Page 32 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

I don’t make it to the second tree.

The thick, leafy drapes of the first tree brush over me before Daxeel shoulders his weight into my side. The force of it throws me off my feet and flips me around in the air.

I land on my back with a grunt.

Frosty, dead leaves rush up all around me, a gust of disturbed snow billows at my face—then the weight of a boot presses down on my middle.

The defeat isn’t a flurry of panic in my chest, but rather a stagnant sensation that slumps me. My chances were slim.

I huff a breath at the strands of hair that have fallen into my face.

Rune’s light voice carries downhill, it mocks me, “Something of a wolf, isn’t she? Relentless, that one.”

By the distance of his voice, I understand that none of those males gave chase—they didn’t have to. I made it only a few steps before Daxeel caught up to me.

“More like a snared rabbit.” Daxeel stands over me, boot fixed on my midsection. Cobalt eyes glitter with a rush of excitement, an unspoken I dare you, fight me . “I see no claws.”

Splayed on my back, I loosen a sigh. A moodiness settles over my expression that I aim right up at him.

“Go fuck yourself,” I murmur, limp on the earth.

A small smile plays on his pinkish lips.

I lift my hand from the foliage. “Are you going to help me up, or are you content to drink in my beauty a while longer?”

Slowly, he blinks those long lashes of his, his head tilting to the side, and I watch dark tendrils fall into his face. “Did you forget how to stand on your own?”

Mistrust dances in his eyes like a glittered mist.

I watch the black and blue specks gleam as he slowly draws his boot from my middle, then presses it to the ground, his weight retreating with the movement.

Still, I keep one hand limp in the air, as though ready for him to take it in his and ghost a kiss along my knuckles. It’s a dainty gesture—and I hope it fools him enough to see nothing more than my defeat, my submission, because my other hand is fisted in the dirt.

He scoffs something annoyed before he reaches out for my wrist. He grips it, firm, then yanks me up from the earth.

The sheer strength in that pull is enough to sprout aches in my shoulder, and to propel me into his chest. My chin knocks off the leather wrappings of his pecs.

The moment I collide with him, I kick up my knee to knock him right in his bits.

But he sees it coming.

Before the hit can connect, Daxeel strikes out at my thigh—and he grabs me, hard.

Eyes blazing in the dimness of the mountain, he shoves my knee further up, all the way , and slams it into my own midsection. A grunt chokes me.

The impact reverberates through my leg before he pushes me away from him.

I stagger back.

His words come with a rush of instinct, to hunt, to fight, “Hurt yourself?”

“Not enough to stop me.”

I hiss at him before I throw out my fist—the one clenched at my side since I landed on my back, a fistful of gravel and dirt.

His eyes, his eyes, his eyes.

A spray of dirt and twigs and ice hits him in the face. Before he can even cringe away from the assault, I’ve turned on the heels of my boots and bolted through the drapes of leaves.

I run.

The shouts of annoyance burst through the woods, an urgency that ripples through the air before each one of the dark males chases after me, the rainfall of bootsteps pounding on the dirt.

I got enough of a head start.

I barrel straight through the lilac drapes.

Snow dusts over me, coats my hair, tickles the tip of my rosy nose. But I don’t falter. Instead, I lock in on the distant song of gentle moving waters.

A stream.

I cut right to chase it downhill.

Behind me, the whips and smacks of branches hitting the dark ones is a coarse tune of drums and battle-shouts that’s blended with the punishing stomps of boots smacking against the earth.

Most branches don’t touch me.

My litalf connection to nature herself aids me.

It swings branches away in a sudden gust of wind right before I sprint through; it tugs away tree roots arched from the ground before I can trip over them. Why she helps me now, I don’t know, but her aid gets me closer to the gentle rush of water.

The stream, it’s there, just ahead, I am so close.

I just have to reach it, chase the downhill current, then fall into whichever river it leads me to, or drop down the waterfall it might end in.

I have to get far away from the summit.

Urgent, hopeful, my boots slam into the muddy bank, and my muscles clench, ready to pounce into the freshwater.

But my jump is startled as a sudden flare of fire splits my thigh.

I choke on a surprised shout.

Then the stream is rushing up at me.

I fall into the water.

I don’t feel the cold of the stream wash over me, I don’t feel the water rushing down my throat, I don’t even hear the gurgle of my drowning cry.

I only feel the hot, wet flames burning deep in my thigh. They consume me.

