Page 34 of Cursed Shadows 2

His smile is soft. “I love you most. I love you as though you are my dearest sister. Even in your moods.”

A heat steals my cheeks and I look up at the fake vines above. “I love you too, brother. And maybe I do not wish to lose you to anyone. Ever.”

His grin is lazy. “You won’t. And you should be kinder to her. Bee is the one who will help if you ever find yourself in need. Lost in the human lands? In need of an update on your fashions? Or maybe you want some human drinks at a human bar… Bee is the one you go to.”

I think on it a moment before the door swings open again and the kinta returns. Her tray is stacked with a few more beers and some taller bottles of pinkish liquid.

I watch the foamy surface of the pink drink slosh around the necks of the bottles as she approaches.

On her way, two humans at a table down the terrace raise their hands and call out to her, but she just shoots them a seductive wink that has them blushing. She comes to us, and Ithink more on Eamon’s words of advice.

“Moscato for you,” she says and sets the tray down. She hands me the two bottles of pink drink, then sets down a stemmed glass I won’t be using.

Before she’s even handed out the beers to Eamon, I’ve already unscrewed the strangely thin metal lid of my Moscato—whatever that is.

“How old are you?” I ask, and though it’s a blunt question, it’s only because I am trying to make up for my sourness towards her.

She smiles at me, a look beneath her lashes, and I find that her greenish grey eyes are much too pretty for a kinta. “Twenty-one.”

I nod, as though she tells me something greatly important and I must consider it. Then I bring the rim of the glass bottle to my lips—and she watches as I take a tentative sip.

I frown on the burst of sugar that sizzles my tongue. I smack my lips together once, twice, then hum something of an approval.

Very sugary, very bubbly—but exactly to my tastes.

I guzzle down more.

Her eyebrows raise with anI-told-you-sothat vanishes as she turns to Eamon. “I’ll be in the village visiting my mother next weekend—your weekend,” she amends, because time between the realms runs differently. “I’ll stop by for a visit?”

“Are you in the mood for merfolk trapping?” Eamon drawls, his voice razored with his dokkalf growl, but also the dread he feels at what’s to come. Merfolk season, a tradition that is practiced in only the Light Court and the Sea Court, in which fleets of civilian boats take to the waters and—predictably—capture merfolk. Whichever settlement, town or city captures the most merfolk per boat is awarded a bounty by the lords of the courts.

“Oh, I forgot about that.” Bee bares her teeth in something of a grimace, and I find it absolutely fascinating that she has no sharpness beyond her very human canines. No traces of her fae blood whatsoever.

Even the generous swell of her hips and bottom is decidedlynot fae. I’m as slender as a beanstalk beside her. Makes me feel a tad better.

“Mother doesn’t care for the sport.” Bee sighs, but the disappointment is still slackening her face as she adds, “I hate the release of them into the lakes, though. It’s the sound of it all. Their cries.” She shivers something so human that I can only stare with a newfound interest in her. “It’s… haunting, you know?”

I haven’t attended one of these traditions before, but I know enough about them to understand what she is speaking of. Merfolk belong to the open waters, not to lakes and rivers. They suffocate and dehydrate on land, so once they are released into enclosed waters within the courts, they aren’t ever able to claw and scrape and flop their way back to their homes out in the open seas. So many merfolk stolen away from their loved ones, their children, their lovers, their parents, their homes—and separated for the rest of their lives.

When they are released into those lochs and lagoons, the cries are harrowing.

“I hear them from my village,” I say, and maybe I’m a bit surprised that my words are spoken softly. “It’s on the edge of the border,” I add to explain the distance away. “But I hear the cries, all night.”

Bee nods, her face something grim. “It’s fucking awful. Always made me feel a bit sick when I was little.”

Eamon sets an empty bottle down and trades it for another. “Then you won’t be visiting?”

“I’ll visit my mother,” she says, whacking a stray blonde strand from her face, one of those highlighted pieces that brightens the dull mousy shade of her hair. “I need some gold to cover rent next month. But I won’t stay overnight.”

“Your mother gives you gold?” I blurt out the words with a rush of disbelief and shock. Her litalf mother, a fullblood, gives her—a kinta—gold to fund her life?

I find it all so strange, but also fascinating.

Eamon smiles. “Not all litalf parents are so awful.”

I raise my brows and nod something slow and stupid.

“Oi! Can we get some fucking service or what?”

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