Page 38 of Cursed Shadows 2

“Do you have a favourite?” I ask and realize this might be the first time I’ve had an actual conversation with Rune.

The drier his hair gets, the yellower it looks. But it’s still damp, and he threads his fingers through it, as if to prevent any knots from forming. “I’ll serve under General Caspan.”

Rune jerks his chin across the way, and I trace the gesture to the three fae gathered by the shadows of the entrance. But there’s nothing hidden or discreet about them. I see only a menacing, deadly presence as I study them.

The black ateralum diadem is what gives the dark-haired dokkalf away as General Caspan. Fixed properly atop his thick head of hair, that chalky metal material somehow glints like silver beneath the constant gleam of the glowjars.

His leather vest should creak as he folds his arms over his chest, but of course it doesn’t, because it’s crafted from dragon leather, and that is as silent as the grave. An advantage the dokkalves have over our kind in battle,leathers.

I watch as his pinkish lips move over murmured words that I can’t hear from this distance, but words he speaks to his companions.

The iilra scribbles down some notes on parchment at whatever he’s saying to her.

“General Caspan,” Rune echoes, then reaches for another bottle, and this one is black sludge, too thick and potent for my tastes: Viskee. “The only general in existence to knock Prince Rain on his ass.”

Eamon scoffs and closes over the book before he sets it aside, but I blanch.

Can’t help that my eyes widen into saucers at the blatant disrespect of our Prince of War. But then, it’s like I hear the words. All of them. Knocked him on his ass…

I don’t dare look at the general again.

“He was only a warrior then,” Rune adds with a slack, impressed look aimed my way. “Guess that got him a fast promotion, because he’s one of the youngest warlords in our history. He leads a strong unit.”

“How do you know you’ll be recruited by him?” It’s not an insult, it’s curiosity, and he reads it as such.

Rune seems to take no offence. “I received a direct offer from him before I arrived at Comlar.” He grins and it’s disarming.

All of this is disarming, me sat here with dark fae all around me, and I’m talking to them, casually, normally, like we’re all friends.

Samick’s glacier voice, cold and smooth like ice, comes from behind me, “The other is Bracken.”

I arch my neck to watch him approach from behind the couch.

Samick makes for the side-table beside Eamon’s armchair. Before he sits, he tugs out some throwing stars, a cloth, then perches himself on the table’s edge. The fireflies suddenly drop to the bottom of their jar to play dead.

“Bracken is Caspan’s second,” Samick adds as he starts to wipe his charcoal-like stars clean of blood, and since he wears spidery chainlink armour over his shoulders, I’m guessing he was getting some fights in on the battle blocks.

“For now,” Rune mutters and his eyes have turned into something deadly, all traces of yellow in his irises gone,darkened into burnt-autumn leaves.

I follow his gaze over to Caspan—and the one beside him, the one with cheekbones so sharp I’m sure they could cut through my fucking bones.

I study him.

Golden blond hair, braided intricately down his back; a slender frame (slender for dark fae), but tall and looming all the same. There’s nothing obviously intimidating about Bracken, this second to the general. It’s the way he looks at Daxeel that has chills trickling down my spine.

Daxeel stands with Caspan now, and I think he must have come in with Samick but stopped on his way over to us. The general speaks to him like an old friend, a familiarity in just their body language, in how Caspan smacks his hand down on Dax’s shoulder.

So I think it strange that Bracken has his gaze narrowed on Daxeel with such unveiled venom. I think of that narrowed gaze, and I’m reminded of a snake’s warning before the strike comes.

Yet Daxeel doesn’t spare Bracken so much as a glance.

At first, I wonder if he can’t overstep—but then I realize, with the slight tilted down chin that Bracken keeps, it’s him who avoids overstepping with Daxeel.

Sometimes I forget his lineage, his house, his ancient blood, his father a warlord, his mother a viscountess. I forget that Daxeel has something I’ve never had once in my life.Status.

And whatever that means to them, it stops Bracken from spitting out the poisonous words he so clearly aches to aim at my dark male.

Rune draws in my attention with a muttered, “There’s always a way to knock someone off their pedestal and take their place.”

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