A hand snatches at my ankle… then I’m yanked out of the stream.

I twist onto my back.

Rocks and boulders scrape down my spine, drawing a hollow sound from my parted mouth. My sweater tears against the rocks, but the grip that’s firm around my ankle, it drags me ashore, drags me over nature’s grater.

I blink away the droplets of water that cling to my lashes.

Looking down my body, I see a familiar clenched-jaw, painted honey, gleaming blue eyes and dark tendrils of hair.

Daxeel gives one, final yank of my leg—and I am fully ashore, nothing but dirt and rocks under me.

He doesn’t release me.

And he doesn’t look at me, either.

His gaze is aimed at the tree over the way.

“You’re welcome,” a foreign voice grumbles—a lighter, smoother voice than any dark male’s I’ve ever heard. But the accent is of Dorcha.

I turn my grimace to the newcomer.

A dark warrior drops silently out of the trees. Her boots are soft on landing and, as she rises, bow in hand, the gleam of black leathers lick all over her muscles. A female warrior with hair so glacier that it has the same blueish tint to it as those glass eyes of hers.

Daxeel turns his cheek to the female. His stare drops to me, and it feels like ice spears are pinning me in place.

His answer is a growl, “I had her.”

Still, his grip is as solid as vines wrapped around my ankle. My leg is raised up, the blood of that searing pain burrowing into my thigh, it flows down to my waist in crimson streams.

An arrow protrudes from my thigh. Sleek, thick and pierced too deeply.

I scowl at the female. Bitch.

Daxeel traces my thoughts, mirrors them.

He eyes the small hole pierced into the side of my thigh, where the sleek black arrow sticks out.

I turn my cheek to it.

“You maimed my evate.” Daxeel growls the words with a warning that ripples tension through the female. “Best to stay as silent as you possibly can, Mika .” He spits her name like it’s a threat.

And it’s one she heeds.

Her glass eyes swerve to the gathering of males by the treeline. Only Rune nods his head in greeting, perhaps an approval that he sneaks around Daxeel’s back, but Dare throws her a look so dark that, if I wasn’t rigid against the pain of my fresh wound, I might have shuddered at the sight of.

Daxeel snares my attention.

He moves for me, boots harsh on the mush.

His mouth twists with a tinge of regret. He turns his gaze to mine, holds my stare for a beat, then looks to the sleek black arrow sticking out from the side of my leg. Just some spots below my hipbone, it protrudes with an elegance that should never bring this much pain.

I know what he means with that look.

He means to rip out the arrow.

A groan rumbles through me as I throw my head back on the stones and look up at the sky, fogged with thick grey clouds.

I fist my hands in the mud and brace myself.

He isn’t kind about it.

He rips out the arrowhead with a sudden, sharp tear that has my back arching off the ground and a hollow, twisted cry warping my face.

His barbed accent is edged with regret, “If you hadn’t run—”

“Oh, fuck your arse!” I shout through gritted teeth.

Rune’s choked laugh is quick to silence.

I don’t need to open my creased, squinted eyes to know Daxeel shot him a glare, dangerous enough to cut down any humour in the moment.

There is no humour. None to be found in the ragged tear through my thigh or the ripping sound of fabric.

I wince, sharp, and throw a glare up at Daxeel.

He advances on me, a freshly torn rag dangling from his hand like a murky ribbon.

“You’re alone?” Rune folds his arms over his chest and falls back to lean on the thin, wispy tree.

Faintly, I’m surprised the wood doesn’t give way under his weight and crack into pieces, he’s so bulky.

As he drops to a crouch at my side, Daxeel throws a look over his shoulder at the female.

Mika shakes her head and gestures with her bow across the stream. “Aled.”

Chins turn, bodies shift, muscles tense—and we all look to the boulder hill, white from sun bleaching, but porous, littered with tiny holes.

There, without the top half of his leathers, stands a dark male with a deep complexion, as rich as the soil beneath me. But where there is warmth to his skin, there is a striking harshness in the stones he has for eyes. No pupils, just grey, and so it really does look as though two stones have been popped into his face.

My attention swerves back to Daxeel as he swipes the rag around my wound. A guttural sound grates through my lungs as the rag goes around and around, and I am suddenly dizzy.

He ties it, firm.

From under my glower, I notice that Rune and Dare share a lingering look; searing glances that burn hotter than my own wound.

