rear ahead, “I might offer you an escape.”

If I asked it of him, I think he would do it, too. Marry me to spare me from Taroh.

The sadness in his voice twists my heart. Because even if he made that sacrifice for me—one that meant as a male, as a husband, he could never take another lover outside of our marriage—my father wouldn’t ever allow me to wed a hybrid, never let me marry a dark one of any kind.

To say my father is racist is to say the night is dark, the day is bright, flowers bloom in spring. Simply stating obvious truths.

“I hope I’m a better friend than that,” I say and come to a stop. Only a reach away, the walls part to the Royal City. And from the open passage, a familiar male wanders up the path towards us.

Fern, a woodland fae, an unseelie, and a favourite lover of Eamon’s. He flashes a grin. His blood-stained teeth match the lively danger of his lilac eyes—a soft, delicate purple to match his feathery hair.

I wink at him in greeting. “Just in time.”

I turn back to look at Eamon, but his hungry eyes are for Fern only. I give his arm a gentle squeeze to remind him of me, that I am here, and that he must look at me.

He does.

“You’ve walked me far enough. I’ll enjoy the rest of the way alone.” I lean up on my toes to kiss his cheek, but I reach only his collarbone.

Eamon scoffs a small laugh before he lowers his head to mine.

I ghost the farewell over his soft, dark skin—then fall back with a devious twinkle in my eyes. I tell him with that look alone, ‘enjoy the alcoves.’

And I know he will.

The Royal City isn’t terribly large, but it is grand. The familiar stir of envy—the same sensation that attacks my insides each time I pass through here on foot—returns as I wander my gaze around the empty square.

Everyone who lives in Royal City is at the High Court tonight, if not the palace itself. It’s for the highest of the high ranks in our lands. Their homes aren’t exactly the wealthy fortresses, castles, or estates further out in the countryside or seaside.

But their homes are divine all the same.

Townhouses. Narrow buildings all wedged up beside one another and reaching eleven levels tall. Soundproofing between them comes in the form of the whisper vines, the ones that suck up nearby noise, their nourishment, and the rooftops glitter with jarred glowworms and trapped globed fireflies to illuminate their pretty rooftop gardens.

Around the square, the rowhouses form two sides of a rectangle, split by the path that cuts straight through the middle. The path I take.

I count the rectangle formation of rowhouses each time I pass through, and this night is no different. Twelve rows all up.

I always wanted to live someplace like this. To marry into a family who lived in this city, in a place where—any other time but the solstice—the air is alive with laughter and bartering and carriages and steeds and nectar sweets and secret kisses and spilled paint and leathered books.

But it’s not for me, since Taroh’s estate is in the Western countryside of the Queen’s Court. So that’s where I’ll live:Notwalking distance to the High Court or the Royal City or Eamon’s home.

I pass by the rowhouses with a silent goodbye.

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