Page 37 of Cursed Shadows 2

A question I’m too afraid to ask.

It gives me the thought for Eamon, too. Is it his father who is less accepting of his same loverness? Does he wish for him to marry a good female and leave behind his bedder ways?

“Huh.” It’s all I can afford to give to the conversation now that my insides are deflating.

“Maybe it’s a mother thing,” Aleana wonders aloud. “And fathers are the ones who can’t love—”

Rune’s cat eyes flash; he swerves them to her. There’s a warning in the way he looks at her and, as she frowns over the neck of her honeywine bottle, she falls silent.

My brow knits together as I look between them.

It’s Eamon who catches my attention with a slight shake of the head, and a stare so severe that it keeps me silent. ‘Don’t pry,’ he silently tells me, but if I was planning to, I’m interrupted before I can.

“Master Cup!” The shout snatches the attention of all four of us.

I crane my neck to look over the back of the couch at the source.

Down the wooden table that reaches all the way to the other side of the Hall, a familiar-faced litalf slams a cup down, then throws a stack of parchment beside it.

The faintest pink hue to lovely pale hair, a pearlescent gleam of marble-like skin, and a grin so white that it’s near blinding. Ridge.

His fist is still firm around the blackened stem of the chalice as he calls out again to the Hall, “For those who dare.”

The cup in his grip is no ordinary one. The gilt surface isstained black in some spots, like it’s been poisoned, and it’s enchanted. Some kind of spirit magick, but those cups can be found at most major markets around the lands.

Master Cup is a common drinking game, no matter which land one is from. I hear it’s most popular at the bases.

And so I’m not surprised as light and dark fae alike draw away from the shadows of the Hall and approach him.

Ridge grins all sharp teeth and dark promises as the contenders reach for quills and parchment.

They each must write their names on a torn piece of paper, then—once they drop it into the cup—they can’t leave the game before the cup spits out their name with a task.

None of us move to join the growing group at the table. And their game begins as it always does—light and fun. Never stays that way, of course. I’ve not seen a single game of Master Cup end without bloodshed.

But it goes on for a while with cheers and laughs and hisses and growls. No blood spilled yet. And, as more and more fae wander into the Hall, most finding themselves at the table and joining the game, it keeps a merry atmosphere about it.

I don’t know Ridge too well. But I know light fae, and I’m not entirely convinced he started that game as a ‘last hurrah’ show of unity before the first passage begins. He’s up to something, and whatever that is, Eamon can keep watching from his armchair, but I decide I want nothing to do with it.

I’m about to turn my back on the table, the game, the entrance of the Hall, when I spot more fae drifting in through the open doors.

It’s the scribes and iilra that steal my attention for a pause. The white-robed scribes carry stacks of parchment, some quills, wear ink stains on their bandaged hands, and have their hoods drawn over their identities. Some light warriors shadow them closely, but not for protection against the lively shouts of the Hall. Those fae I recognize from around the Queen’s Court, and I know them to be generals and admirals.

So I guess the same for the dark fae who wander the Hall with the black-robed iilra.

I don’t turn my back on them now. Faint curiosity has meshifting around to tuck myself into the corner between the couch’s spine and arm. At this angle, I better see my group, and the fae in the Hall.

Eamon has returned to his book, but his gaze lifts every so often to watch the game over at the table. I suspect he isn’t truly watching the game, but rather the strikingly beautiful Ridge.

Aleana hums a disjointed melody into the bottleneck she cradles, her lashes low over sleepy eyes.

But my attention lingers on the doorway.

“Recruitment,” Rune answers my silent question, one I must have had written all over my frowning face.

Then I understand he misreads by focus, thinks I wonder about the fae with the scribes and iilra, not that I watch the door and wait for Daxeel to come.

“All the best warlords will be here to watch the passage,” Rune tells me. “Looks like they have already started scouting for favourites.”

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