The new fae, Aled, jumps into the stream. Behind me, I hear the splash of his boots before the sauntering pace of a wander.

Still crouched at my side, Daxeel shoves his arms under my body, then scoops me into his arms. I almost think he might carry me like this, comfortably, but of course I am delusional, and he’s quick to haul me over his shoulder.

My grunt is instant.

Daxeel pushes into step.

Dare and Samick take the lead.

Rune moves to take point behind us, whether to join Mika and Aled, or to cover Daxeel’s back, I don’t know.

But I stay slung over his shoulder.

I think of that red spaghetti I order in the human realm sometimes. I’m still not entirely sure what the food is, but it’s what I think of as I dangle. A limp strand of spaghetti, red with the crimson blood oozing from my thigh.

For a long while, he hikes without complaint, my weight dragging him down. Longer than I expected.

And longer, still.

Then he flips me over to Rune, who at least carries me like a cradled babe. It gives relief to my dizzied, blood-pooled head, to the bite of pain in my midsection.

I drift off at some point.

When I come to, Rune is setting me down on tufts of grass. With a quick, puffy-eyed glance around, I understand we have taken pause in a clearing. A clearing that, however small, is too close to the Mother Stone.

I can’t see it, but I feel it.

It is ice burrowing into my bones, like each crisp blossom of snowflake forming along my muscle, like icicle-fingers creeping over my shoulders.

I do not belong here,

I do not belong here,

I do not belong here.

I shudder away the wretched sensations haunting me, then scoot backwards to recline against a tree trunk.

I sit alone, silent.

Others move into action.

I watch Samick snatch a waterskin and disappear through the treeline ahead. Aled shadows him.

With a cloth pouch of nuts and dried-meat strips, Rune climbs up a sturdier trunk, I guess for lookout.

Dare starts collecting firewood.

Dropping his satchel to the ground, Daxeel turns his back on Mika, whose murmurs are too soft for me to make out.

Without a word, Daxeel advances on me.

Mika is left silenced.

There’s a distant pang in my chest, stirred by the falter of her expression. Being female in her world, in her career, it can’t be easy. Guess that’s not the first time a fellow warrior has stalked off while she was in the middle of speaking.

Her face hardens, quick, as though nothing happened. And she turns her back on us before she takes to climbing the tree opposite Rune’s.

They sit on watch.

I lift my gaze to Daxeel.

He extends his ungloved hand, palm facing up to the sky, and there on the pad of his finger is a smear of black powder. “I can’t give you more than this.”

Just a sprinkle.

I frown. “Is it enough?”

“Yes. But it will work slower.”

I know why he won’t give me more and heal my wound faster. He can, but he won’t. More black powder might mean a faster heal, and better, but it will knock me out for too long and he doesn’t want to waste the time.

Not when he is this close.

And time is so sparse.

My gaze flitters through the darkness wedged between the trees, as though I will see Mother or the Mother Stone if I look hard enough.

I won’t.

The angle of our location, it’s too far under the curve of a cliffside, and so all I see is rock and ice and snow and mist.

I see no gods.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t close.

The summit is less than a phase’s hike, even with my wound. If the dark ones take turns carrying me, it will still slow us down—as it already has. But the distance is slight.

The dread pools in my gut.

I am running out of ideas.

Schemes are hard to come by in black powder fatigue.

And I fear I have no way out, not anymore.

Defeat is a weighted sensation. It sags the shoulders and slumps the spine. I do just that against the bark of the tree scratching at my back.

I part my lips for Daxeel, for the powder.

He slips his finger into my mouth before he drags the smear of bitter powder over my tongue.

My mouth twists before I tug away from him. “I’m hungry.”

Daxeel looks down at me. “We will cook what we have.”

I don’t meet his gaze. I stare ahead at the firewood that Dare returns with, the pile stacked in his arms.

It will be a while before my belly is filled with fish and berries or whatever else we have to cook among us.

I deflate with a sigh.

Lolling my head back against the sharp bite of the bark, I look up at Daxeel’s steady gaze. “I need to relieve myself.”

His lashes lower.

Sudden suspicion burns in his eyes.

It’s a fight not to roll my own.

I extend my hand and flap it like a dying fish. “You and I both know I am not running very far with this leg. Just help me, or I’ll wet myself.”

His face darkens, shadows shifting from his leathers. “So do.”

I drop my hand to the dirt.

