Page 23 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

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For the first time since I fell through the portal to the Mountain of Slumber, I feel a sense of security. Not safe exactly, but enough of an ease that I finally wash the blood and dirt from my body.

It takes a while.

My scent will be stronger now, no longer muted by the layers I wore over my armours.

But Dare is my companion.

I should be just fine.

The spot he chose for our rest was an uphill climb that lasted the better part of an hour.

It was worth it.

He finds us a creek beamed with boulders, trees that haven’t been frozen to death and so can be foraged for firewood, and a healthy dozen of wild pigs feeding through the area.

In the time I waded into the creek, then stripped off my sweater, leathers, boots, and unwound my frazzled braids, Dare had already snuck to the edges of our perimeter to hunt.

I have washed myself and have started on scrubbing my armours with a stone and beating them against the boulders when he returns—

Dragging a dead adolescent boar into our camp.

And that’s what it is. A camp.

Dare makes sure of that when he starts to build a fire in the small, grassy bank that’s hugged by thick, lush trees.

Rinsing out the water from my sweater, I look over my shoulder at Dare. He hasn’t looked at me once, washing in the creek, and for that I am grateful.

Mind, he’s preoccupied skinning the poor beast he hunted down.

I turn my back on him and drop. I let the creek envelop me.

The rush of water is a soothing embrace.

I stay submerged a while.

I used to do this when I was a youngling. Test my breath-holding skills in the copper bathtub, or pretend I was one of the merfolk in the lake.

At most I can manage ten minutes.

I guess that’s how long I stay under before the constriction of my lungs propels me back up to the surface.

Fresher than I’ve felt in a while, however long I have been out here on this mountain, I run my hands down my flat hair. Really squeeze out all the excess water.

I linger so long that my fingers are pruned and icky to the touch. It’s only then that I grab my gear and trudge onto land.

Naked, but without the shame of it, I crouch for the phials I laid out over the stones. Balms. One, I dab over my now-scabbed gash. The other, I smear over my ribs and thighs. The third is a soothing ointment, and I finger it around my mouth to ease the itch of the lies.

Behind me, the creek is sloped enough that the song of the water rolling downhill, and splashing over boulders, and trickling down rocks is loud enough to mute any noise we might make.

Dare took me to a place of disguise. Hiding behind the song of a creek.

I dry off with a rag from my backpack, then climb into my damp clothes. The leathers will dry against the heat of the crackling fire just fine, and fast, too. It’s the sweater that might take some hours.

I hope we have hours.

I want for more than dry clothes. I want for sleep, too.

And that .

The red meat sizzling on the flat pan of metal that Dare placed on the bridge of the flames.

My mouth floods at the sight of those four generous cuts, the fish, too, that he sourced from my backpack (courtesy of Boil).

The mouth-watering scent alone is enough to lure me to the log that’s flat on the grass.

I drop onto it with a grunt and watch Dare stand over the flames, narrowed eyes sweeping the meat cuts and a stick ready in his hand.

“I filled up the waterskins,” I tell him as I scoot to the edge of the log, a touch closer to the searing sensation of the flames on my skin.

He nods, faint.

Doesn’t lift his tense stare from the sizzling meat.

It’s a struggle not to hug my arms around myself. Need to let the heat of the fire reach every thread of my sweater.

I let my socks dry, draped over the edge of my backpack, and my boots splayed out next to them.

I long for my lost gloves.

“Should I forage?” I ask, curling my toes against the roaring heat of the campfire.

For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to respond. Then, another moment, and I don’t think he even heard me.

“Dare?” I press.

He lifts a frown to me.

“Worried the meat will burn if you don’t stalk it?”

The frown lingers on the marble of his face.

His golden eyes are steel.

Not feeling his softer side. His eyes are his tell.

Dare huffs through his nose as he pushes over the meat cuts with the edge of the forked stick. Perfectly cooked grey is revealed.

My mouth soaks itself.

I swallow, hard.

Patience .

“It’s not the meat,” he murmurs.

“What is it?” I ask. “Is it here—the camp? It’s still daylight,” I add with a glance up at the clouds. “We have time before we need to move on.”

He shakes his head. Soft waves, some coated in blood, rustle over his forehead. “It’s the kinta,” he says after a moment, lips curling around his words.

I blink, startled.

The kinta.

Bee?

I’d almost forgotten her.

“What about her?”

“She’s niggling.” His pale, slender hand lifts with a gesture to his head, his mind , where she’s apparently burrowed, “endlessly,” he adds. “It is bothersome.”

I lean my side onto the log, as a cat would sprawl.

Dare’s dark, steel gaze returns to the meat. He’s a statue, marble and dark, hair that strikes against the pallor of his skin like ink down bleached parchment.

But his hand gives him away, fisted firm around the stick, a grip too tight.

I tuck my arm under my head like a pillow. “What is it you are thinking about when you are plagued by her?”

His mouth slants. “I think of all the ways I might get my revenge on her.”

I scoff.

It draws in his glare, a flash of gilded danger.

