Page 33 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

The quiet of the climb unnerves me.

The summit is so close now, the Mother Stone just over the rocky overhang that looms above us, as slanted and treacherous as a cliff. The sight of it gives me the bitter, amused thought of a gravestone emerging in the distance, peeking through the thin wisps of cloud and mist.

And we, the arrogant fools that all fae are, climb closer.

Any mind that is sane should look upon the peak of the Mother Stone—the charred onyx and marble oval, the blend of light and dark with a bolt of grey running down its centre—and run in the other direction.

But we lift our gazes to it, and we place our hands on the jagged surface of the cliff, and we climb.

Towards it.

Closer .

And so there must not be a sane mind among us.

Part of me, clung onto the narrow face of the cliff, my body tilted forward at the slightest incline, doubts the decisions I have determined within me.

Part of me, however small and fleeting, wonders if I should push my weight against the rock—and propel myself backwards.

I wonder if I should fall.

There will be no saving me.

Not here, not on this cliff with all of us gripped to the rock, not a spare hand between us. No rope can be lassoed fast enough to catch me, no hand outstretched for my wrist, no shadow to unfurl that urgently.

Dare, Rune, Samick, Daxeel…

They will have nothing to do but watch me fall.

And if the dark means to threaten the light, if Dorcha even considers one day using the Cursed Shadows to invade and conquer Licht, I should fall.

I have been selfish in my mind and in my acts.

The realisation of it, it chills me, a glacier sensation that trickles down my insides.

If there was ever a moment to be selfless…

And still, I do not fall.

My thigh burns with the echoes of the arrow that punctured into my flesh. A wound that has knitted and blended and melted into something hot and itchy. The more weight I put on it, the more my face twists, the deeper my grimace.

But it holds.

I climb, unwavering.

Determined.

Like the silence that grasps us all.

No one speaks in the climb. Grunts, harsh breaths, the occasional slip of a boot over a rock, but no one speaks in the tension sheathing us.

If we are to speak, what would any of us say?

Maybe that is the true reason for our silence.

No one quite knows the words for moments like this.

The only small talk I can think of right now is that I wish I still had my gloves, that the rock is too cold and too dewy for my bare hands, and that I’m down to just three nails on my fingers.

But I say nothing.

We climb, slow, steady.

At this rate, it will take less than an hour to reach the overhang. Less than an hour to clear the cliff, for my boots to flatten on firm, hard ground—but that is the moment I suspect it will flip.

Litalf strategy will be an obvious, but effective move.

An ambush.

I know it. I sense it.

We all do.

The anxieties trickle down my pebbled skin.

My breaths are unsteady wisps of mist at my parted lips.

That sensation of being watched— hunted —is all over me, a million invisible spiders skittering over my flesh. And while my teeth are bared against the horrid shudder that jolts me, my alertness has taken a hit.

The dash of black powder in my body keeps my lashes low over my eyes, my hands moving slow as I reach for the next rock, then the next, and the next. This drowsiness, this fatigue pulling on my muscles, is a hindrance I cannot afford. Not now. Not at the end.

I fight through it. Each hiked step I take up this dreadful climb to the Mother Stone is stronger than the last, because it has to be.

I don’t feel strong. I feel as weak as a mouse staring down the jaws of a faerie hound… Yet that mouse has the power to feed the beast, and save all the other mice, give them a chance to evade the beast.

A gasp cuts me.

It’s not the thoughts of my fate, my self-doubt or questioning that shudders me with a rippling breath.

My hand slips on the rock.

Before I can fall, before I can cry out or lean away from the face of the cliff, a hand snatches for my wrist—and clutches on, tight.

I throw a flurried look to Mika.

Just a reach above me, she crouches on a small ledge and leans aside to hold onto me.

Her icy hair falls free of its ribbon and into pale, sharp features. The chill of her ice-blocks-for-eyes is locked onto me.

