Page 102 of Cursed Shadows 3

He doesn’t ask anything about his daughter.

His gaze is stuck like honey to Melantha.

She either doesn’t notice his stare—or she avoids it.

The result is a frown on his thin mouth and a hollowness carved into his eyes. “Lord Braxis will have paid light warriors to hunt you, an added motivation.”

He turns his grimace on his son.

It’s a grimace Daxeel feels the echoes of in his heart, an ache in the chest that’s not unlike a carver took their weapon to his insides and gutted them out, clean.

“And Bracken,” his father says, voice lower than a faerie hound’s growl, “will have designed for some of our own to turn on you on the mountain. He would sacrifice this victory for Dorcha to achieve personal retribution. Do not doubt it.”

It is a thought Daxeel hasn’t entertained.

His jaw tightens on the truth of it, that Bracken would sell out his own to buy his revenge on Melantha’s children: the trophies of his own personal loss.

Daxeel’s gaze fights to aim at Bracken across the courtyard. But he steels himself against anything that might betray what he’s learned from his father. His father who doesn’t aid out of love or regret, but rather the pride and honour of the House of Taraan.

“You might not be the only target Bracken has offered to his hired assassins,” his father says. “Your evate will enter the Sacrament without your hand.”

Rune takes a step closer, his suddenly gleaming cat eyes fixed on the warlord, because while Agnar is a despicable beast, he is ruthless in battle, and so his advice must be respected.

“She might land far from you,” Agnar goes on. “Then she will be exposed to anyone of Bracken’s choosing.”

That thought, Daxeel has entertained. It’s haunted him for a month, now; the threat that other warriors will go after Nari to get to him. Even if his enemies don’t figure out what Daxeel intends to sacrifice to Mother, Nari’s death on the mountain will destroy everything.

It won’t kill him immediately.

The rotting of his soul on this plane can take up to a week before his heart stops and his flesh turns cold. It’s a week he can use to keep fighting, if the pain of the loss doesn’t cripple him. And then he would have no sacrifice for Mother.

If this is Bracken’s strategy, it is an obvious one—but effective, too. The best way to get to any dark male is through the bleeding heart outside of the body. It is through evate.

A weakness in otherwise unkillable warriors. A balance of the scales in nature.

“We will all enter separately,” Daxeel says.

This time, it’s different.

There are no tricks to manipulate the Mountain of Slumber like there was with the shore of the dragon caves, no way of grabbing onto his soul brothers or Nari herself to ensure that they land together on the other side. The mountain cannot be tricked, because the gods themselves cannot be fooled.

“The better spread out across the mountain we are,” he says, “the faster one of us will find Nari before a foe does.”

It’s Rune who says, “Dare has never failed a hunt.” The best tracker any of them has ever known, born of the best traits of both light and dark, a flawless and rare blend. “He will get to her before anyone can pierce her heart.”

The assurance does little to soothe the ice-blue flames ignited in Agnar’s eyes. No matter the faith that the general has in Dare—faith strong enough that he’s already offered him a place in his unit for the invasion, and Dare is taking his time making a decision—there is too much uncertainty around Nari’s safety at the start of the second passage.

It will be bloodshed like no other.

It will be chaos.

And chaos is uncontrollable.

“It is your duty, son,” his father warns darkly, “to ensure she survives until you reach the summit. Between Bracken’s thirst for vengeance against our house and that light lord’s vendetta, there will be more threats to your evate than you let yourself hope.”

The phase was cold. Winter draws near. The rains pummelled the fae for too long in that crammed courtyard. Recruitment took too long. So it is the First Wind when Daxeel slips into the shadows of the kitchens, his curls flat from the rain soaking them.

Daxeel melts into the dark; heisthe dark.

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