Page 29 of Cursed Shadows 2

Those tears have trickled into my chest where they’ve gathered into an ache that reminds me of a cold.

Father just watches me, considers me with a distance that only stirs that ache deeper than it needs to be.

Some moments pass before Pandora steals her momentback. “Let me train you, Nari,” and that pleading hitch returns to her voice. “You go into this fate too willingly. If you let me teach you—”

“Then what?” I snap, face burning hot. “I might stand a chance? How? Will some lessons of how to hold a knife teach me to fight those other contenders—” my voice rises into a shout “—those fucking warriors? What can you teach me that means I can stand against a dark one when they decide to hunt me down,” and I growl out my next words with a snarl turned on father, “because of what I did to Daxeel?”

The truth of it strikes father’s complexion ashy.

A slight like that from one like me against one like Daxeel…

All the dark males will be after me in that first passage, and we all know it. I shamed him, his status, and his kind. Of course they don’t know about our evate bond—and I truly believe that’s the core reason Daxeel hinted at a bargain. His animalistic need to save me.

My snarl turns on Pandora, “I’ll die within the minute.”

Pandora’s face twists, but not with pain or hurt or shame, like it should. It twists with a snarl of her own and she’s fast to move for me, until she’s towering over me, her sharp finger jabbing into my shoulder.

I wince with a stumble.

“How can anyone feel sorry for you,” she hisses at me, “when you do that plenty for yourself? No one else seems to be allowed to pity you, let alone help you—all you want to do is wallow. You are a stubborn child, Nari,a brat.”

My eyes turn wild as I suck in a deep, sharp breath, as if to soothe the surge of rage that tickles my chest. “Feel sorry for myself?” I shriek and push up on my toes to meet her towering height.

But before I can scream another word, she shouts down at me—

“You’re not the only one paying for this, Nari! I’ve lost everything. My career, my future, my sister—”

The screech that rips through me is the shriek of a banshee. My face turns purple as I scream into her face. And that’s all Ido. Lean up on my toes, bloodied hands fisted, and I just scream.

Pandora pales and steps back.

Father moves for me, as if to snatch me by the arm, as if to punish me, but I am so beyond the point of behaving, the acceptance of his punishments.

I just scream until my throat can’t do it anymore and I’m left panting, heaving like a wild beast.

I care nothing at all about Eamon who’s come up to the doorway, close enough to my back now that I can smell his cologne, or even the scribes, iilra and some contenders watch us.

I care only about the words that growl savagely from my bared teeth, “You lost career offers you might have gotten in the Sacrament. Is that what you lost? I’m to die—die! And you think of yourcareer?”

Eyes still wild, I pause to draw in a deep breath through flaring nostrils, and I’m sure I look absolutely mad.

I lift my hand, letting the blood spill to my boots, and I point at her.

“I hope your child is ugly,” I curse her, and she blanches. Then I swerve my finger at father who looks torn between a backhand and a cuddle, “and I hope you do better at protecting that child than you’ve ever done for me.”

I only get to see father’s eyes shut on the pain of my words before Eamon’s slender hand snatches my wrist—and he’s stealing me out into the corridor.

Neither father nor Pandora follow us.

Not as I stagger to keep up with Eamon’s brisk, long strides. Not as the tears flow so freely that I’m blind without Eamon leading me.

No one comes after me, and I know now more than ever that Eamon is my family, my only true family, and he’s the only family I’ll ever recognize again.

I make that decision as he drags me through the garrison, the courtyard, around the battle blocks, and takes me blubbering at his side all the way to the edge of the Gilded Glade.

There, he pulls my back against his spine, and his armscome around me.

I scream into the air.

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