Page 48 of Cursed Shadows 5

After a beat, Rune says, soft. “I mourned mine. When I felt the loss—” his hand turns to press his fingertips to his chest “—and I never felt whole again… I mourned her often. There is no shame in that.”

Daxeel’s mouth thins.

He looks out to the darkness, but his mind wanders further to a place of doubt.

Ismourningwhat he feels?

He didn’t lie about the distortion. What he left out is the distance, the numbness.

There is a feeling within him. More than the hollow spot where she once lived, but the malaise, the fatigue, it reaches between him and his sense of being and forces them apart.

The distance is too great to make out the emotions stirring like an echo in him.

All his thoughts are shut down with a sudden crash.

Rune and Daxeel both snap their heads to the side, simultaneous instincts. Their flaring gazes pierce through the glass paned doors to the dining hall, and beyond to the doors that open to the hallway.

The crash shudders Hemlock House.

The violent slam of the door.

And quick to follow are thundering bootsteps crashing up the rug-lined stairs.

Rune and Daxeel wait in the silence, watching the doorway that spills open into the hall—and a few heartbeats later, Samick storms by… frost creeping along his cheekbone.

He doesn’t spare either of them a look before he’s gone, and the bounding thuds of his boots climb the rest of the stairs to his bedchamber.

The second slam of a door is enough to groan the house in protest.

Neither of the males on the balcony move. Neither of them follows their old friend. Because neither of them is mad enough to go near Samick when the frost touches him.

They simply share a muted look. Rune’s raised brow and Daxeel’s twisted mouth speak enough.

For his mood to be in such a state that the frost physically touches his flesh, there had to have been an altercation of some sort—between him and Kalice, or him and his once-parents… or the whole lot of them.

“Daxeel—”

His muscles bolt to his bones.

A thick swallow bobs his throat as, slowly, he turns his back on the glass paned doors. He faces the darkness where her voice whispered from.

The landscape is unchanged.

Darkness threaded with chestnut hues, a pummelling spiral of black rising from the ruins of Comlar—and no sign of her.

Her scent lifts through the air, snares and licks all around him. But she is not here.

Steeled against the shudder nipping through him, he eyes the soft glittering lights of Kithe.

“—overheard them discussing the bloodline,” Rune’s voice sharpens from a distant murmur. “Be prepared for that conversation coming your way now that you’re awake.”

Whatever muted moment stole Daxeel fades away.

His mind is slow, too sluggish, and he blinks on the view of the Midlands before he turns to look at Rune.

His yellow eyes remain fixed on the glass paned doors. He looks to the pair now sitting at the end of the dining table, and at the sight of them, Daxeel wonders how long he was lost in thought, stolen by the faint sound of her voice…

Now, Melantha and Morticia are huddled together at the table, deep in a quiet conversation.

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