I nod, a little shake of gratitude, an unspoken thanks.

Then I reach for the slippery rock again.

The snow caught on the cliffside is melting. Before we got here, someone must have already climbed, grabbed onto this very rock, or stepped on it, and the peppered snow has melted into something light and dewy.

I firm my grip on it once, twice, before I decide I can trust it now, and I lift my weight up onto the next.

Mika stays with me.

She stays leaning, twisting around, and watches me until I am safely past the slippery rock.

Then, once we are at eye-level, she inclines her head—a silent order to continue above her.

I do.

That leaves her, Daxeel and Aled behind me.

I follow the others, sticking too close to Samick’s boots as we scale the overhang. I make it to the edge when Rune—first over the ledge, first onto firm ground—reaches for me.

His ungloved hand extends for mine, fingers as raw as my own, palm as swollen as mine.

I slap my hand to his forearm. I grip, tight, hugging the solid muscle of his arm to me, and he lifts me up with a strained grunt. He yanks me over the edge—

I go tumbling before I land facedown in the snow. A lump of it shoves into my mouth, as frosty and cold as my insides.

An instant cough jolts me as I lift my face out of the snow.

I roll onto my back and swat at my face, the clumps of frozen flakes in my eyebrows, the little lumps that found their way up my nostrils—

I don’t get a moment to wipe my face clear of the snow before a pair of boots land, hard, beside my head. The toes of the boots drag over the wispy strands of my hair, too close.

I jerk back from the intruder, a scowl aimed up at him.

Daxeel looks down on me, a curious tilt to his arched eyebrow. He runs me over with his gaze for a heartbeat, then jerks his chin. Get up .

With a huff, I turn my cheek to him, my skin rashy and pebbled from the sheer chill so close to the summit. The air, I notice, is thinner up here.

Boots slam into the snow, crunching the frozen earth.

I push up onto my feet and, with all of us at the top of the overhang, gathered on the edge of the summit, I look ahead, across the misty clearing of snow, past the treelines that border us, all the way to the base of the Mother Stone.

My eyes widen at the sight of the mountain’s peak, torn apart, as though monstrous, godly hands reached into the earth itself, then shredded it open like it was nothing more than a loaf of bread.

From that torn abyss in the mountain, an ellipse of grooved obsidian and sleek marble protrudes, then stretches too far up before it vanishes into the thick clouds whirling and whisking around it.

There is a distance between us, gathered here at the overhang, and the Mother Stone. A spanning glade of snow and mist. Yet, through that distance, I can make out those coarse grooves that rake down the polished stone, like a beast’s talons have scraped and clawed at the stone itself.

My throat swells at the sight of it.

I’m too consumed by the looming presence of the Mother Stone that the mere thought of the dangers lurking in those trees yonder is a fleeting fear, too frail to take root.

A hushed whisper gathers behind me, “What is that?”

I cut a glance over my shoulder.

Mika pushes through the snow. Her gaze, as wide as mine, is fixed on the Mother Stone. “That sound—is…” She pauses to swallow, thick, and her throat bobs. “Is it coming from that ?”

My frown settles on her for a beat, then I sweep it around the faces of the other dark fae, each one more severe than the last.

Samick and Rune hold a steady, uneasy look between them—but Dare, like me keeps a frown to his face, one that tilts his mouth down at the corner.

“It’s humming,” Daxeel’s growl is anything but pleased. Not even a hint of curiosity as he fixes his steady stare ahead at the Mother Stone.

“No.” Samick wrenches his ice glare from Rune. He turns it to the Mother Stone ahead, and as he does, his head tilts downwards, almost into a bow. “Whispering.”

My nose wrinkles. Snowflakes caught on my skin fall away, melt into my pores. “What? Who whispers?”

Dare shrugs a shoulder.

Rune keeps his gaze downcast, as though to look directly at the Mother Stone is to stare into the pits of abyss, of hell itself—the chamber of the gods, where no soul should ever go.

