Page 17 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

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“ Loo-ah .”

A sleepy frown turns down my mouth.

“Loo… no.”

Ill rest has my eyes puffy and slicked with gunk. They fight to keep shut, to lure me back into the deep sleep I’m stirred from.

I struggle against the weight of my lashes.

There’s a glaze to my sight, a murkiness that, even as I swat away the eye-sludge with my gloved fingertips, remains. I fix my weary, flickering stare on Ridge.

He’s a silhouette to me in the haze. A shadow.

Takes my mind some moments to wake a bit more, takes my eyes a moment longer to focus.

There he is, on his side. He must have rolled over at some point—and that means the white powder is working.

“Luna…” The faint pink smear that I assume to be his mouth, it moves with the word.

No, not a word. A name.

Luna.

His companion at the Gloaming. His friend, the one who flirted with Daxeel, the one I never saw again.

If I had a speck of energy to spare on Ridge, or any compassion to offer another, I would frown my mouth in a look of pity, maybe lean over him and brush a strand of his hair out of his face, whisper a soothing word or two.

I don’t, because sleep calls me back. It never lost its grip on me. Now, it’s dragging again.

“ Luna, no —” Ridge’s raspy breath hitches.

Lost in a fever dream, he will suffer his grief, his failures, his torments for hours to come.

I can’t help him.

It’s the price we pay for the powders.

I curl up against the wall and let my lashes fall.

The faint splash of water wakes me with a start.

A dusky light has settled over the cavern. Narrow, damp walls and the foliage stacked up against the entrance dims my surroundings.

I frown at the undisturbed foliage a moment.

Tucked under the brown leaves, a juvenile cricket chirps. I eye it for a moment, the peculiar gloss of its skin, a pinkish sort of white, not unlike the flesh of faerie hounds.

Its chirps should irk me.

Back home, I would stomp on paths and in gardens to silence the critters. I hate them, ever since one jumped into my braids and tried to nest in there, I have loathed them.

But I don’t make any move to crush it with my boot.

Its chirps, its calls to a potential mate nearby, is an advantage I’m not foolish enough to overlook.

Its silence will alert me to trouble.

I leave it be and slump against the wall.

An uncomfortable rash-like sensation tickles my chin, and so I know I have drooled through my dreams.

With the back of my gloved hand, I wipe at my face and drag my heavy gaze around the hollow. Drowsiness clings to my sight, a glaze over the rocks I should see sharply, but all I see is a stone-grey blur.

I blink through the weariness.

Each flutter of the lashes sharpens my sight a touch more, and soon I can make out the outline of Ridge, the steady rise and fall of his chest, his unmoving arms sprawled at his sides. He has moved again, rolled onto his back, and he has stopped murmuring about his lost Luna.

An echo of his pain is cold in my chest. The mere thought of losing my soul brother, my Eamon, it’s enough to singe an acidic burn down my throat.

I can’t wallow on things like that, can’t let my mind be distracted. One of the reasons I pushed Eamon to run.

If I’m too distracted by my worry of him, then I am at risk. Even more than I already am.

Ridge’s presence is no comfort.

I am the defender of us both in this cavern.

He is no use to me, not while the white powder has him.

The white powder keeps hold of a fae for less time than the black powder. I suppose he will wake soon, maybe within the hour, though time is hard to count out here with a different sky.

But when he does wake, he will want for water.

The thirst will be sandpaper down his throat.

I grab the pack that’s nestled under the bend of my knees. It snags on the heel of my boot, but with a huff and a hard pull, it whacks me on the chest.

My hands fist on the leather flap, ready to tug it open—then I hear it.

Silence.

I cut a glance to the cricket.

Nestled under the leaves, it’s as motionless as the stillness of my hands on the bag.

My lips part around a silent breath.

My eyes widen and I drag my gaze to the foliage.

I don’t get a moment to so much as blink before it explodes in a cloud of twigs and leaves.

A screech rips through me.

I throw myself to the ground.

Twigs and leaves rain down on me.

I land on my side, my temple knocking off Ridge’s shoulder just as two arms grab at the wall, right where I was slumped a heartbeat ago.

We have been found.

The shout that escapes me is guttural.

I flip onto my back.

The heels of my boots dig into the ground, and I push myself back, away from the entrance.

