Page 113 of Cursed Shadows 3

He holds me, firm. “You want a husband who loves you and you think it simple. But love is no ordinary thing.”

I melt into him.

“You,” he mumbles into my wind-swept hair, “are anything but ordinary.”

For a moment, I believe him.

20

††††††

Eamon is a golden cat lounging on the foot of my bed.

He watches me without an ounce of desire as I shimmy into a brassiere, then tug on a plain sweater. Since he was the one to help me into that ghastly now-cut-up yellow gown, then sew me into it, all shame of nudity around Eamon is vanished.

Head propped up on his fist, he fishes out a valerian stalk from his trouser pocket and brings it to his mouth.

“Can younotsmoke in my bedchamber?” I grumble and tug my belt through the loops of my breeches. “It’ll stink out the room.”

“Oh now you care about the smell in here?” He grins around the valerian. “Aren’t you fresh out of a week-long marination in your own sweat?”

My eyes roll back as I stomp for the window and wrench it open.

The Warmth floods the bedchamber like a fiery punch to the face, and I fleetingly think of what it feels like to lift the lid of a teapot before being struck with the steam.

“Will you come watch me train?” I ask. “I’m getting better with the throwing knives.”

He rolls onto his back. “I’m meeting Ridge for a wander around town. What is this?”

I look over my shoulder at him. He reaches out his boot, gestures it the way of the tomes stacked on the bedstand.

“A bit of night reading?” he teases.

“I’m reading about Mother,” I say and push aside the heavy velveteen curtains, one by one.

“What about Mother?” His tone takes a serious turn, slated now.

“It’s just… something I’ve been thinking about.”

The strike of a match snares my attention.

Eamon hits it down the wooden post of the bed. A risk that pays off, because my bedchamber isn’t suddenly engulfed in flames. He brings the match to his valerian stalk.

Clouds of smoke are quick to gather at his face. “Something like what?”

My smile is small and tight. Defence kicks in, an instinct under the stare of his gaze. I fold my arms over my chest. “Daxeel can talk to Mother because of his ancestry, right?” I lean against the windowpane, my boot kicking over the floorboards. “We call it the bloodline but Mother doesn’t recognise blood—she recognises souls.”

Eamon’s mouth pinches as he considers this.

“So Daxeel’s soul is what Mother will listen to.” I flurry my hand in the air, as though to speed him along, to catch him up to my flimsy theories. “Not his blood.”

He hums, then slowly nods. “That… That makes sense, yes.”

“And Daxeel’s soul must be somehow bonded to his lineage, like there are… marks or prints on our souls that Mother can read and then know who we are and our ancestry.”

I feel the hot hues forming on my cheekbones, the little itch of shame, of embarrassment, because my theory is a thread, not a rope. It isn’t one I thought I would share with anyone, even Eamon.

He arches his brow, and I know I’ve lost him.

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