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That’s the cause for the rinsing of my stomach, the writhing of my heart. Whatever Daxeel means for me in this month, I don’t know. He could command that I fall on his sword and I would be bound to his word. If I found strength enough to deny his order, he could kill me himself and face no consequences.

Of course, the evate bond is forged now and so he won’t kill me. He can’t. Yet I am not soothed by that, not in the least.

I feel more in danger around him than ever before, like he’s in on the ultimate secret and I’m just stumbling around in the dark.

I avoid his unflinching stare burning into my face.

Father steps forward, closer to the iilra who I’m certain is preparing to leave this mundane business, because that’s all my life is to her, mundane.

“There must be a way,” father says. “There must be a way to spare her. My daughter will do best as a wife, not as a warrior or a slave.”

Daxeel lifts his gaze to my father. His smirk widens into a small smile, and the sight of it has my teeth clamping down hard on my thumb. The blood from the glass he earlier spat out, it stains his lips and his teeth, smeared black and red—

My chest burns a sudden sickly sensation.

Daxeel’s bloody smile is aimed at my father. “Buy her.”

An icy chill runs down my spine all the way to my curling toes.

Daxeel doesn’t so much as glance at me, and neither does father. Their stares are locked like hooks.

Daxeel’s smile widens but turns into more of a bared teeth look than anything hued with victory.

This.

This is a challenge.

A statement.

And he directs it right at my father.

“Buy her,” Dax echoes his words with more bite. “That’s her purpose, is it not? To be bought and sold and traded. So buy her contract.”

Father falters.

The ugly red of his face is turning purple as he falls back his weight onto one leg. A slight, minimal gesture of retreat. Because we know, everyone in this office knows, we have no gold.

“I’m not unfair. You may have her for the price you deem worthy.” Daxeel’s snarled mouth relaxes a little as he throws his gaze to me. “Ten thousand gold pieces.”

The exact amount of my tocher.

My lashes shut on fresh tears.

All that separation of my mind and soul from my body—it’s gone, just like that. The realisation of it comes crashing down on me like piles of stone. I feel everything, and it chokes me with a raspy sob.

I bury my twisted face in the quake of my hands.

Daxeel meant for me to be in his home, under his control, for the next month. This is nothing to do with his desire for me, but everything to do with whatever scheme he has at play, a scheme much larger than any I’ve cooked up.

I only thought of him, myself, Taroh—small and slight futures, irrelevant and totally insignificant in the face of the Cursed Shadows, the truest form of darkness to exist.

Daxeel thought bigger, he schemed on a larger scale.

And I, the fool, thought I was keeping up.

Silly me.

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