“Can it not be forgiven?” I ask. “It was only a small slight.”

Not to mention, I sort of like the kinta.

Without Aleana, there seems to be a gaping hole in my life, not closing in, not swelling wider, just… there. Like it will never leave.

I don’t mean to replace her, I never could, it is an impossibility. But I learned that I liked to have another friend. And Bee is amusing. She is sass and rebellion and trickery.

Yes, I like her.

I suspect Dare does too. More than he would ever admit.

Shadows seem to arch over him.

The gold-painted gleam of his eyes warns me. “To intoxicate me, drug me, lure me, trick me—and then steal from me …” his tone darkens with his eyes. He sighs a gravelly sound, a threat. “That is no small slight.” His grim smile turns on me, and at the mere sight of it, I decide I would hate to be the kinta. “I will not turn my cheek to that.”

If I was a gambler, I would bet coin on Dare’s obsession.

Not necessarily a thirst for revenge, a hunger for retribution—but a true, soul-constricting obsession. The kind that eats a fae inside out, the kind that leaves behind trails of blood and organs.

It’s that or…

Mateship.

Evate.

I ask the too-blunt question. “Is she fated?”

His brows shoot up to his hairline. The look he lifts to me is a startled one. His gaze hooks mine—and holds.

For a long moment, he just stares into me.

I don’t flinch. I don’t back down.

I am secure in the truth that Dare won’t harm me.

His tongue rolls over the inside of his cheek for a beat. Then, with a jerk of the chin, he gestures to his packed, leather backpack. Flatter and longer than mine, the sort that moulds to his back as closely as his leathers do.

“Parchment,” he says, a simple word spoken, and yet it’s both an order and a dismissal.

I slip off the log and reach into his unfastened bag. The parchment crinkles under the weight of my wiggling fingertips and gives itself away.

I lure out two sheets, then place them flat in each palm.

As I advance on the fire, my gaze keeps downcast. “I sometimes ask what I shouldn’t.”

“A wretched apology.”

Despite his words, his smile is small as he stabs the stick into one hunk of meat at a time, then places them on the parchments.

The heat is quick to turn my hands clammy and sore. I wince through the growing burn and rush over to the log.

Dare is my shadow. He drops onto the log beside me, then steals his parchment plate from my hand.

The flesh of my hand is scalding red. Flexing my fingers, I blow a cool, steady breath on the boar cuts and pinkish flakes of fish. Too hot to even try and bite into just yet.

Torture of the worst kind.

If my mouth floods any more, I’m sure I could fill a stream.

Dare sets his parchment plate on his thigh, a frown carved into his face. A heartbeat passes before he murmurs, “I did not experience evate.”

I throw him a bewildered look. “What?”

“If the kinta was fated for me, then I would have experienced evate when I first saw her.”

I pick at the fatty lumps on the parchment, the worst part of any meat, those translucent lumps of fat. But starvation means I would eat dirt if it had any nutrition.

I tear off a chunk. Through a mouthful, I ask, “Is that something you would experience?”

Dare is quiet.

He carefully peels apart the flesh on the parchment into little strips, each one a half-inch wide.

He knows what I’m really asking.

I would gamble that he is thinking the same:

Do hybrids have evate?

Are you dark male enough that this will happen for you?

Or are you so diluted in blood that it will only ever be a fantastical fate?

There is pain in the smile he wears.

As though not to disturb his pain, I gently pick up a piece of meat and sink my teeth into it slowly. My chewing is subdued, when really, I ache to rip into the cooked flesh like a savage unseelie.

“I have felt this pull before.” He bites into a strip. After a swallow, he adds, “Though it was not born of slight.”

He slides a look to me, one that punches his words, reminds me of his desires for Bee, to punish her, not to love her, not to be kind.

And maybe I fall away into fantasies of love conquering all, to never-futures where the males forgive the wrongs of their females, and all is easy and lovely.

That is his look.

“Who was this crush?” I ask, meat rolling around my mouth. Already devoured the first slab. I’m quick to pick up the second.

Without a glance my way, Dare plucks two strips of meat from his parchment then places them on mine. “She was a maid.”

“You felt this pull,” I start, then force a thick swallow down, “for a maid? Was she human?”

Most are.

Some enslaved, others serving out bargains, but many of them—like Tris—volunteer to serve us. They seek us out, follow the lore and our call, and worship our kinds.

But not this maid.

“She’s a halfling of dark,” he tells me. “Worked in a manor near my home in Aiteal.”

“Aiteal?” I know it.

A seaside town circled by villages. Must be about a three-hour carriage ride from Kithe down the coastline. Through the barren lands of the morke. A dangerous journey if one isn’t of full dark blood.

Dare arches a brow. “You know it?”

“I spent much time with scripture.” It’s the answer I offer, when the truth is that I read so much because I had so few friends to fill my days before Eamon came into my life. And even then, I still had time without him that felt so empty. Reading and dancing became my crutches.