It hits with a thump.

“You want me to die in my own urine?” I scoff and turn my cheek to him, but not before I catch a glimpse of his frown forming. “You won’t even grant me the dignity of an honourable death. Of all the regrets I have…” I shake my head, not at him, but at myself, the disappointment that floods me. I throw my gaze back up at him. “It’s that I did not listen to my father when he warned me about your kind.”

Daxeel’s jaw rolls, as though he chews on daggers he means to aim at me. A snarl claws through his chest as he swipes down for me. He snatches me by the arm, then yanks me up onto my feet.

The stab of searing hot pain is quick to bolt through me. I grunt on a choked cry.

I hobble a mere step before the ground is swiped out from under me, and I’m draped over his shoulder again.

Daxeel carries me out of the clearing and deeper into the wispy woods. We are some distance away from the small camp when he ducks under the drape of a lilac tree, then lowers me to my feet.

He draws back with a step and a throwaway gesture to the foliage. “Go.”

My wide eyes cut between him and the ground.

“I can’t go if you are watching,” I hiss at him, cheeks aflame.

He folds his arms over his chest and cocks an eyebrow. “Then you must not really need to relieve yourself. Another ploy? They are becoming weaker, Nari.”

“It’s not a ploy,” I sigh. I reach for the buttons of my leather trousers, fastened along my hipbone. “Can you turn around, at least?”

He is unmoving, entirely unflinching. “No.”

For a beat, we are locked. Gazes hooked.

I suck my lips inwards, then drag my teeth over them with a sharp bite, a bite I itch to chomp right into his small dancing smile.

Ugh, to the gods with it.

I must relieve myself. Better here than at the summit.

At least hidden behind the shield of curtained leaves, I might be hidden from the eyes of Comlar. I cannot know that for certain, but I do hope. I hope they cannot see me as I unfasten my trousers and boldly squat under Daxeel’s gaze.

A groan tangles in my chest. It thrums like an ache, a brewing cough, under the siege of my thigh.

I loosen a steadying breath—and let the relief come.

Daxeel does not stray his gaze from mine.

But where my cheeks are crimson, his are beige, smooth and sanded. He does not mirror my shame in this.

Easy for him to not be ashamed, though.

He isn’t the one squatted, tilted to the side to relieve the weight from her bad leg, and peeing in front of the male she loved.

It is a long moment.

Too long.

And by the time I am finished, my whole face is crimson.

I fasten the buttons, then, with a withering look at him, extend my hand. “Waterskin,” is all I say.

He unhooks the string from his shoulder and passes it to me. Still, his unwavering stare traces my every move, watches as I gulp down the springwater, then rinse off my hands, then splash more onto my face to wash away as much of the grime as I can.

Daxeel draws closer.

His hand reaches out, and I think at first he means to take the waterskin from me, then lead me back to camp, but his reach passes the leather bottle in my hand, and moves for my cheek.

His fingertips graze the blush of my prickling flesh. “There you are.”

I look up at him.

His voice is as soft as the breeze that rustles through the leaves, “I yearn for the moment I no longer revere the mere sight of you.”

The waterskin crumples in my grip. My fingers tighten around the leather, creaking in my fists.

Another step brings him closer. His hand travels around to my nape, and there his fingers are quick to tangle in my braided hair.

“Even now, in your filthy state, unwashed,” he says, a frown furrowed at his brow, “I would get on my knees for you.”

My wide eyes cut aside. “Well that is disgusting and I would not allow it. Please never speak of it again.”

A small smile curves his lovely mouth.

“I was close to forgiving you,” he murmurs.

And my heart flips in my chest.

A flicker of anxiety passes through my uneasy gut.

I am mute. Simply looking up at him, I wait.

“Many moments came to pass,” he says, and brings his face to mine, “And I almost confessed my schemes to you. I almost let myself—”

“Life is full of almosts.” I lift my chin. “And they are as empty as human promises.”

“You do not wonder?” He nudges my nose with his own. “What it would have been if we followed our almosts?”

The ghosting of his soft lips brushes along my cheekbone.

“What if…” My words fail, whispers taken away on the wind.

He stills against me, a breath pinned to his chest.

His mouth moves softly against my cheekbone. “What if?”

I turn my chin aside.

I steal away his taste of me.

“What if the gods do kick us off the mountain before we reach the Mother Stone? What if you fail—and I live?”

Will you let me live?

