Page 18 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

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No wind batters these trees, yet they groan and whisper all around me, as though communicating. Maybe they do.

Maybe they talk about me.

The intruder.

A being who doesn’t belong on this mountain, a new creature that has taken shelter on one of them, scaled the trunk, slow and lethargic, climbed its branches, bleeding and sagged, all the way to heights that offer a spanning view. From this high up, I can make out parts of the river, at least the parts that aren’t hidden by the steep inclines and sloped forest floor.

Beyond the pass that brought me here, there’s a rusty red smear on the mountain, like a faded maroon field of sorts, maybe just a barren glade of the death.

Further up, I can make out some caves dotted around, black inky smudges on whitish stone, and—too far out, past the dead whitish frost of the woods that envelope me now—I watch the lovely blue of a kind-looking waterfall pour from cliff heights, then disappear into the woods. A much nicer waterfall than the one that killed the litalf.

The view of the summit would be in my line of sight from this high up the tree if it weren’t for the constant fog that clouds the air in a stagnant mist. That fog hasn’t gone anywhere, not in the hours I’ve been in the white woods.

The pass took me from the thick mist to a wood of frosted earth and icy bark.

I took cover up the tallest one within my line of sight.

No time to gut and cook a fish from my backpack, no moments to waste on warming myself by a fire or washing the caked blood off my face.

I had to be quick.

I scaled the tree, tied my middle around the trunk, and dipped black powder into my shoulder wound.

It knocked me out like a club to the head.

Hours have passed since I drifted off into a sickly, sweaty slumber. A fever sleep, the nightmares of black powder.

Now, I wake to the sluggish frost of the skies. While I slept, the sun came up, lightened the clouds to bleached stone, but now, it starts its descent again.

I missed the hours of sunlight. Slept through them.

Now, the dark ones will be out again.

I have lived my life well-fed, and so the hunger is a great discomfort I am not accustomed to. All I have are some berries, a few nuts, and crumbling honeycomb.

Something about the powder daze, whether its black or white, it dries the mouth and starves the belly. So it’s hard to ration myself after the daze, and I eat through all the nuts, some berries, and a full snap of honeycomb before I guzzle from the waterskin.

I want more.

More water, more nuts, more berries—but I need to save what I can. I need reserves. Don’t know when I’ll need them again.

The black powder hasn’t fully released me yet.

I’m in a haze, a mist of its own making.

I stay put. Spine slumped against the tree trunk, rope looped around my midsection, and my backside planted on the bough, I let time tick by in sluggish heartbeats.

The weight of my lashes pulls on my eyes, begins its battle to steal my vision from me.

I fix the thin rope around my middle, secure it. My legs stretch out along the thick, sturdy branches, ankles crossed, and my backpack rested on my lap.

Some time passes, whether seconds or minutes or an hour, I can’t be sure. I just know that my lashes are drooping over my vision, and the black powder firms its grip on me. It drags me down again, back to slumber.

The skies are grey, the air is silent, and a brush of steady warmth tickles my hairline.

Blinking awake, I am sagged against the bark. One boot hangs off the branch. It dangles from the safety of the tree.

Vaguely, I am aware of the rope still bound around me.

But before I can focus on it, focus my mind to my body and reach to check how secure the rope is, that strange tickling sensation disturbs me again: Right at my hairline, little hairs are prickled.

I frown on the fuzzy sensation.

Lifting my hand, I scratch at my forehead. The gloves irritate me. never a decent scratch with these things on.

Before I can think about slipping off the gloves, that tickle comes again, as though the tip of a feather or a dislodged twig disturbs my hairline.

Rubbing my head, I lift my weary gaze up, and up, all the way to the branches above—

And my throat thickens.

I don’t know what I expected. The imagined feather. The fallen twig. A leaf. A vine that dangles too low and brushes over me, just grazing me. I expected, perhaps, something that belongs to this tree.

I didn’t expect that it is the warmth of a steady breath that tickles me. I certainly didn’t expect to look up and see a creature, watching me from the branch above.

My breath stills, trapped within me.

And I am staring into the eyes of a python.

The creature holds my gaze.

It’s a sort of python I haven’t seen before. Frosty eyes that watch me with too much intensity, and—through its parted jaws—fangs, like icicles carved and sharpened, then dipped in a glassy venom.

A shuddering sound whispers from me.

The air that lingers near my mouth frosts with the warmth of my breath.

