Page 43 of Cursed Shadows 3

I eye Aleana for a beat. She toys with her silver spoon, but doesn’t scoop it into the broth, just scowls at it as she turns it over and over.

“You’re energised this phase.” Well, less fatigued than usual in that she isn’t coughing blood or passed out in the chair. Still, “Should we go outside?”

I don’t saywhereoutside.

For all anyone knows, I could mean the gardens, within the boundaries of the fencing that encases Hemlock House.

But I hope for beyond the fence…

I hope for beyond the imprisonment of this home that’s starting to itch my bones and stir my insides. Restless. I am becoming restless, I decide.

Daxeel lowers his lashes over his ocean-storm eyes.

Ifeelit, how he narrows his gaze on me.

Out the corner of my eye, shadows flicker, disturbed from their rest over his shoulders. They writhe now with a lazy fatigue, as though annoyed.

Before Daxeel can remind me of his command to stay within the confines of Hemlock House, Eamon suggests, “We could get a carriage to the shore.”

Aleana groans a drawn-out sound. “The shore, the shore. I’m sick of the shore.” She tosses down her spoon. It lands on thetable with a clatter. “I would be content to never see another shore again. It’s the only place you ever take me.”

Eamon’s mouth flattens into a thin line.

Daxeel starts, “The healer said that seaside air—”

“Is a lie,” she snaps and turns her fierce, misty gaze to him. “Salt in the wind isn’t curing me. It isn’t helping me. But it is boring me.”

Fingers click in my mind. The phases that I was stuck at Comlar, and Eamon was nowhere around for me to find, that’s where he was. Escorting Aleana to the shore.

Some weeks ago, the thought of it would have burned my insides with a flare of envy. Jealousy, even. But I find now, I’m only a little sad for her, sad that she’s like me—confined. Confined by Daxeel, as I was confined by my father.

With a bored sigh, Aleana shakes her head. “What about dances?”

My mind flitters to the dancers at Comlar. It frowns my brow. The performances are for ceremonies only.

“The next one should be at the end of the Sacrament,” I say before I bite a spoonful of broth ham. I largely ignore the broth itself in favour of the fillings, thebits.

Aleana’s mouth puckers and she looks to Eamon for the answers she wants, the ones I don’t offer. “What about the bars in town?”

He deflates with a gentle sigh that has him reclining in his seat, the back of his shirt silking over the high blackwood spine. “None that are open until the start of the Quiet at least.”

I wonder if this is what they did when they weren’t at Comlar, but weren’t at the seaside either: at bars, watching dancers perform. Mostly, I wonderwhy.

Aleana’s shoulders sag. “Oh.”

That’s all she says.

For a moment, only the sounds of silver on copper and drinks pouring into mugs ebb at the silence.

Then she turns her cheek until it’s pressing against the back of the chair, and her crystal eyes glimmer behind the fog. “I’ve always wanted to dance.”

I fight the urge to raise my brow. Instead, I lure off the lentils from the spoon’s grooved edges. “What sort of dance?”

There are so many types, after all. Different events, different cultures, different songs.

My chosen genre is ceremonial. The lure of grace and power in each move, from the delicate flick of a hand and sway of a hip into the sudden flip and solid landing that, frankly, makes me feel—even if it’s just for a moment—like a formidable hunter of the old fae, the savage ones who hunted humans and beasts for meat.

Not a confession I’m willing to betray to just anyone.

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