Page 21 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

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If it wasn’t for Dare, I would have given up on this fire an hour ago. The branches are too cold, the frost too deep, the kindle too damp—and the spark from the flint won’t take.

The fish that I caught in the stream about a mile back is now gutted on a boulder beside me. But what’s the point if there’s no fire to cook them?

I caught two, but only one is ready to be cooked.

The other is wrapped in parchment and stuffed into my backpack. The one I prepped has gone ignored as I crouch over this smoky mess I’ve created in a patch of dirt.

Any more smoke and I might as well just jump up and down on the spot and shout my whereabouts into the skies.

A grunt catches in my throat as I drop to my knees—the crouch was killing my already strained legs—and I toss the flint rocks to the ground. I rub my red, raw hands down the thighs of my leathers, as though it will soothe them.

It doesn’t.

I glance to the side.

Besides my discarded gloves, the gutted fish is sprawled and peeled open on the parchment. Its insides have been scraped out, the body peeled apart, red flesh exposed.

I wonder how sick I might get if I eat it raw.

Not just seafood poisoning I would be at risk of, but parasitic contamination and contagious infections, too.

The fish must be cooked.

But I can’t get a fucking flame out of the flint rocks. The sparks just aren’t taking to the cold, damp kindling.

The mere thought of giving up strikes my gut with a sudden growl. It’s a deep, rumbling sensation that singes my insides with a burn of nausea.

Bile.

My stomach is churning through the lining—and soon, I’ll be doubled over with bile vomit.

My lips flutter with a sigh.

I snatch the flint rocks and position them at the root of my stacked kindling, right where the cold tufts are tucked.

I strike.

And strike.

And strike.

And strike.

My face twists with the threat of tears.

But I keep striking.

All I manage are sparks. No flames ignite.

I don’t stop trying. The fatigue isn’t wearing me down to the bone. The sleep I’ve had, it helps.

Rest and black powder are the only reason I’m still standing. It’s the stress that I feel frosting my bones, a cold sort of tingling sensation knitting through me.

I’m agitated from it, a burst of tense energy that fuels my body, but not my mind. Beyond determination, my mind is frazzled, it’s slow and disconnected.

I’m less concerned about starvation in the face of my frazzled mind—because I’m more at risk of making mistakes now than any other moment since I landed.

I worry about that.

One stupid, slow-minded mistake that could end my life. Stumbling over an exposed tree root and falling the way the dark fae did in the blood bog. Just cracking my head—and then it’s all over.

Truthfully, I’m not even sure he died after hitting his head. Makes more sense that he was simply knocked out or stunned—and then the bog finished the job.

I snap.

Maybe it’s the ruminating thoughts of a pathetic death or it’s the frustration rising in me over these useless flint rocks, or the hunger and the fatigue, the death and the blood, I don’t know, but whatever it is—

I just snap.

“Fucking, fuck-fuck- fuuuuuuck ,” the groan finishes with gritted teeth. I smack the flint rock on the ground over and over. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck all of you .”

I fling it with as much strength as I can muster.

It spears over the failed fire, then cracks into the trunk of a tree. The flint splits down the middle. Severed, it falls as two chunks of rock and hits the frosted floor.

For a long while, I stare at it, two glossy pieces, two lumps of polished opaque black.

I slump on my knees.

Hands pressed into my thighs, legs under me, I start to sag over myself until I’m folded in three and my forehead is rested on the jagged surface of the surviving flint rock.

That sickly singe is burning my insides.

The hunger is crawling through me, creeping and stinging, and I have no way to appease it. The fish I have in my backpack, the fish on the parchment beside me, they taunt me. I can eat neither, because there is no flame that will take to the dewy, cold foliage.

So much wasted time.

I left the tree when it was still dark, before the clouds lightened with the hidden sun. I risked nearby dokkalves just to have more time. It was an hour at the stream to catch the fish in the net, then sourcing firewood, finding the right spot to build the fire, to cook the meat, and then however long I spent uselessly striking the flint rocks.

Now, the sun has lightened the clouds above, and the dark ones will be back in their shelters, dotted all around the mountain, and when they reemerge, it will be all too easy for any one of them to snatch me up.

