Page 64 of Cursed Shadows 2

We take a small bridge connecting a divided road that is split down the middle with a little rush of water coming from underground, and I find it fascinating.

“Is this amethyst?” I ask, running my palm over the bridge’s barrier—feeling the polished kiss of blackwood against my skin, but the jagged bite of a harsh, raw crystal, too. “It’s only found in Licht.”

Aleana smiles, a toothy grin that glitters her eyes. “Probably imported—or that type found in the human world.”

I shake my head and let my hand fall away from the barrier. Quickly, I duck out of the way, moving behind Aleana, to let an elder pass. To the untrained eye, elders might look young, like a human might look well for their fortieth or fiftieth year, but elders carry the weight of eternity on their sagged shoulders, wear too many losses in the wrinkles around theireyes and mouths, and their nails turn grey like their hair turns silver.

I don’t think the elder even sees me as he walks by, as though he’s already a spirit simply travelling over a bridge.

Then I forget all about him and turn back to Aleana with a sigh. “The human crystals don’t glow. These must be from Licht.”

I’m glued to her side as we walk the rest of the way, and it’s a sort of town I would like to see painted.

Ribbons of canals and bridges unwinding through the crooked and bending streets of Kithe. Above, vines connects from house to house, thick ropes of purple pebbled with flowerbuds that gleam violet—and the vines hook from window to window, crisscrossing overhead.

From a balcony three stories up, my eyes narrow and my instinct narrows in on a humming human who leans over the banister and fastens damp linen to the ropey vines. The flowers embedded in the vines whistle faintly, as though they like to be disturbed by the human, and their song is like the melody of a gentle wind.

All the study in the archives for so many years, and I am stunned.

Beside me, Daxeel sticks close, and I feel the heat of his gaze caressing my cheek. He watches me, I watch his town.

We pass a human servant—told by the clean beige suits he wears, waistcoat and all—at the mouth of an alleyway with a sort of shovel. He starts clearing the mess that a passing kelpie made. I arch a brow at him—this city must be wealthy for it to keep servants.

The light in the all-consuming darkness of the Midlands, it comes in so many forms. It’s the warmth of the amber firelight flickering from the street lanterns; the crimsons and blues and whites that illuminate windows all around; and it’s the faint purple hue of the flowers catching on the surface of the calm waters that run under the small bridges.

Chunks of amethyst are pebbled over the railings, polished wood interrupted by the raw texture of the gleaming crystal, but speckled throughout the blackstone streets of Kithe, thesespecks of amethyst wedged between the stone slabs.

Then Eamon and Rune cut down a lane where the light doesn’t reach. Thick dark smoke from the grimroot clouds around me in one final puff that Rune takes, then he flicks it to the wall. Embers splash through the air before the root dies on the ground.

And they stop.

Down the end of the narrow lane, only one light source penetrates the darkness—barely. A red lacquered door that glistens faintly in the blackness, a blood moon in the thickest moment of night.

The door is small and narrow. I note that Samick stands at least two head’s taller than it as he moves around us. He reaches out a hand, inked in sharp lines as thin as Daxeel’s tattoos, then he raps his knuckles on the door—one, two, three.

It creaks open to reveal the stark white face of a human, a human who has not seen the sun in some time, or perhaps ever in his life. He spares us a mere glance before pulling aside the door and making way.

Samick dips his head and steps over the threshold, then disappears inside.

I turn over my shoulder to see Daxeel’s eyes gleaming like lights of their own, if the depths of a dangerous ocean were a light source. How they gleam from kohled eyes, inky hair falling into his face, the shadows of the Midlands—he was made for the dark.

I falter under his fierce stare, as I often do, before I turn back to the shrunken door.

One by one, we dip inside.

I follow behind Aleana, losing her grip on my hand as she goes, and I have to crouch to fit through the doorframe.

It’s…

It’s nothing like what I thought, yet everything like it to.

The Gloaming.

15

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Baris a word beneath this place; this magickal, lovely place.

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