Page 16 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

??????

My calculations were off.

Not a half-hour, it turns out to be the full hour before we reach the rockpool with the overhang.

Ridge—in all his honour—doesn’t slip away to fever sleep. He fights to keep awake, to keep his weight off my shoulders, and his boots moving.

I’m glad for it, because it’s better for his bones that I don’t have to roll him down the forest floor and into a rockpool, all because I can’t carry him alone.

The water of the rockpool is shallow, barely reaching the ankles of our boots. We kick our way across, the exhaustion of the second passage already weighing us down. Slowing us down, too.

Even my legs are bendy beneath me, my lashes are draped over my eyes, and I’m sagging with the poisoned fae.

I hardly feel the sting of the cut on my neck or the moisture that’s glistened all over my brow.

We cut through the pool, because we have not enough energy to walk around it for the overhang that’s something of a stone umbrella curving out from the cracked and deformed cliff to shade over the edge of a small pool.

My mood doesn’t sour at the sight of it. It lifts with a flutter of relief.

It’s better than I expected.

Beneath the stone shade is a sort of cavern. Not a cave, exactly. Small and delicate, I consider it more of a hollow that’s carved into the rock of the mountain.

It’ll be a tight fit.

We don’t have time to search for something better.

We move for the overhang. At least it shields us from view. The only way anyone will know we have taken shelter here is if they come to the rockpool for water—then they will have a direct view into the stone hollow.

That’s if no one picks up our scents.

With Ridge bleeding so freely, I don’t pin too much hope on our hidden scents. I’m covered in mud, still, and my scent should be muted, but Ridge…

I could always leave him behind.

Look out for myself. Find shelter away from him.

I could help him settle, feed him white powder… then leave when he falls into the fever sleep.

But a dokkalf might catch his scent, his blood. Might hunt him down. Find him alone, unable to defend himself in brutal dreams, and then Ridge will be killed.

And it will partly be my fault.

No, I can’t leave him.

It wouldn’t be fair to him, Ridge who has helped me before, befriended me, been kind. It wouldn’t be right to steal him away from Eamon, who has done so much for me.

I find that I care.

So I fling away any thoughts of abandoning him, and I help him into the hollow. Our knees bend and we duck to squeeze inside.

It’s a narrow space, just big enough for us both, maybe another slender fae, but that’s all. I doubt two dokkalves could fit in here.

I manoeuvre Ridge to lean against the cavern wall. He slumps with a harsh breath. His mouth moves around murmured words, but I can’t quite make them out beyond a garbled hum—

Then he crumples.

Chin pressed to his clavicle, he’s on the verge of folding over. His lashes shut on this realm.

The poison has knitted too deep.

I have to make quick work of it.

I reach for his waist.

Two leather belts are strapped around him, pouches fastened to the bands with string, holsters sheathed all around him, and two furry sporrans.

I snatch the one closest to me.

I’m quick to unhook the lid and reach inside. My fingers dance around glass phials and cotton balls. I scoop out as much as I can grab in a handful, then spill the phials onto the cavern floor.

Tonics and balms glisten up at me—and one small phial of a plain white powder that, under the sunlight, will glitter with the magic it contains. But in the dim light of the cavern, it looks as ordinary as flour.

Snatching the phial, I bring it to my mouth and bite down on the cork. I tug it out—it pops .

The best way to administer the white powder for such a festering poison, one that’s had too much time to spider its way deep into Ridge’s body, is to cook it into a liquid, then inject it into his tissue.

I don’t have time for that.

Ridge doesn’t have time.

Slumped over, a horrid wheezing sound escapes him.

I look up from the phial a mere moment before he falls onto his side—and hits the hard floor of the hollow with a thud.

My mouth twists with a grimace.

Breath pinned, I wait—wait for blood to spill from his head, now rested on the rocky floor. But no fresh streams of blood appear.

But there’s no relief to be had.

A breath ribbons from Ridge’s parted lips; his lashes flutter on the whites of his eyes—then his leg kicks with a twitch.