Slowed down by fatigue, stupefied in mind by the hunger, I will soon be a stumbling target, aimless.

In the dawning defeat, I shouldn’t think his name.

Daxeel…

I should avoid him still.

I should run the other way if I see him. If he sees me, I should throw myself into the closest river and pray for another divine act from the gods.

Yet, the call still thrums through me.

Daxeel, are you there?

Is it him that I need, or is it merely food and a rest?

Daxeel…

I am starving.

Help me.

An answer comes—

My heart slingshots.

Behind me, a twig snaps. A faint sound that, in the silence of the frozen woods, is as loud as bone breaking.

I tense all over.

The breath that shudders through me is sheets of ice.

He has found me.

He has tracked me down, followed the call of my heart.

Daxeel has come.

Slowly, I straighten up and turn my chin to my shoulder. I look over at the arch of two boulders planted firmly between the pillars of dead trees.

I expect to see him. To find cerulean eyes gleaming at me, shadowed by dark kohl lines and thick lashes.

But that is not what I see.

It isn’t Daxeel who has found me.

A pair of emeralds gleam from the dense mist.

My eyes fix on the emeralds. Can hardly make out the silhouette that shadows in the mist. But with each focused second that passes, my heart thumps just a bit harder, just a bit faster—

And the shape of the beast comes into view.

My throat bobs.

A beast of white fur, a translucence to it that shows enough of the pink skin beneath, a beast that stands as tall as I would if I had the strength, the courage to rise.

A faerie hound has found me.

Standing between the boulders, camouflaged in the frost, the beast watches me.

Then, slowly, its upper lip—foamed with drool—curls over its teeth. Saliva drips from the needle-like teeth, bunched together like a shark’s fangs, rows and rows of a menacing, metal danger.

It faces me with a silent snarl that needs no sound, because that gleaming green gaze is enough of a threat.

My hands fist on my thighs. Fingernails scrape over the waterproof leathers of my high boots.

I don’t move.

I watch the creature that watches me right back.

Fully mature, perhaps a decade old, and female I suspect. They are always that bit more feral than the males, and I think it might be something to do with the need to protect their pups.

Perhaps her pups are nearby.

Perhaps I am in her fucking territory.

The thought shudders me. Not just my spine, my arms, my shoulders, but my insides, too.

My mind flutters in all its panic to the ice-python.

I’m no mind reader, but I’m almost certain that the snake was sizing me up for a meal before it decided I might be too big to consume or might be too much of a battle.

I appeased it.

I made it an offer—the rodent.

A trade .

A life for a life, a show of respect from me to the beast.

But it was more than that, it was that I made the meal easy for the beast. I caught the rodent, I killed it, then I simply handed it over.

The snake would have had a fight in killing me—and its own life would have been at risk, too. Could be that it was a touch grateful, and that was why it warned me of the dokkalf who aimed his arrow at me in the depths of my sleep. Could be that it was simply repaying a debt.

Whatever it is, it gives me the idea to offer the same to the faerie hound—because, truthfully, I have no other route to take.

A fight with a beast like this, I will lose it. Fast.

Those serrated metal teeth will shred me to bloody ribbons. It will be a far uglier death than any litalf will spare me.

And my body won’t survive it.

There will be no corpse of mine to be flung back through the portal and land in Comlar.

I will be in shredded pieces—and that is if the faerie hound doesn’t eat me.

So I play my only hand. The only out that I might have.

A trade.

The flimsiness of my hope shows in the tear that rolls down my cheek to the corner of my slanted, trembling mouth.

I start with lowering my head—a bow of respect.

Then, slowly, heart thrumming in my fingertips, I reach for my backpack. Beside it, still on the parchment, is the gutted fish. I leave it where it is and, bringing my backpack to my knees, I dig out the other fish.

Those emeralds gleam at me still.

Unwavering in its watchful stare, the faerie hound keeps to the mist. It makes no move for me yet. But that doesn’t soothe my rising, thumping panic. In just a rushed run and a lunge, my head will be torn clean off.

The distance doesn’t settle my nerves.

