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At the reminder of the nearing dawn, my teeth bare. The threat swarms through me, worms in my veins.

“Our farewell lingered,” I dismiss and roll the tension from my shoulder. “It’s proving more difficult each time to leave her.”

The urges are getting harder to fight.

Eamon’s grumble is as sour as the look he slides my way, “To what end?”

I sigh a soft, weary sound.

Keeping my back to my dull cousin, I steal the washcloth from the soapy pot. The water is warm to the touch.

“Are you not optimistic?” Dare stretches his arms over his head and turns to look at Eamon. He flashes him a grin; one without the warmth of his light tone. “Do you doubt your cousin?”

I run the cloth over my bare body. “I will not stop in this chase,” I tell Eamon for what feels like the hundredth time. “I court her.”

Behind me, he scoffs, bitter. “And what you do you expect to come of it? That her father will decide to sign her away to you—because she is in love?” he spits the last words like too sweet poison, a ridicule.

The frown burrows into my face.

I toss aside the cloth, then turn to face him. “What else would be?”

Eamon’s shoulders jolt. “That you would darken his porch—and he would slam the door in your face.”

“This is evate,” I speak each word with purpose, my lip curling around them. “He will negotiate.”

But with a glance at Dare, I recognize that he, too, isn’t convinced.

My jaw locks, tight.

I look between them.

“He will not stand between evate,” I speak with the conviction that thrives within me.

The moment I learned of Brok Elmfield’s prejudices from my cousin, I took a step back and reassessed my approach. It wouldn’t have done well to take my offer directly to him, and with Nari not feeling anything beyond desire for me so soon, I would not have her support in my offer. It’s support I need. It’s her complaints in her father’s ear that will wear him down, and then free him to negotiate with me.

I needed to douse her fear of me first.

Without Nari in love, I have no audience with her father.

And though by my laws I can simply steal her away, the shame that will reflect on her family, the pain that will cause her, dismisses the option entirely.

My approach is better—with the best outcomes.

But Eamon does not keep the same faith as I do.

“Dokkalves.” Eamon’s eyes flash. The corners of his mouth tuck into his cheeks. “Dokkalveswould not stand between evate, because that is the dark culture. You are speaking of a light male, a once-noble, an ambitious racist—evate to him is nothing.”

I snatch a pair of black linen trousers from an armchair.

As I pull them on, I start, “What do you want me to do, cousin? Abandon my evate because her father has prejudice? He knows as well as I do—as we all do—that there is no true choice here. Only the illusion of one. If he will not open her contracts to me, I will have no other way but to take her. He will see this. So he will take the tocher.”

“And then what?” Eamon grits out the words. He pushes from the bed and starts for the door. “Lock her up in the Shadow Court with your sickly sister and scarred mother?”

My lashes lower.

I feel the air around me shudder with thickening darkness; those fleeting moments of a dormant power long lost in my bloodline. A shadow of a shadow.

Dare moves past me. Still as naked and soap-scented as when I entered, he fixes the curtains, though no light will penetrate the boards nailed to the window frames. I know him well enough to understand he busies himself to stay in the room and listen to every word shared between Eamon and I.