Page 47 of Cursed Shadows 1

Sickly, yes, but I doubt she’d have much trouble peeling the spine out of a human body if the mood struck her.

Her mouth is full of plum flesh and blood. “The Shadow Court.”

So her manners are poor. Or maybe it’s the differences between our people that makes me think that. Maybe at a dinner table she would never talk with her mouth full or eat so messily, and it’s only among friends she lets herself be this way.

I’m not disturbed by it.

Just curious.

“Mother’s a viscountess of the Shadow Court,” she adds with a sharp look at Eamon. I suspect she’s telling me more than she ought to. “But her lineage reaches back to the firsts of that land. Father is a descendant of warriors. But it’s mother’s blood that—”

“Makes your line ancient,” I breathe out the words. My fingers clutch the plum too tight, and the pressure breaks the skin.

She nods and bites down on the hard plum pip—it cracks open, then she starts using her sharp black nails to scoop out the nectar.

A frown wrinkles my face. I turn to look over at Eamon.

He watches me closely. Watches me piece it together.

Daxeel is of ancient blood. Caius is of ancient blood.

And they both compete in this Sacrament. They will be the ones to fight their way to the top of the Mountain of Slumber, the ones the other dokkalves will protect—all so they can reach Mother’s ear.

Daxeel and Caius might be the only ones who can do this. Other ancient bloodline contenders have tried and failed—and contenders can only compete once. Every litalf will be out for their deaths, in both passages.

But… there is another of that bloodline…

Not Aleana, the obvious thought, but Eamon.

I blink at him. “You?”

His mother is the sister of Daxeel’s mother. Both of the Shadow Court. And so Eamon carries that bloodline, too.

Eamon nods, once and sharp. “Mine is muted.” Because he’s a hybrid. “And I don’t want to compete.”

Eamon is Eamon. He wouldn’t declare loyalty to Dorcha, not unless he had to. Licht is his home. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t side with whatever benefited him most.

We’re the same that way, self-preservation over loyalty to a cause.

“Your bloodline?” Aleana asks, though the small smile on her lips tells me she already knows about my low birth, and maybe more about me.

I wonder if, back then, Daxeel wrote to her about me.

What do you know of me?

“Low birth,” I tell her and finally bite into my plum. Through a mouthful, as if inspired by her poor manners, I try to speak, “A bargain-born halfling.”

Aleana isn’t fazed by any of that. More than anything, she seems curious. And she goes on to ask me about my mother I don’t know much about, and asks of the humans and the human realm, and the other halflings in Licht.

I answer her questions until it becomes more of a conversation. And I find I quite like her.

I don’t have many friends, not outside of Eamon. I’m too insignificant, and my village too old, my family too poor. I had some in lessons when I was younger, those I would sit with sometimes, but I couldn’t trust them because on the occasional day, they would push me into the lake, or cover me in tree syrup.

So this…

Sitting in the faint light of the tower, sharing wine and plums, and chatting with this female the way I do with Eamon, I’m… content. Happy, maybe.

My annoyance has long since faded the more we talk, the more relaxed I get from the company and the wine. But it’s inevitable—the winds are starting to slow, the Quiet is near.

---