A light fae crouches on the other side of disturbed leaves and foliage. The width of his shoulders presses into the stone—too wide to climb into the cavern and grab me.

He reels back, crimson hair falling over his face, and starts wrenching branches and stone from his path.

I wriggle off Ridge’s hard shoulder and thump to the stone floor. The strap of my bag catches on my boot.

A soft moan comes from beside me.

I throw a wild look at Ridge.

He stirs, a frown cutting into his soft, pale features. Slowly, the scrunch of his eyes squint open and he turns a dazed look around the cavern.

I part my lips to speak, to warn him, shout at him to fight, but all that comes is a screech.

Hands snatch at my ankles.

Throwing my gaze down my body, my screech turns mangled, and I thrash my legs. But his hands are firm on my boots—then he heaves me down the cavern floor.

My sweater catches on twigs, leaves crunch under my dragging body. I reach out for the walls, leather slipping over the damp stone.

The foliage falls away entirely, it crumbles beneath the weight of us both, crumbles with the writhing of my body.

The litalf is revealed, and now I can see how he managed to sneak up on me so seamlessly. The bloody hue of his hair, a rusty brown of his complexion, and his muddy leathers—he is the perfect camouflage for forests, for woods, for foliage .

There’s no alliance in the way he looks at me. No kindred spirit between us.

His mouth is twisted, determined, and his eyes burn red like blazes that devour villages, whole.

He drags me out of the hollow.

I writhe against his hold. My legs twist and flail, I try to kick out at him, but it’s as though vines have their hold on me, and I’m powerless against the sheer strength.

“Ridge!” My scream splits the cavern. “Ridge, help!”

I twist onto my side.

My hands grab at everything until I loop my arm around Ridge’s calf, then tense. One arm hooked, I reach down for my belt and feel around my waist for a weapon.

The firm brush of leather caresses my palm.

I suck in a sharp breath.

My hand fists around the knife’s hilt.

Then Ridge is stolen from me.

A roar rips through the crimson litalf before he yanks me by the ankles, hard enough to tear me away from Ridge.

My anchor is gone.

All I have now this this knife.

I use it.

Spine twisting with a bite of sharp pain, I strike it down my body. The blade slices the cheek of the litalf. Rubies spill, fast.

The strike is enough to falter him. His hands loosen on my ankles, tempted by the instinct to clutch his bleeding face.

I hit out again.

The tip of the blade tears at the tip of his nose—and now his face is streaming with liquid rubies.

If I had a moment to afford on a weak stomach, I think I might retch at the sight of his sliced face, and that sickly puss-like liquid that oozes out of his split eyeball.

I don’t have the time to waste on disgust.

I wrangle a leg free.

With a grunt, I hike my knee—then boot out at his face once, twice, then I feel the bone crunch. Nose, chin, brow, I don’t know what broke, I just know it’s enough to have him staggering back with a shout.

Doubt he expected the fight.

He underestimated me.

And I don’t doubt for a moment that’s how I managed to get free. Even if I’m still stuck in the cavern.

I snatch my bag and wrestle the straps over my shoulders. “Ridge,” I heave his name in a flurry, then reach for him. “Ridge, can you move?”

He’s sitting upright now, weight leveraged onto his elbows that cut into the ground, and the heavy haze of his stare aimed at me. “Luna—”

“We need to go. Get up.” I tighten my grip on the knife’s hilt, then look over my shoulder at the litalf. He’s just beyond the foliage, kneeling in his own blood, and holding his peeling face together. “You have to get up— arghh !”

I’m thrown back by the force of it.

Shock slackens my face, and I do nothing more than gape up at Ridge.

I didn’t even feel the slam of my back on the stone ground, not with the backpack to soften the blow, and especially not over the hot rush of blood that spills from my shoulder.

Straddling me, Ridge frowns through his haze, first at me, the shock on my face, then at the knife he’s plunged right into my shoulder.

Something flickers through his dazed, lilac eyes. It’s not regret, not sorrow. It is determination—I see that in the way his mouth twists before he yanks the blade out.

A guttural cry rattles me.

With renewed resolve, Ridge flexes his grip on the hilt. “This is for Luna—it was always for her.”

He lifts the blade again. Ready to bring it down on me, a more accurate strike this time.