I rummage around my bag but never take my eyes off the constant gleam piercing through me. I keep my movements as slow and steady as I can manage.

Still, my fingers tremble with my loosened breaths as I slip out that one paper-wrapped fish I have left.

The parchment wrappings crinkle faintly in my shivering grip. I swallow back a lump and set the fish down on the ground.

I offer the faerie dog all the food I have.

Since faerie hounds feed off two things—flesh and souls—I can only hope these two meagre dead fish are enough to strike the bargain.

But I can’t be sure.

The faerie hound hasn’t moved.

It watches me, still. Emeralds piercing out from wispy clouds, an eternal fog that clings to the mountain’s surface.

My movements are slow, gradual. I tug the straps of my backpack over my shoulders. I let the hound understand that I mean to leave… but to leave behind an offering.

A toll for safe passage.

Still, it does not move. It is frozen with the woods.

I lean my weight onto my boots and rise into a hunched crouch. Keeping my head low, my bow submissive, a non-threat, I chance a step back.

The emeralds flicker.

I stiffen.

If I had much water in me, I might pee a little.

It blinks, once, twice, then turns its piercing stare to the fish on the ground. For a heartbeat, too swift a heartbeat, it considers the offering—then latches it stare back onto mine.

My shoulders tense. My spine clamps up.

And I wait, muscles tight and braced for the attack.

But the attack doesn’t come.

I watch the steam huff out from its flaring nostrils. I hear the guttural thumping of its breaths catch deep in its chest. A sound I recognise from Kalice’s hounds, whenever they tried to communicate with her.

Only, I have no idea what it means.

I need Kalice here to translate, to tell me what this beast is saying to me.

I hope it’s telling me to get the fuck out of its territory.

Because that is what I try.

My back to the woods, I slink away with receding steps.

It doesn’t stop me.

It lets me leave.

Those emeralds start to dim away to frost.

The beast watches me go—it doesn’t give chase.

She accepts my offering. Replacement flesh for my own, because it is an easier, safer meal than to fight me and risk lethal wounds from my weapons.

It is undoubtedly a fight that the hound would win, but that doesn’t remove the risk entirely from itself. To the hound, I am prey, yes, but I am also another predator.

My boots flatten on the frosted grass.

Each crunch and crinkle of the ground jolts my muscles and clenches my teeth together so hard that they might shatter in my mouth. Any sound I make might trigger the hound into movement, into a vicious and violent frenzy, or even give it pause enough to simply change its mind and decide that my flesh, as well as my soul, is a better option than a couple of fish.

I back out of the small clearing, and further, and further, until I can’t see it anymore, and the emerald glints are taken away by distance.

Surrounded by rickety trees, I turn my back on the lingering threat of the beast—

And I run.

I race through the downslope of the woods, with no sense of direction other than it’s far away from the faerie hound.

But I make it only a few minutes before I round a house-sized rock—and I smack into a solid wall.

I stagger back, a sudden eruption of stars in my eyes.

My forehead took the brunt of the impact, the tip of my nose second, and it burns with the rush of blood thumping through me.

Dazed, I stumble. My boots thump on the foliage. My hand presses to my pulsing head and I squeeze my eyes shut on the swell of dizziness.

Ow .

I peel my hand from my head and frown at the wall I ran into. But it isn’t a wall.

Right in my line of sight, just an arm’s reach from me, is a solid chest wrapped in brown leathers, swollen with stone muscles.

A litalf.

I lift my gaze.

My hand drops to my side.

A familiar face is turned down at me, but not one I welcome out here on the mountain. Not one I even considered.

But at the sight of it, dread trickles through me, cold like icicles forming along the edges of my muscles, my bones, my organs. That sickly, glacier sensation creeps over my stomach, then tenses with my breath.

The first thing I notice about him is the boil.

It’s tacked to his chin, too red, too ugly. A most unfortunate Fae Mark on translucent, pale skin.

A friend of Taroh’s.

One I aptly named after the ugliness I see on him.

Boil looks down his slanted nose at me. His lashes are low over his eyes, pupils dilated with the thrill of the kill—one that stumbled right into him.

He is excited .