That is the true question behind my words.

I draw back, a side-step around the edge of the tree, and fall under the weight of his gaze. It lands on me like lead.

“What will happen to me?” I ask in a whisper.

“If you survive…” He pauses to swallow, hard, then a tension grips his jaw. “If you survive, Nari, I’ll let you go.”

I stare at him.

His words don’t hurt me. They do not flood me with hope. We have danced this dance too many times before.

It has lost its power over me.

“I never intended on keeping you,” he says. “Not since that night. I have made that clear. I never lied to you about that.”

For a long moment, I consider him.

Is it numbness that has crept into me, stolen me whole, and filled in the gaps and cracks around all these fragmented bits? I decide that it is peace.

I am at peace with our parting.

So I nod. “Then I will go.”

His lashes flutter, only slightly.

“I will go,” I echo, stronger. “I will survive this, and I will leave. I will leave you… and Taroh… and my father and my sister. All of you.”

Daxeel tilts his head to the side and studies me. “You have declared this before,” he says, soft. No mockery, no accusation, but mere observation.

“Not with the understanding I have now.” I take a step closer to him and raise my chin. “I do not think I lied when I said I do not love you anymore. I wonder, Daxeel, if that is the truth.”

A stricken look passes his face. But in a blink, it’s gone, and I’m staring at a male as unfeeling as any boulder.

“All this time of knowing you, I believed as deeply as my soul that I loved you.” I smile, bitter. “But it was only ever my soul that wanted you. My heart, my mind—they are not so convinced. I can be without you all. I hoped before coming to this mountain—but now I know . I can do what I doubted I was capable of. I can survive on my own.”

The look I give him is one made of steel.

His mouth flattens.

“I have skills and talents and determination. I don’t need you, any of you. The best part is… I don’t want you. You touch me and I feel an echo of what I once did. You speak your lovely almosts to me, and I hear them for the silliness that they are. Empty—like you.”

His lashes shut on a defeated dimness to his eyes.

Standing before me now, he can’t hide the pain in his face, or the anguish that calls to me through the bond. But that is only evate, and not his true love, not his true feelings for me.

So I ignore his pain, just as he has perfectly crafted then ignored mine.

A shadow carves into his dimpled cheek as he turns his chin aside. “It will be different to not have you crawling after me each phase, to not have you begging for a taste of me. It might be something of a reprieve.”

I scoff on his blatant lie. A lie he tells as though I don’t feel him crumbling in my own heartspace.

A dark smile dances on my mouth, bitter and disgusting. “For a taste of me, I will see you on your knees.”

“If you survive,” he adds darkly and slides his cobalt gaze back to me.

“Yes. If I survive, Daxeel… I will make sure you suffer as you have made me suffer. But not with intent. I will not live my life to hurt you or seek revenge. I will go on as though you do not exist, because once our bond is broken, I will also be free of you.”

His jaw is clenched too tight, his teeth might shatter.

“This bond is the lie between us,” I say. “You and I, under all this fate and gods business, we do not love each other.”

He flinches as though I struck him.

I push into step and throw aside the leafy curtain. My legs are unsteady under me, my thigh—already knitting together—screams with each step. I grit my teeth against the sharp pain.

I make it out from under the drapes before Daxeel has caught up and moved to tower over me.

I slew my narrowed gaze up at him, a curl tugging at my upper lip. But he wipes the snarl from my face in a second.

There’s sincerity in the way he watches me, like he knows as well as I do—this moment, this phase, is our last chance to ask what burns us.

And so he does.

“Why didn’t you ask me for help that night at the court?” His throat bobs. “You could have asked me then, in the midst of that celebration, to save you—and I would have done. I would have stolen you away on a steed and taken you home with me.”

“You never made offers, Daxeel. You never told me that we were more than a fling, a first love—you didn’t tell me anything that mattered, that I am your evate, that you wanted to be with me, or that you would save me from my wretched little life.” I shrug with the same dullness that dims my eyes. “You gave me almosts . You kept me in the dark, and so I made my own way through it.”

He looks away.

Shadows unfurl at the wrists of his leathers, coiling around his ink stains, lashing at his fingertips, as though seeking to comfort him.

Cheek facing me, he asks, blunt, “What happened when your father took you from me that night?”

“The night under the willow?” I ask.

In answer, he nods and turns his darkening expression to face me.

I heave a sigh. “I was punished.”