Rune’s voice is soft, almost… afraid , “Mother whispers.”

Dare makes a face. “That is the creepiest thing I have ever heard.”

My voice is small, “We can’t hear it.”

Gilded eyes cut to me.

“She doesn’t whisper to us,” I say.

Daxeel lifts his chin. “Mother does not whisper to the light.” There’s a hint of victory in his posture, a premature ghost of a smile dancing over his pinkish lips.

He does not look at me.

If he did, he would see sorrow in my fallen face. Defeat in the sag of my shoulders. He would see that I drop my gaze to the snow, that a frown forms in the middle of my brow, and then, finally, that my jaw hardens before my mouth moves around words so quiet they are inaudible to anyone but Mother: “ You will hear me .”

Her answer is instant—an echo of a throaty otherworldly sound I wish I never heard, wish I never felt clawing at my bones.

‘ Ssssssssssssssssssssssss .’

The hiss whirls around me.

I stagger around, eyes wild, as though I might find the whispers, those awful layers of sound stacked on top of each other, and yet hardly a sound at all.

‘Scha-scha-scha-scha.’

Breath pinned to my chest, my hands are quick to fist at my sides, as though I can somehow steel myself against the skittering sensation nicking and clawing at me, inside and outside of my body, no escape.

‘Narsssissaaaa….’

I think I might be sick.

Dare watches me closely, his gilded eyes gleaming like pools of molten gold in snow. “You hear it, don’t you?”

Daxeel’s jaw flexes. The side-look he spares me is a flare in the mist.

My answer is a faint nod, a sickly one.

Daxeel’s upper lip curls before he growls out, “Let’s move.”

That godly sound, a language not meant for the ears—or the bones—of mortal flesh, it snakes and skitters all around me. And it follows as I push into step.

I keep close to Dare. Practically on the heels of his boots with each cautious step I take.

Caution is not in short supply.

It’s an abundant, sudden shift among the fae of our group. Steps are slow, gazes are thrown around, cautious, and breaths are bated. Even Daxeel keeps a slow, methodical pace through the snow—and his gaze is sharp, cutting and swerving around the mist.

The unease follows us further past the treelines on either side of the clearing, a border of trees that shouldn’t grow this far up the mountain, any mountain at all. But this isn’t just any mountain.

Each one of us, I’m sure, has felt it. The strong sense of not belonging, of invading a place so natural that it is unnatural to us. This place does not abide by our laws of nature, it does not conform to our understanding of the worlds, the realms, the lands.

But now…

Now, that sense of not belonging, of intruding, it’s a shout through our bones, a hum; it’s instinct creeping along our muscles, as though to force us to turn and run.

I am certain, so certain that I would bet my fangs on it, that each one of us wants nothing more than to turn and bolt in the other direction… not one of us so much as pauses.

Not even when, in the twin treelines that border us, the fog starts to clear—and shadows creep out from it.

Wispy, frozen trees that frame us, left and right, and no matter which way I turn my head, muscular silhouettes emerge. They stretch, taller and darker, a light grey that fast blots into shapes of spilled ink… like leathers.

Dark fae.

Dokkalf warriors that have waited at the summit for this.

For us.

For the end.

I loosen a shuddered breath and draw closer to Dare’s back.

He touches his chin to his shoulder, his lashes low over gilded eyes. But they are no longer pots of molten gold. They have hardened into gilded steel.

He pushes ahead, and I keep tucked behind him, Daxeel close to my heels.

Yet I feel nothing close to soothed by their presence.

Peppered all over, the dark ones are creeping out from the shadows. Silence envelopes them. Their steps are slow and purposeful, their gazes flinging between me and Daxeel, then to the Mother Stone ahead.

These dark ones made it closer to the summit before we did. And they have been lurking here since, waiting for us to arrive.

We walk the clearing, drawing closer the Mother Stone—and the closer we do get, the better I see the greyish centre, the jagged line scraped down its middle.