Just by the look of its clear, sharp fangs, I suspect it is more venomous than my body can survive for longer than a handful of minutes.

My toes curl in my boots.

Hands fist into the leather of the backpack, nestled on my lap, blocking my reach to my belt—to my weapons. I could reach around the side to my hip, grab a knife from there, a dagger to slash out at the creature…

But that means to move.

And this creature might strike at me before I even lift my hand from my backpack.

It’s closer. It has the advantage.

Snuck up on me while I slept.

We are in a standoff of sorts, a locked stare of who-will-make-a-move-first .

One wrong blink, one flickering glance away, a breath too loud, and those glassy fangs might just sink into my face.

My mind lurches through schemes.

Can’t reach for my weapons. Not before the python bites me first.

Can’t unfasten the rope around my middle, then descend the tree. Not before the creature has dropped onto my head.

Can’t lift my hand to swat at it. Not before it has coiled its body around my neck and— snap . How easily my bones would break.

I’m slow. Too slow. In mind and body.

The black powder works against me.

It knits my shoulder wound back together, I feel it, the threading of my flesh, the easing of my blood, and it saves me there. But the thick, sluggish haze of it has me at a disadvantage.

I almost wish the python was the face of a fae. I might have a better chance. At least a shot at survival, however small.

But I don’t stare into the eyes of a fae. I stare into the watchful, intense gaze of creature foreign to me; white, frosty eyes, textured and thick, an echo of ivory-hued brushstrokes over a rough canvas.

A jolt of fright rings through me.

My back scrapes against the bark of the trunk, my shoulders curving inwards, as though I can sink into the tree and disappear.

But the python makes no move for me. Not yet.

Its head swerves to the side. Its gaze flickers away from me—just for a moment—then it snaps back into place, and returns to its threatening stare, sizing me up.

Stiff against the bark, my jaw tenses and I trace its fleeting, distracted look to two branches away from the bough I’m stuck on.

It takes me a moment to spot it in the camouflage. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, if it weren’t for the python’s flickering attention.

But there it is.

A whitish rodent, a rat or a voder of sorts. It emerges from a frosted nest.

I hadn’t the faintest clue that a nest was even there at all, it’s so perfectly blended into the white of the dead woods, a camouflage like nothing I have seen before, since the nest looks like a pile of snow, and nothing more.

My mouth turns with a frown. Perhaps a little impressed, but mostly just a bit sorry for what this creature will face.

I look up at the python.

It’s watching me, still, but its pupils dilate each time it glances at the rodent, and it doesn’t quite know what to settle on—me, a potential threat, a body too big for it to comfortably consume, a meal that will leave it weighted and vulnerable for too long… or the rodent, far on the other side of me, but a lovely, easier meal it needs to survive.

I make the decision for the threat.

I make the decision to appease the python.

Peeling myself from the bark scraping at my back, I slowly inch closer to my knees. I start to fold over myself, running my hand down the length of my boots.

My movements are glacier.

The ice-burn of the python’s stare itches into my flesh. It watches me closely, tracing my every move as I reach out my gloved hand for the sleepy critter.

Then I snatch out, fast.

Cold fur wriggles in my fist. The rodent squeals in my grip, but I have no more attention to spare on it.

Sinking back against the bark, I look up at the python.

Its eyes flare on me, ice-storms, and it slithers closer, too close. I watch as it snakes over the snow-dusted branch, then uncoils directly above my lap, where it curves around—and faces me.

I bring my fist to the snake.

The critter writhes in my hand; doesn’t thrash, like it should in my predatory grip, but wriggles as though it can slip out of my hold and drop to safety.

Never straying my gaze from the watchful ice-python, I slide the pad of my thumb along the smooth fur of the creature. Once my thumb finds its heartbeat in the arch of its neck, I twist my hand.

The snap of the rodent’s neck is as faint as parchment crinkling at the corner. It goes limp in my grip.

I reach out my hand and offer it to the ice-python.

For the first time since it dropped from the branches above, the snake fully wrenches its gaze from mine, it looks away for longer than a second—and my muscles dare to release some of their wrapped tension.

Still, the air is pinned to my throat, and I don’t dare do so much as a swallow, in case it lures the snowy gaze of deadly promises back to me.

But the python is entranced by the offering. Its eyes gleam like glowjars, all the tiny holes for nostrils the creature has, they suddenly expand with a flared inhale. A black forked tongue flicks out and tastes the air.

