Page 66 of Cursed Shadows 1

My blank face doesn’t betray that my heart leaps up into my throat and chokes me. But my tight grip on the bottle neck does give me away.

I loosen a shaky breath and throw a glance at Eamon and Samick.

Eamon studies the rough edges of the throwing star, none the wiser to a confession Aleana should not have made to me, no matter our friendship.

Samick looks up from beneath his lashes—and his eyes have turned pure white. He frowns, only for a fleeting moment, before he looks down, and apparently decides to not intervene.

Undeterred, Aleana goes on, “He hoped we would be friends. I have so few, only my family and my neighbour, but she is human.”

Two things flicker into my sight, snaring my attention.

First, she speaks the breed of her friend with a twist to her mouth, a hint of distaste that doesn’t quite take.

Second, Samick stills as though ice creeps over him for a fleeting moment, a mere second, but it’s enough to earn a frown from me.

A sheepish look settles over Aleana’s face, like she didn’t notice Samick’s reaction to the mention of this human neighbour like I did.

“He said you had none at all,” she whispers, and it might be something to be ashamed of, that they all think I have no friends.

It’s true—but it isn’t.

The blush on my face is as hot as the flames in the fireplace. “At home, I only have Eamon for a friend.”

There are some acquaintances, I won’t stand alone at a field party, butfriends…

Just Eamon.

Once, I had a female friend, Belladonna. Then I turned sixteen, and learned she was with child by a woodland fae—then she was banished to the Grott. I haven’t seen her since, not even read a letter from her in all the thirteen years since.

Aleana smiles her rogued lips, but it’s a drunk gesture. It’s heavy and lethargic. She appreciates my honesty, it comforts her, eases her embarrassment.

“He doesn’t…” I choke on my words. I look down at the bottle in my hands, and I pick at the leather grip. “Daxeel made it clear he never loved me.”

Aleana scoffs. “He lies. You hurt him,” she adds with a frown at me, as though remembering how she should dislike me, but can’t find it in her to do so. “He wrote to me often about you when he was stationed in your lands. I was so desperate to meet you.”

I hold my breath and hang on every word she says, and I feel them like stabs to the heart.

“Daxeel is not a soft male,” she sighs, her temples pressing into the cushioned spine of the chair. “But he found a happiness with you. I know he can rediscover it if he only let himself forgive you.”

My lashes are heavy with the tears stirring in my eyes. The thickness of my throat is eased only a little as I drink generously from the bottle.

“When he returned home…” Aleana’s face is tight with distant pain. “That was the first time in my life that my brother ever ignored me. For months, he spoke to no one, he battled in the rings constantly, pure violence, even fights at taverns. I saw then that you killed a piece of him.”

Pain twists my face and I turn closer to the chair’s spine, as if to better hide my grimace from everyone in the Hall.

I remember.

Always, I remember that look on his face, the last time I saw him in the light lands, that fleeting second before the rage hardened every part of him, before he ached to rip me apart with his bare hands…

I remember the hurt on his face.

“More than the slight, more than the shame,” she adds softly, “you broke his heart.”

The tautness of my voice betrays the shuddering tears I fight back, “Why are you telling me this?”

We might be friends, but her loyalties should lie only with her brother.

Then I recall her snarling face and sharp finger jabbing into the hard chest of her eldest brother, Caius—and I wonder if they fought about this, about her confessing these secrets to me.

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