It bleeds.

Pulsations, like heartbeats, thump through the pores of the grey streaks, and from them, secretions of blue and red and black and white, all ooze down to the torn flesh of the mountain.

Nausea burns my throat.

My skin prickles, my shoulders tense. A hiss bubbles up my chest, a bile-laced burp that I cannot force back down.

I shrink into myself.

Shoulders curve and my arms wrap around my middle.

“What will happen?” My question is wrapped in a whisper, one that stills around us, not carried away on the winds, because up here, there are no winds. Only absolute, utter stagnancy.

An unnatural sensation.

And it isn’t softened at all by the fifty-or-so sets of bootsteps crunching into the snow, the steady breaths of the dark fae all around me. The unnatural stillness, the eerie silence of the summit, it cannot be masked. It only feels as though we are intruding on it.

Daxeel is a mere step behind me. “What do you ask?”

My wide gaze is glued to the mist gathered around the Mother Stone, concealing the tip from our view.

“If you are victorious…” I start with a shaky whisper, one that I am sure should carry through the clearing as it would an empty chamber, too cold, too still, too quiet, and yet the sound doesn’t travel very far at all. “What will happen to the darkness?”

If the warriors around me, an army marching into the unknown, hear what I ask, none answer.

None but Daxeel.

“Darkness will be restored to the descendants of the Sgail line. The iilra will remove the power from the bloodline—and expand.”

“ Expand ,” I echo the word with a whooshing breath. It frosts the air in front of me. Clouds my face for a heartbeat.

Into the human realm, the darkness will venture. It will swell and suffocate and destroy.

I know this, but the question that swirls in my mind starts to slip onto my tongue, “And to my land?”

Daxeel tosses a look my way, and it is a hot burn of blue flame that sears my cheek.

Out the corner of my eye, I catch the tension in his jaw, the darkening of his dimples with deep shadows. I see the shudder of shadows rippling over him, tendrils of darkness peeling from his shoulders, his arms, and slithering out as though to reach the distance ahead, to return to its true home—Mother.

Daxeel does not answer.

“What’s to stop the iilra from invading Licht?” I breathe the wretched, ugly question that thickens my insides. “What is to stop the iilra from taking Licht until there’s nothing but darkness beneath our sun?”

I throw a look over at him.

Daxeel has his gaze fixed ahead. Those dimples darken with his eyes. He doesn’t look at me.

And so there it is.

The answer I expected but dreaded.

The confirmation I needed…

I have been so certain of my plan since I arrived here. To survive. And if I made it to Mother’s Ear, if I was forced here as I am, then I would make a wish and a sacrifice to Mother, in exchange for my life.

Now, my heart finds a shift.

A cold, solid understanding hardens my face. My mouth puckers with the sudden waver of a brewing sob. But the sob does not take hold.

I force it down.

I let shuddering breaths pass through me once, twice, before I shoulder into him.

Daxeel throws a glare at me, one threaded from warning and threats. His eyes smoulder from kohl lines, but he keeps a silence as I push past him and march ahead.

Dare says nothing as I reach his side.

And I match his pace.

But I match it for only three hiked steps through the thick snow before a sharp stillness sweeps the clearing.

Ahead, the dark ones stop.

Dead in their tracks, statues that become one with the frost. And that stillness ripples through the crowd, all the way back to us, and freezes us all.

Dare’s golden eyes gleam sharp as though he’s aware of everything in all directions. Slowly, he reaches out his arm, then flicks his wrist. That one, practiced gesture has a razored whip uncoiling from his forearm. It unfurls in a heap that thumps the thickly dusted snow—and his hand flexes, firm, on the leather grip.

His murmur is gentle, “ Litalves .”

I fling my stare to the Mother Stone ahead.

But before I can focus my stare on anything, a gust of smoke blasts through the frost—and I’m thrown off my feet.