A wince strikes through me.

The creature snaps its jaw at me—and snatches the rodent from my grip.

The flinch has me smacking back into the tree trunk. My shoulders curve inwards, the tension in my body braced for attack.

No such attack comes.

Eyes wide, I watch as the python flicks its head back and devours the rodent whole.

The swell runs down its throat, down its belly, then settles there. A lump in the fine, smooth shape of the snake.

It will want to rest now. If the python is like the others in my world, once it has eaten, it must rest to digest the meal.

More than an offering I gave it, I gave it a reason to leave.

And, after a curious look, it does.

The tail coils around the branches above before it starts to lift itself.

The python is appeased.

I watch it go, until the camouflage melts into it, and I can’t see it anymore. Must be quite a powerful hunter on this mountain, with only the black of its tongue to reveal it, a hidden giveaway that prey would only see at the last moment, in their final breath before the panic sets in.

I hope it found alliance in me.

I showed that I am no threat.

But that could rebound. Might see me as an easy target, now.

So I keep my stare locked above.

Moments pass before I finally trust that the python won’t return to lash out at me.

I loosen a breath and drop my gaze from the branches above. I look down at my backpack on my lap.

My fingers itch to sneak inside and steal the last pouch of berries.

My mouth floods at the thought.

But I firm my fists, then hug my arms around myself.

The black powder will steal me back to dreams. I’ll sleep through the hunger. And maybe, if I’m lucky, when I awake, it will be bleached stone skies—and I can cook some fish from my backpack before I have to throw them away. They don’t keep fresh forever. It’s only the cold of the mountain that is keeping the fish from rotting in my bag. But that won’t last much longer.

I try not to think about it. About food.

My mouth is too wet, now. I swallow back the saliva and ignore the churning growl in my gut, the acidic burn climbing up my throat.

I turn my chin to my shoulder and look down at the bloody hole of my sweater. There, Ridge plunged a short blade into me. His aim was skewed by the white powder daze—and so he meant to stab the blade into my chest, my heart .

As though echoing my thoughts, my heart twists.

I reach for the tear in my sweater. Hooking my finger around the soft material, I tug it down and study the red line that mars my skin. An ugly, raised line, red and purple blotches all over it.

But it’s closed.

Focus on the positive, the wound is almost healed.

Knitted shut, inside and outside. The black powder will soon be finished with me.

I’ll be out of this tree in no time, building a fire in the next lot of sunlight, warming myself on the roasting heat of the flames, cooking up what I have left in my backpack.

Believe in the positive.

And still, that guttural, empty growl rumbles in my belly.

It’s an ache that’s echoed in my chest. Not of hunger, but of pain. Sorrow.

I release the sweater, then curl up against the tree trunk.

Ridge’s lilac eyes flicker in my mind. The determination that renewed in him when he yanked the blade out of me, then prepared to strike faithful.

No regret, no apologies, no pity, no hint of the friendship we shared.

Everyone at Comlar would have seen it.

The spectators would have watched Ridge turn on me the moment another litalf came and he was awake enough to attempt my murder.

The mirror would have shown Ridge’s betrayal to every watchful fae in the stands.

But not many would feel as I do. Betrayed. Shocked. Sorrowed.

To the litalves, it wouldn’t have been any of that. It would have been justified.

Ridge had their full support, I know it. He said as much.

‘I’m not doing this for the gold…’

Beyond the honour of the victory in this Sacrament, there must be a bounty on my head. Whether it’s from the Queen’s Court or from a more personal vendetta—my mind flashes with Lord Braxis’s proud face—or even both, I don’t know.

But Ridge didn’t betray Licht in his attempt to kill me.

The betrayal would have been what I did. It would have been me killing Ridge, me not killing myself, not allowing my end—because the light must be protected, the dark must be vanquished.

The logic of it should… do something to me. It should sink into my bones the way it apparently does with all other light fae, that selflessness, the absolute allegiance to Licht.

I find my allegiance is to myself.

I don’t want to die for a cause.

Yet, the light lives in me, as it does all my kind. I feel it. It thrives within me, in my chest, my heart, my bones, my soul. A little hum of light, constant.

The desire to protect it, it’s in me. A natural adoration. A mother’s love. A daughter’s love.

I don’t want to live in a world where the light doesn’t exist—where I am partially responsible for its end, even if it is only the human realm that pays the price.