That is betrayed in the small curve of his mouth, as though threaded at the corner and tugged.

Before I can blink, before I can utter a word or turn on my heels and bolt in the other direction, Boil moves for me.

And he moves fast.

He is a sudden blur of translucent flesh and sandy hair and glossy brown leathers.

I blink with the surprise of his advancement, the sort of slack shock on my face as though I’ve just been lobbed off the head with a slice of bread.

Then he retreats a step, that stupid smirk still painted onto his face.

I just… stare at him.

I’m sure I look too much like a stunned fish out of water.

Then I feel a tingle at my waist.

Numb, I reach my hand to the tickling sensation, where I felt his touch, his grab—and I expect my gloved hand to press against something slick, something hot, something a lot like my blood.

No such sensation finds me.

I look down at my waist, a frown knitting on my brow. But there is no blood to be found because Boil didn’t strike me with a weapon.

He took mine away .

I hide the panic from my gaze.

My jaw tenses for a swift heartbeat before I school my face into something soft.

I look up at him.

I hear the thud. The clang of weapons knocking off each other. Metals striking, thrumming with song. He drops my weapons belt to the forest floor, right at his boots.

I don’t even glance at it, no matter the temptation, the tugging lure of my gaze downwards.

I keep my soft gaze on his wicked one.

I have no scheme yet, no plan, but I am certain that keeping a stupid look on my face—to maintain his foolish thoughts of me as no threat at all—is the smart move while my brain scrambles for something.

The severity of this isn’t lost on me.

Boil is more of a threat than the litalf I killed in the rockpool, or perhaps any other light one out here.

This, to him, is personal.

He made sure I knew that by stealing away my weapons, when his first move, his only move, should have been to kill me where I stand.

He is in no hurry.

He means to take his time with me.

I fight the lump swelling in my throat.

Boil leans his shoulder on the mammoth rock. “Why are you not with your dark one?”

I realise now that I do not know his name.

I should. It will better serve me as I face down the death in his glittering eyes, eyes I once thought ordinary and dull, but are now too full of life.

The life in him, the excitement, is fuelled by the pain he will inflict on others. A special breed of male I wish to see wiped out from all worlds.

I dream of one thing for him right now—a slow, painful death, the sort mirrored in his gaze, the sort he has planned for me.

“I hide from him.” The answer I give is an honest one, but strategic, and my voice is a subdued whisper, as soft as it should be for any lady to speak.

He likes his victims weak. Makes him feel bigger, stronger—and so I play into it. It buys me time.

That sickening smile is still plastered onto his face. He tilts his head to the side. “Why do you hide from him?”

“I do not want him to have victory this Sacrament.”

The honesty strikes him enough to lift his brow.

Fleetingly, I think of the spectators at Comlar—and that this is the first time they are hearing these answers from me. I wonder how many asked themselves the same question, why I hide from my dark love, why I keep these bloody and muddy camouflages all over my person despite that it hinders the likes of Dare finding me.

Now they know.

But I add more.

My mind has settled on a scheme.

I add lies. “I do not want him to be victorious with me.”

Slowly, Boil’s smile darkens. That hunger in his eyes burns. “Do you not love your darkling?”

“No.” The lie prickles my tongue. “I once did, many years ago. Now, I…” I let the breath escape me, a sigh of dismay, a performance, “I love another.”

The tension in my throat itches. I ache to shove my hand down my own neck and scratch the insides.

I mask the discomfort with a twist of my mouth, the prelude to sobs.

A wink catches my peripherals. The wink of a gold blade that he’s threaded from his person, now spindled between his fingers.

I do not look at it.

I do not remove my gaze from Boil’s glistening one.

I play the role of the silly village halfling.

And I play it well, with tears to brim in my eyes, the faint sting irritating me.

Boil doesn’t hide the gold blade anymore. With a step closer, his shoulder dragging over the rough rock, he lifts it—and brings it to my cheek.

He catches the falling tear on the edge of the blade. “If not your darkling, who is it you love?”

“You,” I breathe the word with an ache I don’t feel, a rush of desperation, and I take my chance for a step forward.

Surprise flickers through him. It flashes in his eyes.

