Page 49 of Cursed Shadows 2

He gives too much credit to the humans.

The couple we advance on are my proof of that.

They don’t notice as we wander closer. If they do decide to look up, Daxeel might get what he wants. They’ll scream at the sight of him and run—and he’ll kill them purely on instinct. His hunting side will take over.

It’d be over in the blink of an eye.

But they don’t look up. Not even as I sidestep too close and, behind me, Daxeel snatches the hooded sweater, then… we keep walking.

Nothing happens.

I throw a smirk over my shoulder at him.

His lip curls around the hissed word, “What?”

‘You vex me.’

It only softens me. My smile is intact. “Put it on.”

I could swear he almost rolls his eyes. “You take too much ease in ordering me.”

Lifting my hand to my head, I shake the balled fluffy lump in my grip. My hat. Never breaking our locked stare, I straighten it out, then tug it onto my head.

“I hide my ears,” I say. “I won’t open my mouth too much—” I do just that to bare my sharper teeth at him. “—I’m hiding. I blend in better than you do. Put it on,please.”

A throaty grunt catches in his chest, not quite a growl, but an annoyed sound all the same.

Still, he does as I ask.

The black material is not well fitted to his shape. The shoulders are tight, but the rest is loose enough (since the human was a sort of large and round man) that he is able to zipit up, then lift the hood over his inky hair.

It doesn’t fool me, and I doubt it’ll fool the humans. He’s so decidedly unnatural to them that they’ll feel the difference no matter how well he hides behind a hooded sweater.

But it’s enough that they won’t run screaming. Enough that they’ll doubt and question themselves.

“Good thing is,” I say and steal his hand in mine, “humans don’t pay attention to anyone but themselves.”

Daxeel is a statue behind me.

He stands at my back, and I doubt he looks at the artwork that I admire. Each step I take in this gallery is a step he shadows.

No one pays us any mind.

Unlike out in the halls and on the staircases of the garrison, it’s quiet in here, late hour and a weekday (which I think means it is a day that the humans must work and cannot come to galleries because of their commitments, but I don’t know for certain).

I planned this visit. Planned it for this very night at this very gallery. For my favourite human artist who is sadly passed but how I would like to have met him and told him all the wonderful truths.

It’s a Vincent Van Gogh exhibition. Well, it’s animitationof his works, but still.

I think his art somehow travels around the world. Tonight, the imitations are here in this town—and so not even Daxeel’s hunting of me in the woods was going to stop me from coming to the human lands.

I lose myself in him.

Van Gogh.

I lose myself in his deep blues that echo Daxeel’s eyes to me. I drown in the blue. I submerge myself in the pain of all around me, the colours, the brushstrokes, the self-loathing.

Envy buds within me as it often does in this gallery.

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