Page 136 of Cursed Shadows 3

A screech catches in my throat.

I throw myself aside, prepared to scramble off the bed—but he’s faster.

A feral growl rips through him. He lunges for me, snatches me by the leg, then tears me off the bed.

I stagger on landing, hands splayed in front of me.

I knock into the chest of drawers. An abacus topples over, a golden sun ornament hits the floorboards.

I inhale with a deep flare of the nostrils and whip around to glare at him. But I fast shrink back into the drawers.

Daxeel closes the distance between us in one step. Towering over me, the tips of his inky hair brush over his brow, and his lips curl to bare his teeth.

“Everything you have said,” he growls the words like a warning, a threat, “all your promises and declarations…”

“True,” I hiss at him, and though my spine screams from the bite of the drawers pressed into my back, I lift my chin and push up on my toes before I add, “All true.”

“I trust nothing you say, I believe nothing more than the depths of your viciousness.” He steps closer, and I slink back with the advancement. “What if I had forgiven you? What if all your clawing and chewing back inside of me worked—and I abandoned my mission for you?” His voice booms throughout the bedchamber. “For your lies!”

“Oh, spare me,” I snap at him through the quivers of my spine. “All you know are lies. You lie and lie—andscheme. Your bargain with Eamon,” I push the tip of my finger into his chin, “was a lie, was it not? You had no need to make the bargain, because you never meant to kill me at Comlar. You were always saving that for the Sacrament. So why even bother with the bargain?”

The growl of his words caresses my lips with his sweet breath, “It benefited me.”

“Your lies face no consequence,” I say and push at his chin. “So why should mine?”

He falls his weight back onto one boot, then runs me over with a dark look.

“Your lies have deceit behind them,” I go on. “But mine were only ever to protect myself—not to harm others. You lied to me, you have lied to Eamon, and every day you deny our love, you lie to yourself. You are a walking contradiction, and I loathe that about you. There’s a fucking truth.”

I push from the dresser and stalk past him.

I make it two steps before he’s grabbed my wrist and spun me around to glare at him.

“My mistruth,” he corrects carefully, “to Eamon was not to benefit me. I promised not to kill you at Comlar,” he concedes, and his fingers slip from my wrist, “and in return, he would care for Aleana while I could not. That is no selfish lie.”

“But of course it is,” I smile wretchedly around the words. “Because this was your plan, Daxeel. To deceive Eamon into believing that he was saving me—but all along, you meant to end me on the Mountain of Slumber.”

His face shutters.

At his sides, his hands curl into fists, then flex before he loosens a sigh.

He turns his cheek to me. “You know nothing of my schemes.”

“What would you have done if I never came here at all?” I can’t keep the snark from my tone, like all this built, rising frustration with him is freely spilling out of me, obliterating my instinctual fear of him. “If my father let me stay home in Licht, and I never joined him at Comlar, what schemes would you have concocted to lure me here, all the while callingmethe liar?”

He scoffs a bitter sound, then slides his dead gaze back to me, dead from the exhaustion of our battles, the rawness of his own defeated heart.

His smile is small, dark. It lifts the corner of his mouth—and throws a sickly sensation through my insides.

Then the admission that strikes me silent—

“I brought you here,” he says as darkly as he smiles.

I blink, once, twice, then a shuddered breath loosens from my parted lips. “You planned it…”

His smile fades. And all that faces me is something hollow. Like he carved himself clean to get to this moment. That he died on the journey he chose.

“How much did you plan, Daxeel?” I swallow, hard. “How far do your schemes reach?”

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