Tears flood my eyes. “Ridge, no—”

“I’m not doing this for the gold,” Ridge heaves his hatred, a feral flare alighting his eyes, “I’m doing this for her. You thought I wouldn’t?” His voice hikes into a guttural boom. “ Expected that I would love the folk that took her from me ?”

My sight blurs on my friend, someone I nursed to health, someone who—as I know now—was just biding time to be well enough to take me out, because he couldn’t do it when he was falling from poison.

And I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

But I don’t ask questions. Because, truly, I am selfish.

The fight strikes through me. The ache in my chest fuels me like fire.

“Fuck you!” I scream and, tightening my grip on the hilt of my own blade, the one slick with the blood of the other litalf, I throw my arm up—and sink the knife into his neck.

Ridge’s lashes flutter.

“ Fuck youuuuu !” The scream rips through me, and it’s a sudden frenzy. “ Die, die, dieeee !”

I rip out the blade, and over and over and over, I plunge it into his neck, his clavicle, his face, his shoulder—anywhere I can reach.

Hot streams of crimson rush down on me.

Blood leaks into my mouth, a coppery taste that has my body flexing with a gag, and it’s all over my eyes and my hair, but I don’t stop, I keep stabbing, screaming, until—

Ridge falls off me.

He lands on the ground in a heap. A motionless, crimson stack of dead weight.

Lilac eyes face me.

Stare at me.

But there’s no surprise in them. No defeat, no anger.

Only death.

There is no death in me.

I won’t go quietly. Not softly.

I will go down in blood, in guts, and savagery.

My teeth bare as I flip onto my front—and I lock my gaze on the litalf attacker. He’s some steps back from the entrance now, staggered there, a hand cupped to the middle of his face. I know his eye is split, his vision obscured by all the blood, and I know I could run and he wouldn’t catch me, can’t chase, can’t hunt.

But fuck that.

I charge at him.

The shout that rumbles through me is nothing short of feral. That’s exactly how I feel, my insides thrashing, my fingers aching to draw blood and tear out the spines of my enemies.

Ridge .

His betrayal has snapped something in me.

And I tackle the litalf, hard.

But even in my savagery, I am not a fool. Not enough to think I can take on another light one, a warrior, in close combat, even if he is all cut up.

We fall, topple towards the rockpool—and I stick that knife into his gut before we even land. He takes the brunt of the landing.

We crash down on the shore of the rockpool.

I tear the blade out from his gut and flip off of him.

Water splashes all around me.

The heels of my boots dig into the rockpool, and I push my weight into them, scooting away from the sliced up litalf.

I look down my body at him.

Then I still.

His dazed face is slick with the blood that pools in his mouth, dark enough that it almost looks black. Internal blood.

He slumps, his cheek in the shallow water—and the black of his pupils spread like spilled ink.

I scoff, dazed and bitter. Guess I can add another fae to my kill list.

I fall into the water, limp.

The water creeps through my sweater, soaking my back.

I lie, limp, in the shallows of it, blood and water drenched too deeply into my braids.

I turn my cheek to the cold bite of the rockpool and spit out a hunk of blood. Whether it’s mine, the warrior’s, Ridge’s, I don’t know.

My mind is a blur of metal, knives, screams and crimson.

It’s too tangled to make sense of, and my breaths are too heaved to think of anything other than the icy feeling rushing through me. It’s a dizzying thing, adrenaline. Disorientating, and sickly.

As it starts to ebb away, the coppery taste slicking my tongue, coating the insides of my cheeks, it has more of a bite to it.

The grimace that tightens my face is one of nausea.

I roll onto my side.

And the sick burps out of my parted mouth in a stream.

I sick up the death—and then the berries I ate after I tended to Ridge, and I’m sure the little flakes in my vomit are pieces of fish I had after escaping the river.

Mostly, I throw up water and blood.

I finish it off with a spit.

The water doesn’t take it away. The sick pools in front of me, waves gently, but with no current to carry it away, it lingers too close.

I grunt a disgusted sound, then reach for a spot of clean water.

I rinse out my mouth first.

Priorities.

And though I itch to wash my body clean, to undo my braids and rinse each strand in the rockpool, the logic can’t be argued. Dried, dead blood and mud—that’s too good a camouflage to pass up.

But the thought only just passes my mind, I only just shut it down, when the shout echoes over the rockpool…

“Is that her? a female calls out. “Over there, in the water, look!”

I stiffen on the rocks.