Blade still pressed to my cheek, he lets the doubt tug at his brow as he looks me over. Figuring me out. Looking for the loophole.

“You do not know me, halfbreed.”

“Do we always know the mind before we recognise the soul?” I ask, voice slick with tears. “From the moment I saw you… I knew it was you I should marry. You I should wake with in my bed. Your kinder hands on my body.” I move for him, a mere step closer, and my hands flatten on his chest. “Their kind has evate. Our kind has mates. Don’t you feel it? The draw, the pull—the desire? It’s why the mountain brought me here, to you. This is fate.”

I cannot lie.

At least that is what he thinks.

No, it’s less than that. Not a thought, not words in his mind that he thinks. It’s an assumption, a fact of life, just as he simply knows he needs air to breathe, it just… is.

He doesn’t question my ability to breathe. So why would he question my ability to lie?

Boil drops his gaze to the sweater covering my chest. He considers the swell of my breasts—and I have to steel myself against the sudden pulse of nausea that threatens to curl my mouth into a snarl. A dead giveaway.

Too early to give up my play, and I have already done enough for the blade to leave my cheek.

As though starting to follow his thoughts, the gold blade grazes down the side of my neck, then over the curve of my shoulder.

His mind wanders.

It strikes an idea. “Let me show you—show you how I think of you. Let me show you how deeply I crave you.”

His jaw tenses and he flicks his lively gaze back up to mine. After a moment, he jerks his chin.

He isn’t convinced of our love. Just convinced that I’m delusional. And I’m sure so many of the spectators must think the same. There might be the horrid sorts of fae watching right now, sniggering under their breaths, whispering mockeries about me.

It doesn’t rile me.

Underestimation is not a stranger to me.

It works in my favour.

I surprise often when the expectations of me are low.

Gives me an edge.

And Boil gives me that edge, that silly, stupid male sort of doubt. It will cost him his life.

It is how I will save mine, that this ugly creature is at least willing to bed me before he kills me.

So I start with a kiss.

My boots fold as I push up on my toes to meet his mouth.

And it’s only when I feel his lashes brush over mine, his eyes shutting after some beats of hesitation, that I lift a single boot from the ground, slowly, softly, until my heel touches my bottom.

I graze a hand up his chest to curve over his shoulder, but the other reaches back slightly for the small knife I have strapped to the inner-ankle of my boot.

I keep him distracted with another lie.

“I love you,” I murmur against his chapped lips. I feel them tug into a crooked grin against me. “It is you I will marry.”

The answer is a mere grunt, a smile wrapped around it, because any truth he can give me right now is a truth that will stop the bedding. He wants to get off before he slits my throat.

Males .

I fucking loathe males.

I loathe this one so much that my schemes are rapidly spiralling in my mind. Traversed from mere stabbings of his heart to cutting him open and cracking apart his ribcage, just to scramble around his middle—or maybe cutting off his appendage—

I let the shudder of bloodlust run through me.

He mistakes it as desire.

Boil’s hand comes around my side, then splays on the small of my back. He pulls me closer, close enough that I feel the excitement hardened in his trousers, firm against my belly.

That hand is much too close to my sneakiness. If he lowers his grip to my bottom, he might feel it, feel that I make soft, quiet work of threading out the small knife from the ankle of my boot.

My leg is bent at the knee, and I am grateful for my muscles trained to hold balance. Still, as my grip firms around the hilt of the knife and I start to lower my boot back to the ground, I lean into him so I don’t topple over. The fatigue and hunger have me too unsteady.

I lean into his hungry kiss, a kiss too hungry for all the filth I wear, covered in dried mud and blood. But this isn’t about lust, it’s about power.

I will take his power from him.

He must have family, loved ones, friends watching on the stands, shouting at him to pull back and look, shouting that I have a knife, that this is a trick—that I did what litalves cannot do.

I lied.

The sole of my boot presses onto the crunch of the dead, frosty grass. I mask the sound by pushing further against him and I murmur into his mouth, “Take me here.”

A hungry grunt is his answer—

Whatever weapon he was holding, the gold bladed threat of death, is gone from his grip. He holsters it in a fumbled moment, too eager, too stupid.