Life unribbons from him. He goes limp.

The panic jolts me forward, and I throw myself at him.

Stretched over his body, I reach into his mouth and pry it open. I pour the white powder down the back of his throat. The tickle of his tonsils clenches, a sign of life that lifts my brows over worried eyes.

I cover his mouth with my hand, then shove his jaw up. I push down on his face, shielding his mouth, his nose—stealing his breath.

His throat bobs.

I feel it against my forearm.

It bobs again, swallowing the white powder.

Still, I suffocate him. I deprive him of his air until his instincts take over and he’s swallowing down all the powder that dries out his mouth and tickles his throat.

Half the phial, I poured down there.

It’s too much, but I would rather that than too little.

The bobbing of his throat slows until it stops.

I draw back from his limp body, slipping my hand from his face.

Ridge’s answer is instant, a weary gasp for air.

Still, he’s unconscious, lost to the poison, slumped on the cavern floor. The sweat that glistens his face is as dewy as the rocky walls surrounding us.

My fingers slip into his mouth, then tug his teeth apart. I peer into the darkness, eye up his tongue and tonsils, slightly stained with the residue of the white powder.

But he swallowed enough.

With a sigh, I draw back from him.

Before I slump against the opposite wall, I gently set down the phial, then tug off my backpack. My waterskin is small, only enough for one person, and it’s empty.

I want nothing more than to fall onto my side, curl up, and fade away to dreams. I just need rest.

But Ridge needs water to push the white powder through him faster. And my mouth is drier than Melantha’s glances.

I grab the waterskin.

I study the muddied toes of my boots.

Within them, my socks are perfectly warm and utterly dry. The quality is more costly than probably anything I own. Aleana took great care in picking them out for me. Even with all the near-drowning in the river, my socks stayed dry.

Dry socks. What a thing to notice. What a thing to be grateful for.

And I find that I am grateful.

They even stayed dry when I was filling my waterskin in the rockpool. Half of that water is gone already. I drank a lot myself, and I poured some down Ridge’s slack mouth, too.

He’s been motionless since he collapsed.

At his boots, I’m tucked up against the opposite wall, knees to my chest. I hold myself.

My brow rests on my knees.

And for the first time since I landed, who knows how long ago now, I let my eyes shut.

I let rest knead into me.

But sleep isn’t fast to find me, like it should.

Instead, my thoughts pile in my mind, until they carry with the weight of stone pushing down on me.

Daxeel…

I let his name whisper through me.

Daxeel… do you feel me?

Silence is my answer.

No sensations flitter through my chest, no unfamiliar emotions overwhelm me, no echoes of pain or rage.

No trace of Daxeel.

He might be so far on the other side of the mountain that I cannot feel him. He might be dead. It might be the mountain distorting our bond.

I don’t let myself get carried away with the fear of it all, that his life might already be gone from his body, his soul waiting for mine in the afterlife.

Though I do let myself wonder, ask the question down the dormant bond; why did you forge the bond ?

It made sense for me to seal our bond. But for Daxeel, all he’s done is create a second target—a second heart outside of his own body that, really, he can’t protect as well as he can protect his own.

Was it a moment of weakness that phase at the Gloaming and he simply couldn’t fight his beast anymore? That he finally cracked and risked his own life to mate with me?

He must be regretting that now.

Out there, somewhere, beneath the grey of the skies, he must be consumed with the regret of his choices. Never knowing when the strike to his life might come, or if Dare will reach me first.

Part of me hopes Dare finds me soon.

Even if it’s just so I can rest easy under the heavy blanket of fatigue. With Ridge knocked out by the white powder, and the soft quiet of the rockpool lulling me into slumber, I would sleep easier knowing I was guarded by Dare.

But as my lashes close on my vision and my mind falls away to sweet nevers and nothings, all that shields me is the pile of foliage I placed at the mouth of the hollow and the mud that’s caked all over my person.

I dream of all things awful.