Page 82 of Cursed Shadows 1

He blinks, a flutter of the lashes that tickles me, then his face smooths against mine. He’s slipping on his mask before he lifts up enough to bring his face to mine.

Our noses graze, and those midnight eyes are chasms I ache to fall into.

“I’ll die.” My voice is a whisper still, something breathless, but it hitches with the tears that leak down to my temples. “Daxeel… I am so afraid.”

His face shutters. A flicker of a blink, a fleeting wrinkle of a frown, and he looks down at my raw vulnerability. “Nari…”

I arch against him at the way he speaks my name, like a prayer, a promise.

“Vicious one,” he says softly. “If I knew a way to help you—” He leans closer, then brushes his bloody and honey-slicked lipsover mine. “—a way that meant you didn’t have to enter the first passage at all—” I taste myself on his mouth. The rumble of a faint growl vibrates his chest against my palms. “—what would possess me to give that answerto you?”

His mouth twists with disgust and he spits those last words in my face.To you.

Daxeel shoves back from me in one swift move. The icy chill of his rage feels like lashes all around me, nipping at my cold, damp flesh.

For a beat, he looks down at me.

Standing over me, I must look pathetic to him right now. I’m sprawled limp on the cushion, orgasm between my legs, his saliva on my skin, and blood smeared on my shoulder. But the tears spilling from my eyes are the real pathetic part as I blink up at him.

"I will destroy you. I’ll see you on your knees, and you will weep at my feet. You will beg. And when all that is done, you will meet my dagger. This is a fae's promise."

He turns and storms off without another word.

I stay a while on the cushion, welcoming the punishment of the rain, and I weep. And then I scream, until I can’t scream anymore.

18

the night I shamed him

††† TEN YEARS EARLIER †††

I sniffed a lot of roses and smoked a lot of valerian before I even got dressed for this night at the High Court. In the carriage ride, I feast on a whole black plum.

Father says nothing about my obvious nerves. He offers no comfort.

His fury, I can handle. It’s his disgust of me that cuts my gaze down to my lap each time he looks at me. Looks at me like I’m not his daughter, his favourite child, like he doesn’t love me at all anymore.

Even when he climbs out of the carriage, he doesn’t bother to turn to me and offer his hand. He just… stalks off. Leaves me behind and goes into the court alone.

Pandora is the one to help manoeuvre me out of the carriage. With so many steeds around, and the mush of the rain that fell throughout the day, the ground is mud. So she steals my hands in hers, pushes all our weight onto her own boots, then lifts me out.

She carries me to the pearlescent path, where my heeled sandals are safe from the grim ground.

I should care more about the dirt. Even care more about the sparkling tulle hem of my purple gown. But all I care about isthat tonight is the night. The night I will walk into the High Court ahead, where the farewell to the dokkalves rages on in a wild party, and deliver a blow to my dark one.

Father will be watching. He will be listening.

And if he isn’t pleased by how lethally cruel my rejection of Daxeel is, then…

I can’t think of it.

I shouldn’t think more on it, not now that I walk the path to the High Court.

This is a time for composure.

And so I follow Pandora inside. She’s quick to separate. Not only because she’s off hunting for her husband somewhere in the court, but that father demanded I do this alone.

Before I so much as look at the throngs of dark ones, or lift my gaze to the beauty of the court, a very naked fae waiter slinks up to me. Rox—a woodland unseelie who has dedicated his life to serving the High Court—smells the mischief around me tonight, the cruelty.

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