Now, both hands are weaponless threats as they come around to my spine and pull me along with his retreating steps.

He’s backing us to the tree behind him—and so that is where he means to take from my body before killing me. Fuck me up against the tree, then snap my neck.

No, he wouldn’t make quick work of it. I get the sense he would want to see the tears flood my eyes, watch the betrayal flash through me, hear me blubber and beg.

The darkness in him is as ugly as the boil on his chin. It will be the end of him.

His back connects with the tree—and his smile widens into a grin against my mouth.

I firm my grip around the hilt.

My breath sucks in, sharp, just a frozen moment before I strike. I swing my fist up, and I plunge the blade into his neck.

The fright jolts him forward.

I jump back before he can fall into me, grab me, hit me, but not before a sputter of his blood sprays me.

I am undeterred.

He staggers forward, a dazed look slackening his face, utter surprise that he aims at me. His hand lifts to the gushing wound torn into the side of his neck.

I give a smile of my own.

I feel my eyes alight with the hunt, natural instincts prickled in me, to survive, to fight, to kill.

And I lunge for him.

He strikes out with his fist.

Before it can connect, I twirl around his side and come around to face his back. I bring the knife down on him.

It plunges into a muscle that clamps to his spine.

His knees give out—then smack to the ground.

A wispy sound escapes him. Something of a groan or a whimper, maybe words trying to form, to plead or accuse.

I don’t give him the chance.

A wretched shout rips through me.

I throw myself at his back.

My arm loops around his neck, holding him in place as I strike the knife into every part of him that I can reach. In the frenzy, I stab at his face, his collarbone, my own fucking forearm, but I don’t stop. I stab and stab and stab—

Then he slumps facedown.

I fall with him.

His leg twitches beneath me once, twice… then the swell of his back deflates with his final breath.

I slump.

Under my sagged weight, Boil is utterly motionless.

A harsh sound escapes me as I throw myself off of him.

I fall onto my side, blood pooling all over the frozen soil. I kick around, my hands pressed into the earth, and push myself upright to sit on my bottom.

My chest is heaving, curt breaths that pant through me. I’m sure my face looks absolutely wild, smeared with fresh streaks of Boil’s blood.

Blood sludges under me, but all I can do is heave my gasps with an ugly, guttural sound that is nothing less than primal.

I scoot back from the fresh corpse until I’m on the edge of the blood pool. I rest my forearms on my knees—and for a while, I stare.

His head is turned, cheek pressed to the ground, and so I stare at his slack face; at the glaze of his eyes; at the gape of his too-relaxed mouth.

I’m trapped in a ruby. Red all around me, coating my bare hands, spattered over the dead face not far from my boots, hanging from my lashes in stubborn droplets.

I don’t weep.

I don’t tend to the gash on my forearm.

I just stare.

My knees dig into the underside of my forearms. I flex my fingers against the cool air. Hands are soaked in blood—and, with a bitter smile, I remember that I left my gloves back at my failed fire. I left them behind with the fish and bolted far away from the hound.

Now, my hands tremble, the residue of the fight’s adrenaline pumping through my body, or the effects of the cold biting at my flesh. Maybe both.

I should warm my hands. At least tuck them under my pits to heat them up a little.

But I don’t.

There’s little in me now. Every scrap of power and energy has been burned to ash. Maybe it’s my mind that has been beaten into defeat as I sit here.

I should feel victorious.

I sure as hell don’t feel guilty.

But I do worry that my luck is running out.

My bag of tricks is emptying, fast.

And I don’t have the strength to face another battle.

So I stare at the face of the male I butchered.

Not the first time I have killed on this mountain. But this one… It feels as though it holds up a mirror and forces me to look at what I am becoming.

I am not certain I can look into that mirror much longer.

Still, I sit here, tucked up, staring at the face I itch to cut free from its skull. I itch to defile the body.

I hate myself for that.

Yet I am not sorry.

I am only grateful.

Lying saved my fucking life.

And my hidden savagery took a life.

The surprise at my own brutality is reflected elsewhere. Not just me, but the voice that flitters out from the woods behind me—

“I didn’t think you had it in you.”