But I am utterly selfish.

I can’t die for it.

My mouth turns down at the corners.

The way the litalves fight for this…

It’s almost as though there is a lot more at stake than humans. More at stake than the human realm.

Licht needs humans enslaved in the Eternal Dance to power the magick of the High Court; the wild fae need humans sacrificed to fuel the magick of the woods. Souls must be offered to the gods. It’s not just humans we use. All sorts of unseelie are offered up to the gods, to the woods, to nature, to the light.

We need them, sure. But we can always find other sacrifices if the humans are gone.

So for the litalves to be fighting to the bone…

It doesn’t sit in me like a firm truth, it rocks like a boat on uneven waters, it sways me with doubt.

There’s something just a bit off about it all. Milk that’s a day too old, cheese that’s been left out in the sun and gone all sweaty, water that has stagnated in a puddle—just slightly off.

If it is all about saving the humans and the light, wouldn’t recruiters—like Eamon—be sent into the realm in the masses to steal as many as possible? Perhaps even offer entire towns and villages sanctuary in the light realm, to live among us as many of them do? Because while we, the litalves, sacrifice humans, we adore them, too. We keep them. We love them, adopt them as our own, wed them and procreate with them.

I chew on the inside of my cheek.

There is more.

There is more to this outcome than I understand.

If Daxeel can take control of the Cursed Shadows, then hand over that power to the iilra, they will use it to spread darkness over the human lands… but what is to stop them from drowning out the light of Licht?

My lashes shut on the ugly realisation.

I feel it dawn on me.

My insides hollow out, like Daxeel has taken a carving knife and gutted me.

Daxeel kept me in slavery, confined to his house, not only so I couldn’t flee from the Sacrament, but to keep total control over what I learned.

He kept me from this .

The light ones aren’t fighting on the Mountain of Slumber to kill me, to stop Daxeel, to save the humans, or even for a proud victory in the Sacrament.

They fight because the light lands are at risk.

More than that, they are threatened.

We are threatened.

Put it like that, and maybe I understand that they are all out to get me. My life doesn’t compare to what is at stake.

I am not worth more than the security of the light, the lands, the folk.

I am just a silly, selfish halfling.

That is who I am.

I don’t want to die.

Not for any cause.

I won’t offer myself willingly to be sacrificed.

But… I won’t— I can’t —let Daxeel take this win. Not easily, not without a fight.

I promised him I wouldn’t make this easy. And so I won’t.

I’ve decided…

I will ask something of Mother. I will steal that wish right out from under Daxeel.

He hasn’t figured it out—or at least doesn’t realize that I have. I will call on our joined souls, cut from the same cloth, and I will speak to Mother just as he will attempt to.

The determination of my thoughts is mirrored in my stern expression. As though the spectators can hear my running thoughts, I nod, firm.

But it’s only a passing moment of resolve before I’m sucked out of my mind—

I flinch as something tickles my head.

Between the braids knitted to my scalp, strands of hair are disturbed by what feels like a breeze that comes from the branches above me just to tickle me… or a breath.

Again, that tickle disturbs my scalp.

I frown up at the breeze that irritates me—but no breeze meets me, only the frosty eyes of the ice-python.

I stiffen all over.

It has returned for me.

To eat me.

Fight me.

Poison me with its venom.

Like a statue perched on the sturdy bough of a frozen tree, I am unmoving as I glare up at the snake who… who licks my fucking head .

Tasting me, smelling me, sizing me up—

My neck shrinks into my curving shoulders.

My mind scrambles and shouts with a dozen reactions I should have. Yet none of them take form, none of them reach my tensed muscles.

Before I can do something, anything , the python stops its grooming of me, then flicks its head to the side. Then again. And again. And, this time with a hiss, it repeats the gesture slowly, and it looks out beyond the branches.

My brow knits.

It’s trying to communicate with me.

I trace its gaze to the tree opposite. The tree directly across.

I’m not ashamed to admit that a trickle of urine escapes me as I stare down the sharp arrow aimed right at me.

The python woke me.

It is warning me… warning me about the dark male crouched on the branch of the opposite tree, arrow notched and aimed at the meat of my thigh.

A sharp breath is sucked in through my blueish lips.

In a frantic heartbeat, I am tugging at the rope around my middle and wriggling off the branch.

The arrow zips.

I hear its song spearing through the air.

And it’s coming for me.