Page 91 of Cursed Shadows 3

For a beat, he considers my question.

He loosens a soft breath before he tells me, “Did you know Morticia hid in the first passage of her Sacrament? Dark warriors collected dragon eyes for her. The iilra forced her through the portal for the second passage. But she refused to go up the mountain,” his lazy grin ignites a flurry in my chest. “She met a litalf male she loved. They made a deal to protect each other—and to stay hidden. When Morticia threw her dragon eye in the blood river, the iilra pulled the contenders out. It is the shortest passage on record.”

“She chose to love the one her heart belonged to. She chose not to have war.” I shrug, my face softened with a dreamy look. “She chose herself.”

I always liked Morticia.

Daxeel doesn’t mirror me. His eyebrow arches and the ghost of a smile flickers over his lips, but it feels something like a mockery, a joke about me that I’m not in on.

His fingers are soft around my ankles, his thumbs moving in tender caresses that I hardly feel through my stockings. “If the dark contenders had found Morticia and dragged her up to the summit, Mother wouldn’t listen—because Morticia didn’t want to talk to her. One must want to whisper. One must be willing in the sacrifice, no matter how hard it might be. And as for the sacrifice, well the better it is, the more Mother is intrigued.”

I would offer up Taroh, beg Mother to devour him whole, and ask for nothing in return.

I press, “And what is yours?”

“Mother does not mind selfish motives. So my sacrifice is one that will ease my pain.”

His father.

That’s the first that comes to mind. The sight of Daxeel’s scarred, torn back burned into my eyes, forever.

But who’s to say Mother would like that offer, the offer of a father that a son does not love?

Sometimes Mother doesn’t listen.

Daxeel’s searing blue gaze pierces through me. “If I win this Sacrament, the darkness will not be contained to these lands anymore. The Cursed Shadows will break through the barriers. The iilra will direct it where they choose.”

The sway of my legs falters.

Daxeel doesn’t graze his thumbs over the flimsy material of my black stockings anymore. His hold is loose, and his eyes blaze through the dim light of the study. He watches me.

Something flickers inside me, a faint flame. “Where?”

“To the human world,” he says.

My brows pinch, once, twice.

I study the ink on his hand, the spears of blackness that coil around his fingers, but my mind is churning, it’s racing against the winds.

I ease out the question, afraid of it, afraid of the vibrancy in his eyes. “Darkness will take the human world?”

A dark smirk ghosts over his lips. “Wewill take the human world.”

I yank my feet from his lap.

Legs curl into my middle and, still perched on the desk, I glare down at him.

“War?” I hiss the word with a raspy breath. “War that the humans cannot withstand?”

War between the light and the dark, that is natural. Our forces clash, but they are matched.

The humans…

“They will be exterminated,” I say. “You… Daxeel, you cannot. How can you—?”

Daxeel shoves out of the chair and towers over me.

“You did this,” his whispers. Gravelled words lash at me with such sudden cruelty that I flinch.

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