Page 13 of A Kingdom of Shadows

Most people expect to feel sadness, but what they do not expect is the profound emptiness you are left with when someone dear to you perishes. I've become different for each death I've experienced, and after Lorcan's, I've ended up feeling confused... lost.

I clear my throat when I remember something and pick at my fingernails. "I know we haven't spoken since—"

"Don't." His voice is a dejected warning. He knows what I was about to say.

Swelling forms in my chest, the size of a rock. "He told me to tell you to go after your wish," I say softly.

His jaw tightens as he shifts his gaze toward the fire. A taut second passes by, wind curls through the woods, and the trees almost seem alive, screaming for help, before Darius finally whispers, "It's not so simple."

"No wish is simple to achieve."

"It is when it's absolutely unattainable."

"And how would you know that it is?"

He looks at me with a heartbroken gaze full of secrets and devastating promises. "I don't deserve such a wish to come true."

Tension spikes the atmosphere around us.

It's a good thing I adore to be hated.

Something he had said to Erion at the trials.

I will never understand your desperate need to be hated by so many.

Something I had said before his capture.

I snap back when Darius’s fingers trace the skin of my cheek, and my breath hinders.

"Still got mud on you, Goldie." The pad of his thumb slides downwards, lingering on my lips for a while. "Do you ever wash properly?"

He's straying from the topic.

Pushing his hand away, I shake my head. "Are you ever serious for more than just one minute?"

He grins effortlessly, looking down at my hand still on his. I remove it like he's scalding heat. "I think you know my answer to that," he says.

"I don't know why I even bother trying to speak to you like a normal person." I stand, dusting off any dirt from my backside. Darius watches the motion hesitantly before I say with a huff, "I'm going to get more wood for the fire."

"Be my guest." He gestures to the different sections of the forest, separating into four paths.

Glowering at him, I start for the same path he took to find wood when I stop halfway. I inhale a quick breath, my foot bouncing impatiently on the ground as I decide to turn and look at him.

His eyes are on me. Curious amusement sparks through them against the raw fire.

"You should know everyone good deserves their wishes to come true," I say, and his smile dims. "And if Lorcan wanted you to go after it, I say you do because the only person stopping you is yourself."

I twist around and walk away before I can witness another reaction from him or a response I might not like.

Chapter Six

I mumble to myself like a madwoman while walking through narrow paths. Twigs and leaves stick out, and I swat at them with my hand. Leaving Darius with my last words makes me wonder if I should have said them at all. I've only come to know one side of him until recently. Some moments I want to ask him hundreds of questions, despite whatever I'd said the day I won against him at the den. And other times, I think things should be left unspoken.

Sighing, I shake my head and have the uncomfortable urge to take out my sun carving Lorcan gave me back. Instead, as emotions swell in my throat, I draw out my double-ended blade.

During the days I'd spent in one of the shifter's rooms after the trials, I carved the exact figure I'd once done at my old cottage.

The Ardenti dragon.

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