Page 41 of Cursed Shadows 2

I reach out for the table and, snatching an already open bottle of tavarak, whose stench itches my nostrils, I fall back with a grunt.

I lift the bottle to Daxeel. “Here.”

He looks down at me with dark pits of ice for eyes, shadowed by long thick lashes.

Daxeel could be considered pretty if it wasn’t for the ruggedness about him, the darkness of the kohl shadows around his eyes, the forever-commanding stare he keeps, the menacing tattoo licking up his neck and inking his hand. Rather, he is a walking threat.

There is nothanksthat comes from him as he reaches out totake the bottle from my offered hand. He firms his fist around the neck just as Ridge’s voice shouts out, “Luna! Punch your equal!”

And that’s the Master Cup’s latest task.

This Luna, if doesn’t complete the dare, she will break out in hives. Not the sort of the flesh, but hives that spread into mouths and spill down throats and inflame organs.

My earlier suspicion that Ridge has strategic reasons for starting that game in a phase of lower spirits… If he was aiming to eliminate some of his competition with hives…

Or fights.

My eyes widen the moment I hear the crunch of bone. And I meancrunch. Like a cheekbone has been crushed beneath the weight of a fallen boulder.

Rage floods the Hall with the surge of roars and outraged, fierce war-cries. The sheer animalism in these battle sounds bolts me in place, a call of hums drawn out from calloused throats.

I’m a sudden statue, tense and cringed, on the couch. Like if I don’t move at all, those warrior sounds, cries and shouts only ever meant for the battlefield, won’t be aimed at me.

But I squeal a shout of my own as the air is knocked out of me. I’m falling, falling to the floor, the weight of solid marble pushing at my side. It takes me a blink and a heartbeat before I realize Daxeel has tackled me off the couch—and onto the floorboards where I land with a grunt.

Just in time, too. On my back, my wide eyes are aimed up at the ceiling, over Daxeel’s shoulder, and all I see is a spatter of crimson blood.

I wince at the sight of it, even as I lay under Daxeel’s hard body that he keeps over me like a shield of ateralum.

The frantic shouts of rage twist in the Hall’s air, contort into a symphony of crunching, beating, thudding.

Fights have broken out. More than one. And I don’t need to look to know it’s between the dark and the light.

How our unity holds up in the face of the Sacrament.

Curved over me, Daxeel’s eyes gleam like never before. Or like I’ve never before seen them.

Hunger, thirst, yearning—it’s all there beneath the shadows of panic he has for me, for my safety in this Hall. A part of him wants—needs—to abandon me on the floor and join the fight. He smells the blood, hears it call to him, and he is a mere slave to it.

But shadows start to darken the gleam until the deep blues of his eyes are mostly onyx. And that’s all I see before I’m flung again, this time over his shoulder.

Daxeel moves fast.

He’s out of that Hall in seconds.

At the entrance, I push my hands against his back for leverage and look into the Hall—at the brutality of them all. Knives coming down on cheeks, a jaw ripped clean off a dark male’s face, a light one’s leg bent and snapped at the most unnatural angle.

In the chaos, I notice that Samick and Rune stay behind to fight. They work together, Rune kicking a light fae square in the chest, then Samick coming up behind the victim—and punching a blade right through his skull so it comes out his parted mouth.

Then the scene is stolen from me.

Daxeel sweeps me away from the threat.

11

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Daxeel puts me down at the door to my bedchamber.

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