There’s a touch of concern in the frown that pinches his brows. He is quiet for a beat before, “How?”

“You think I merely received a lecture,” I say with a lousy smile, so tired of it all, “that I am a darling and spoiled, that I faced a mere speech.” I throw my hands up. “So what does it matter? I know how you see me.”

A desperate glint sharpens his gaze and he hisses his words with a fresh urgency, “What happened, Nari?”

“Father beat me.”

My blunt answer strikes him, like a blow to the face.

He flinches, his lashes fluttering, and falls his weight back onto one boot.

Cerulean eyes drop—and sear into my chest, as though looking right through my ribcage to my heart space. He reads me, searches for any hint of a lie, for a falter in my heartbeat, a flurry in its pace.

He won’t find it.

“Father smacked me so many times I lost count,” I tell him. “He never hit me before that night. But that night he did. He dragged me by the hair, he threw me into the metal tub, hit me some more, then had the servants scrub me until I bled and screamed, and he destroyed all the treasures you gave me, and…” I swallow down a sudden thickness in my throat. “And he meant to send me to the Grott.”

Daxeel looks somewhere between feral and ill.

A sickly pallor has washed out his honeyed complexion, and he cannot find it in himself to meet my unfaltering gaze. He looks over my shoulder, at the lilac curtain of leaves we disturbed, not at me.

His voice darkens into the pits of the gods, a wrath that ices my spine. “He would send you to the Grott?”

“If I could convince him, you, and the High Court that my rejection of you was sincere—then I would be spared the Grott.”

His lashes lower over ocean eyes. His cheek faces me, the tension in it, muscles bolted to bones.

“I lied to you at the High Court,” I say. “I lied when I said that I ignored your stones on my window. I did not ignore them—because I was not in my room.” If now is not the time to give the full truth to one another, then it will be never, because soon there will be no time at all. “I did not know you came,” I confess to him—and probably to all of Comlar. “I was in the basement, with boneworms that Father had the servants force into me.”

“How long?”

“All two days and two nights before the court. I was only released and purged from the boneworms the night of.”

He drops his head.

And he stays that way for a long moment.

Distantly, I hear the roaring crackle of a fire.

Dare will have it searing hot and ready to cook whatever fish Samick was able to catch. And with his icy—and peculiar—methods, we should have enough.

That is what I would rather be doing now.

Eating, filling my stomach, fuelling myself for the summit, then perhaps resting off some of the black powder before we keep going.

I know I will need all the strength I can get.

Because I will be fighting against Daxeel.

And I will be fighting to survive.

No matter what that costs.

Daxeel runs his hand through his thick, tousled hair. There is a distant regret in his eyes. “I should have offered you more security. I was so careful not to scare you that I avoided telling you what you needed to know. The night your father found us, I was going to confess to you about us—the evate. I meant to propose to you. The treasures were your gifts.” He drops his hand to his side and turns his sorrowed gaze to me. “I intended to give you what you wanted. Animals and gardens and a rich library; love and family and friends. Everything and anything you desired. I even offered Eamon a place with us in Kithe… for you.”

“But Daxeel.” I shake my head, slightly. “I did not know any of that.”

His mouth thins for a beat before he nods. “I decided when you needed to know what I knew. I decided what you needed to know. I was wrong for that. Perhaps… I played a bigger part in our demise than I ever cared to acknowledge.”

The closest to an apology one can get from a dark male.

And it is not enough.

I limp a step back. The pain is muted by the powder, knitting through my flesh and muscle, but it does smart.

The hiss of pain sheathes my tired, weary voice, “This doesn’t change my decision, Daxeel. You will let me go if I survive this… You will release me.”

He turns his ocean eyes to me. Unlike any other time I have looked into them, there is a true ocean mist—a dusting of tears gathered.

The sight thickens my throat instantly.

It’s the bond, it’s just the bond, that’s all it is.

I step back, another hobbled limp. “Our story ends with the Sacrament.”

His jaw clenches.

Another limp. “And our love was buried so long ago. It’s time I released my grief. It’s time I moved on with my life.”

His hands flex at his sides.

I turn my back on him and head towards the crackle of the campfire.

His words follow me before he does, “We will camp under the shade for the daylight. Then we climb.”

A moment, a spark from a flint. We return to our existence as enemies on this mountain.

I don’t so much as look back at him.

I leave him behind, as I should have done so long ago.