I stare at the clear water, and there’s only one thought in my mind as the echo is followed by the thunder of pounding bootsteps—

You have got to be fucking kidding.

“That’s her! Go, go—get her!”

I shove up onto my hands and knees. The tears blur my sight as I scan the rockpool. But I see no signs of other fae, not around me.

Then I hear it, the familiar bass of his voice, the call of my name that’s wracked with worry…

“ Nari !”

My gaze snaps up to the edge of the forest.

There, I see the female litalf who spotted me, her brown leathers melting into the shade of the tree trunks, a camouflage for nature. Another is hot on her heels, a light male I have seen around the High Court over the years.

It’s the third male who holds my gaze for a beat.

Ronan.

He casts a worried look my way before he turns and chases after his comrades. They run the curve of the forest edge to the slope. It’s a straight drop down to the rockpool—one that the female litalf takes no pause in jumping.

She lands on the other side of the shallow water.

A groan rumbles me, and I stagger to my feet.

I give no moment of hesitation before I’ve pushed into a sprint, and I’m barrelling for the trees closest to me.

Behind me, the splash of the rockpool is too close, too loud. I can hear their boots kicking up water as they trudge after me.

But I am faster, not just because I am not running through water, but because I have to be. Because, if I slow down or trip over or pause to look back, it will cost me my life.

Even with Ronan among them, I am not safe. He will only kill with regret and a whispered apology, but he will kill me all the same.

Just the thought of it snatches me back to lilac eyes, a knife in my shoulder, a wound that bleeds freely down my side, that screams with every jerk of my arm to keep pace with my run.

I trusted Ridge.

And look where that got me.

Chased into the forest by three more of my kind, one a brother of sorts, and all three out to kill me. Because they must. For Licht. For the light.

I am not willing to die for a cause.

I will not give my life for the greater purpose of it all.

I am no one’s sacrifice.

So, I run.

I race into the treeline and barrel through the forest, not pausing for the branches that whip me, scratch my cheeks, tug at my braids.

The bounce of my backpack smacks against the small of my spine, over and over and over, and with the bruises already blossomed there, each smack chokes me with a deep ache.

I keep running.

The mossy overgrowth of raised earth looms ahead.

Fleetingly, I think it must be a long-fallen tree, like the one that saved me in the river.

I drop to my knees and skid underneath it. My spine arches all the way back, my body folded the wrong way, and the moss tickles my nose as I skid under.

I flip onto my boots once I’ve cleared it.

I don’t break pace.

Thank the gods for my love of dancing.

It’s already saved my life.

But I’m not free yet.

The distant punishing sound of bootsteps chases me.

I don’t have a direction.

I lost my sense of direction.

All I know is I’ve run into the lush green of the forest. It might lead me back to the riverbank, the waterfall, or to where I found Ridge, or to the snow and ice incline of the mountain.

If I make it…

Beneath my boots, the terrain is uneven and full of trickery. Exposed roots curve up from the dirt and attempt to trip me. It’s successful with one of the litalves chasing me—I guess that when I hear the shout of surprise and the hard smack of impact.

I don’t look over my shoulder.

I run up the trail, then cut left when the trees are at their thickest and there’s a cloud draped in thick mist.

I hope to disappear.

I pray for it.

Again, I pray to the gods.

I ask for yet another favour.

But I have been given so many, I doubt more is on offer.

Still, I pray, and I hope, but I don’t stay idle.

I chase the fog.

It is quick to swallow me.

My boots slap on the dampening earth. Each pounding bootfall is wobblier, softer, and so I know I’m nearing the misty air near the river.

I’m headed right for it.

If I keep at this pace, in this direction, I’ll fall over the edge of the cliff—and nothing will save me from that plummet.

There’s nothing else for me to do.

I cut left and delve deeper into the cloud. It’s so thick that, if I lifted my hand in front of my face, I would barely see the outline, and so I know this is my chance.

Not to flee. Not escape.

To hide.

My hands slap onto the thick trunk of a tree.

Without so much as a breath, I scale it. Fast.

The gloved grip of my hands on twigs and pine needles and branches propels me.

The bounding cascade of boots smacking down on earth draws nearer. It strengthens from a faint, distant sound, an echo, into a shout that circles me.

I still.

My breath pins to my throat.

I stand, uneasy, on two branches, one boot planted on each, and my forehead pressed to the rough bark of the tree.

