Page 140 of Cursed Shadows 3

Then father forgets me—

Clasps his hands at his stiff back, turns his chin.

Whatever conversation he carries with Lord Braxis, he continues it now.

Father forgets me—and my pain—all too easily.

But there are many eyes on me, too many, so I cannot break yet.

I blink, slow. My lashes lower until all I see is the reddish hue of my lids.

Then I open my eyes.

And just like that, the daze is gone, the clouds of despair evaporated.

The High Court is an eruption of festivity all around me.

Music muted to me in my daze, it screeches in a rising crescendo all the way up to the hissing, writhing vines above. Cheers and laughs and screams—it all tangles together and floods my eardrums and dizzies me.

A practiced grin knits its way onto my face.

I turn it to the stumbling human at my side.

My body twists to follow—and I trace the cursed man through the Eternal Dance, stealing a low-hanging fruit along the way.

I play the part. I perform. I pretend I am not dying.

Plum juices fall down my chin as I take a soft, meaty bite.

My head lolls back, arms spread against the lively air—and for a while, I spin.

To anyone who looks, I will seem like little more than a halfling drunk on fruits, in a pleasure daze, no worries in my empty mind.

To anyone who looks, I do not seem to be the broken soul that I am.

I only stop spinning when the nausea stirs my head.

I wander the Dance, a ghost drifting near the cursed.

Lilac flitters through my line of sight.

I blink on the gentle hue—and force a polite smile in greeting.

Fern aims his soft purple gaze at me, his mouth spread into a grin that shows the yellow of his sharp teeth, stained over decades, centuries, by blood.

The reddish tint of his skin blends into a sudden eruption of thick, fresh blood. Screams rise from the dance podium, but the laughter booms.

Fern melts into obscurity—and I find myself staring at the headless body of a human man.

Crimson streams pour over torn flesh, down a dated collar that tells me this human has been trapped in the Eternal Dance for centuries passed in his realm.

Behind his jerking, twitching body, a dark male stands, smeared in crimson, and holds the head—hand fisted in greyed hair.

Golden eyes gleam like swords.

The glare he pins me with, I feel the ferocity in it.

Dare’s mouth curls over his teeth—

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