Page 63 of Cursed Shadows 5

His lashes shut on some ugly understanding.

Just as he thinks it, he feels it. The whisper of her behind him, the graze of her hand down his neck… but she isn’t here, how could she be? It’s his mind, it’s residue of the summit warping him, distorting.

“Daxeel,” the haunting sound of her voice trailing behind him. “Daxeel… please.”

He doesn’t look.

His shoulders are hunched tight, muscles clamped to the bone, and he fears that if he opens his eyes, it won’t be Taroh he finds in front of him, but her face.

He keeps his eyes shut on that chilling sensation skittering up his spine; keeps his eyes shut on the burn that sears him, that he might release a tear—in front of a prisoner, no less.

Dare holds the moment in the dungeon. He senses something amiss in Daxeel—and spares him from it.

“He doesn’t stop, does he?” Dare murmurs.

Daxeel opens his eyes, a stab of caution jolting through him. He tosses his gaze around the dungeon, from Dare leaning against the mossy wall to Taroh slumped over on the ground.

No Nari.

Still, a shudder rinses through him before he turns a frown down at the prisoner.

The strip of fabric muzzling Taroh is as damp as the bloody, dewy dungeon floor. Against it, Taroh’s incessant pleas are muffled.

“Every time we come here,” Dare drones, “there you go—mumbling and mumbling…You have a gag in your mouth,” Dare enunciates the words, “We cannot understand you.”

Taroh’s spine shudders with suppressed sobs. He drops his head with a faint whine.

Dare huffs a weary sound and folds his bare, pale arms over his chest. “Finally—a little peace.”

That peace is short-lived.

Taroh sucks in a shaky breath that trembles his chest… then starts all over again, mumbling, mumbling, mumbling.

Dare rolls his eyes.

Unmoving in the shadows, he looks a male carved from marble, a statue that belongs to the forgotten mists that cling to graves. It’s his eyes that give him away, one gleaming bright like fresh shavings of gold, the other crushed crystal, a duality that comes together to thirst for more blood to be spilled.

And still, Taroh mumbles, the same sound, over and over.

“Sounds likepromise,” Dare decides after a pause of deciphering. He frowns and turns his dubious look to Daxeel, who wears blood and strips of flesh. “I didn’t make a promise—did you?”

Daxeel shakes his head, crimson drops dripping from the ends of his inky hair. He lifts his ocean gaze and smiles something dangerous at Taroh. “I did not. I only illuded to one.”

A stillness ripples over the prisoner.

“Not to mention the obvious,” Dare drawls, “but there’s the truth of our deceit. We, unlike the restricted race of our kind, can lie.” The whisper of a smirk ghosts over Dare’s face. “But what will we do with so much flesh?”

Daxeel sighs, his mouth tugged into a half-sneer to bare some sharper teeth, and he looks down to the side of his boot.

Tucked against his boot is a white-furred pup.

Daxeel asks, “Hungry?”

The pup stirs from its fleeting rest, then—as though it understands the question—it blinks against the fatigue of its youth and lifts its expectant gaze to Daxeel.

White eyes gleam up at him, the hunger and plea of a faerie hound.

“It’s not as though we can starve the poor pup.” Dare pushes from the wall and, with wandering steps, circles Taroh’s shivering form. “Nari won’t appreciate it. You know how she is with beasts.”

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