“I was born and raised in Aiteal,” he says with a small smile, a touch amused. “The Midlands is my home.”

A frown cuts deep into my features.

Of his village in the Midlands, I knew. But I didn’t know he was born here, raised here, in freelands.

Being of freelands, Dare is of freedom itself.

Dare owes nothing to Dorcha. He wouldn’t have been required to enter the warriorship for the dark lands.

“But you met Daxeel at the barracks?” I press. My parchment is empty, save for the oil stains soaked deep into it.

I hope Dare gets up and cooks more from the cadaver that lies gutted and skinned across the camp.

He nods, faint, and polishes off the rest of his meal. “I always knew I would serve Dorcha. I always knew where I belonged. Since I was a youngling, I felt the call of battle in my soul. I only had to wait until I became of age before I could finally follow it.” He scrunches the parchment in his fist, then chucks it into the fire. “It led me to my brothers.”

I mimic him and toss away my greasy parchment. “And away from your crush.”

I reach for the waterskin and uncork it.

“That was dead years before I left.”

Pressing his hands to his thighs, he pushes up from the log and wanders to the cadaver.

I pry on the matter no further, because to interrupt him, distract him from another serving to fill my belly, is to betray myself.

I watch him work in silence until he’s carrying back just two cuts—two for me, maybe; two for him, perhaps; or one for us each.

He cooks the cuts on the hot metal slab, glowing red in its centre now. Silence has him enveloped for a long while, past the flip of the meat onto the raw side, until he gestures for more parchment. Fresher.

I dig out another two sheets from the backpack.

“I meant to marry her,” he says.

I blink at him.

Marry her.

Marry his crush, the maid from his village, the dark halfling. Takes my mind too long to catch up, and so I think the fatigue has really worked through my body and mind, and after this meal, I hope Dare lets me get some sleep before moving us on.

“I mistook the pull I felt for something of the soul,” he says and plates up. “Mateship or evate or a mere whisper from Mother.”

He drops onto the firm soil, the grass a lush cushion beneath him, and leaves the log all to me.

I reach out for my parchment-plated cut. He keeps one for himself, but just picks at it.

“It wasn’t a soul-call?”

He shakes his head slightly. A loose wave of inky hair falls into his face and brushes over the thick length of his lashes. “For a year, she haunted my waking thoughts, consumed my dreams— until I had her in the hay barn. Then…” He shrugs one shoulder. “It faded.”

I chew softly. Quietly. Feels like a quiet moment.

A grim twist to his mouth betrays a sadness in him.

I watch it as closely as I did the faerie hound.

There’s just something about Dare that perplexes me.

He hikes his knee, boot pressed into the earth, then drapes his arm over his knee. “Each phase,” he tells me, his meal forgotten beside him, “the pull faded… until it became nothing but a memory.”

A frown turns down my mouth.

My mind flickers to false evate. When the beast stirs for a potential mate, a female that has roused it with enough interest—but interest that can’t sustain. The beast knows that this female is not his.

So the beast goes back to sleep.

Maybe this maid was merely a false one.

Maybe they will all be false, for he is hybrid, and that is unpredictable in every conceivable way.

“That’s what you feel with Bee?” I ask, then toss the finished, oily parchment into the flames. “The pull?”

“She captured me with her looks.” His mouth tugs upwards, into a smirk. “At her dwellings, she forced me to listen to her music on a rek-ord player.”

I do not know what that is, but I hum all the same, then lean onto my side. I curl up on the log, feeling the flames heat through the dried threads of my sweater, now warming my prickled flesh.

It’s a lulling feel, a full belly, the hum of conversation, and a fire to keep me warm.

This is the best I have had it since I went through the portal.

My voice is sleepy, “What else did you do?”

Something flickers over him. I can’t quite place it. Something of an ease unwinding in his shoulders, but a clench of his fist, too.

“We ate cakes and sweets in the kitchen,” he says after a moment. “A man brought food to her door in exchange for currency. Chime Ease . It was too salty,” he says and my nose crinkles with a distant disgust. “But I ate it. Then I had her for dessert.”

It takes a moment before I’m flooded with images of the kinta’s legs draped over Dare’s shoulders—and I bludgeon the thoughts down.

“But you didn’t have the sex,” I say, because he was mocked ruthlessly for that detail in the kitchens of Hemlock.

Dare shakes his head.

And I understand his fear now.

If he beds Bee, Dare knows he will lose all interest—and he will be cursed to trek through his life once more without anything beyond fleeting fancies and conquests.

At least with Bee, and her slight against him, and his thirst for revenge… he feels something.

Dare would rather feel something for a while than nothing for too long.

I wonder if his friends figure him out as well as I do.

I wonder if they know his pain.

“Take it from me,” I say with a sigh, my lashes heavy over my eyes. “Evate is a fucking trap—and everyone in it is miserable. It isn’t something you should wish for. To be in evate is to be in abyss.”

His gaze flickers to me.

For a moment, he watches me.

Then darkness steals him from my view, and I sink into the log. I sink into a dreamless sleep.