Page 22 of Cursed Shadows 3

I remember the short descending stairs from the foyer—and I start through Hemlock House for those.

My steps are rushed. An urgency steals me, because Daxeel’s mother could slink out at any moment. I’m eager to avoid her threats before my first coffee.

But some moments into my hurried journey, it isn’t Melantha I run into.

It’s Caius.

Slathered in glossy leathers that reek of soap, he comes bounding up the stairs, two steps at a time. The house shudders with each thud. But his steps falter when he looks up—and I look down.

His mouth twits before he pushes into a prowling climb.

I grip the banister and start down the stairs.

Our locked gazes hold as we near.

Then Caius turns his dimpled chin my way as he passes.

I’m silly enough to part my mouth around a question—‘where are the kitchens?’—but I don’t get the chance to ask it before he lets a snarl twist his face, a scratchy warning sound crawling up his throat.

I freeze at the sound.

Muscles bolt to my bones.

My hand tightens on the smooth wood banister so tight that my knuckles bleach. I half expect him to smack his shoulder into mine and send me flying over the railing.

But he just stalks past me.

The throaty snarl leaves with him.

For a long moment, I keep tucked to the banister. Neck craned, I look up at the second-floor landing, watching the doorway he disappeared through.

He doesn’t re-emerge.

I loosen a shaky breath. It shudders through me before I start down the stairs again.

My mind flickers back to the small steps. In old homes like these, with bones more solid than my own, the kitchens are often in the basement.

With each step that I clammer down to the guts of Hemlock House, thoughts of Caius and his obvious disdain of me linger. Is he just another one who judges me too personally for my slight against Daxeel, or does his loathing come from something deeper?

I’ve observed Caius before, how receptive he is to Aleana, yet doesn’t take the elder sibling role in guarding her, then how he is with his brother, how little they interact, but when they do, it’s as though they are little more than colleagues.

What I’ve gathered is simple.

Daxeel and Caius just aren’t that close.

Pandora and I seem to share a stronger bond than Daxeel and Caius do. So a part of me, this sliver of self-sabotage and poor survival skills, urges in the flames flickering in my chest to spit at Caius’s boots and tell him to mind his own business.

But of course, I don’t.

I bite my tongue and descend the short staircase to a cold, stone corridor. Down that hall, I find the kitchens in the bowels of the house.

The moment I reach the stone archway, the fireplace carved into the wall flashes blue. Those flames lash and lick up theheavy bottoms of cauldrons and pots, flicker the shade of diamonds for a heartbeat, then mute back into their dull hues.

I spare the hearth a mere glance before I throw my stare to the male who sits on the edge of the dining table, his back to me.

Lingering in the archway, my bare feet flex on the cold stone floor as I study the smooth marble tone of his unblemished back, down to the waistband of his black linen slacks.

Dare is perched on the edge of the old, homely dining table whose surface is all scratched and marked and stained. Hunched over a midnight apple that he rolls in his fingers, he pays his surroundings no mind beyond the toying of the fruit.

---