Page 85 of Cursed Shadows 5

“I did.”

Silence, again, until slowly Dare turns his chin and he spears Eamon with his stare alone. “Why?”

“I do not like you for her.” Eamon turns his cheek. “I watched all those horrors inflicted on my Nari… for what? For evate? For a claim on her that she did not ask for?”

“To protect Bee, then,” Dare decides his motive.

“Yes.”

Dare starts, a faint tug between his brows, “If she were evate… wouldn’t I have known that when I explored her, tasted her? In all the time we spent together, there was a drawing to her, there was lust, but nothingdeeperthan that. It was something I have felt many times throughout my life, a slight crush perhaps, but it was fun… only fun.”

“Evate could take longer in you… being hybrid, you might not have one at all. The point is, with us, our kind, the halved ones, everything is unpredictable.”

Dare sinks into the window frame, a slouched sigh huffing from him. “Her name could mean anything. It could mean evate, mateship, or the path.”

“The path?”

“That I follow the sun—to find the fate. And if fate did not mean for us to meet again, she would not be lost in the very land that my unit will conquer.”

“Canada,” Eamon says, soft. “At that time of year, it will be a place of snow and ice.”

“Samick will feel right at home, then.”

Eamon frowns. “Is he with your unit?”

“His unit is assigned to the same land mass, but not with mine. We will pass without meeting.”

That fainttick, tock, tick, tockfrom the clock fills the silence.

“Please, Alasdare,” Eamon breathes the plea, “do not bring her harm.”

“That—” a golden eye flashes, bright, yet layered with a darkness, like light flaring over an abyss “—was not part of our bargain.”

17

††††††

With Eamon gone for a few phases now, I fast learn the reality oftrulybeing on my own.

It is revealing. As it turns out, I have a habit of sneaking luxuries I shouldn’t.

I start the third Warmth with a coffee I can’t afford from the bakery downstairs, then guzzle every last drop before I even make it to the tavern to finish the sanding of the tables. The clean-up is the most work, moving chairs and crates and sofas by myself.

Hedda is no help.

She follows me around like a shadow.

I’ve tripped over her three times this phase already, and she has puddled urine on the floorboards behind the bar; a sharp stench that takes me a while to clean.

Then the Breeze passes, and I work into the First Wind. I spend much of that time upstairs in the dwelling above the tavern.

If we can get it to a liveable state, we can save ourselves the cost of more coin on the other dwelling. But it is work, and a lot of it.

To start, there is no furniture in the upstairs dwelling, none at all. But there are plenty of dust balls to take up space.

The washtub is blackened with age and soot from the unshielded hearth, and so when winds have come in from the chimney, ash has blown all over. Not to mention the inconvenience of even having a washtub in the same room as the lounge. That will need screens to separate it when the time comes, and the coin is greater.

Eamon had plans to open the tavern the phase after the Sabbat, one week from now.

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