Wrapped in mist, I freeze and silence myself.

The footsteps draw nearer. And they slow down.

My eyes clench shut. A silly thing. As though, if I can’t see, then they can’t see me.

I hug the tree.

The wetness on my cheeks could be from the blood I spilled. It could be from a silent stream of tears I hardly feel through the numbness of it all.

The footsteps don’t run by. They don’t thunder and boom. Now, they are softer, crunching gently on nettles, flattening dirt, prowling nearby.

I chance a look down the heights of the tree, and I realize how far I climbed in the panic.

Outlines of bulk and muscle disturb the mist below. The shadows don’t hover near the base of the tree, they move through the area, scouring.

I count three outlines.

Ronan moves with them.

How far would he take it if they caught me…

A question I don’t want the answer to.

If he spots me up here, will he announce it to the others?

Just yesterday, I would have said no. I would have been adamant that he would look the other way, or even help me. But he wouldn’t kill me.

Now…

I can’t trust anyone.

Ridge was never meant to turn on me.

I trusted him.

And he stuck a knife into me.

To think that if he hadn’t been poisoned, lost his strength when I found him, that if he hadn’t let me nurse him back to health just to keep me around for the right moment…

My face crumples.

A thick sob tenses in my throat.

I fight it, swallow it down and pray that the shadows creeping down on the forest floor don’t hear it.

They don’t.

The female is further out of sight, deeper into the mist than the others. I know it’s her when she calls out, “Do you have her scent?”

Ronan’s deep voice answers from just three trees away, “There are a lot of scents out here.”

I watch his shadow closely.

“It’s the blood,” the other fae says. “She was covered in it. Must not be hers.”

I am coated in the death of others. I have mud caked onto my face, my hair, my sweater. But I also have enough of my own blood that Ronan might be able to pick up on my scent again, especially now that he’s so close.

The reminder of the blood, of the stream that oozes from my shoulder, is enough to tense me, as though if I relaxed too much, then the blood would come out in spills and alert them to my presence.

The others will smell me. It’s just that they might not recognise it’s me they smell.

Ronan will recognise it.

Yet between the blood of Ridge and the other fae and the mud from the riverbank, my scent must be shielded enough.

Because he makes no move for me.

“She’s smart,” Ronan says, and his shadow shifts through the fog, as though he takes retreating steps. “She might have followed the call of the river.”

“Downhill,” the female mutters, then—tone firmer—adds, “Let’s go. We can’t risk losing her again.”

They do.

They move so fast that they are gone in a heartbeat. And in two, I don’t hear the faint echoes of their bootsteps anymore.

Still, I wait.

I keep my embrace of the tree, and let time pass me by.

I’m left with the silent question, did Ronan know I was here?

Did he know I am up in the tree, hiding, wounded and on the verge of being slaughtered by our own kind?

Was this his kindness to me?

He did suggest the river, another direction, steering the others away from me. But then, he truly might have believed that I went the other way, that he lost my scent because I fled into the river.

The doubt lingers.

I can’t be sure.

I decide I can’t trust him.

So I wait.

For a long while, I stay up in the tree.

My boots smack on the moist earth. My legs wobble and a sudden dizziness washes over me.

The creases of my eyes pinch as I battle back the swell of nausea in my chest. I aim the squinted look at my shoulder, the smear of red and the stink of blood.

I need the black powder, and I need shelter to pass out in. I don’t have long. Less than an hour, maybe, before I lose too much blood and crumple to the forest floor—out in the open. This rag I’ve fastened around it, it won’t hold.

A raspy sound grunts out of me.

I push from the tree and stagger to look around the mist.

Dread pools in me.

It’s an ill sensation. An unease that sways in my gut like a boat sways with the waves. I know I can’t go back the way I came. I can’t head back down the mountain, through the forest.

Now, I have only one route to take. I must head through the narrowing pinch of the forest, until it spills out into the white, dead and barren part of the mountain.

The very direction I have been avoiding, because it’s the pass, the way up. It will be riddled with fae travelling to the summit, hunting others, seeking out slaughters.

But the three litalves are hunting me in the other direction. Not to forget the dokkalf I lied to, the one who will most certainly be prowling back that way with reinforcements.

One could say I am surrounded.

Call me crass, but I prefer my way of saying it.

I’m thoroughly fucked.