Page 38 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

Thump,

thump,

thump.

Bootfalls are pounding down the dirt slope to the battle blocks. Rushed, frantic steps thump on the hard, packed earth towards me and the bodies that are scattered around.

I blinked on the realisation of my defeat, of Dorcha’s victory—and in that moment, all chaos broke loose.

Those raining bootfalls are piling past me, some steps slamming much too close to my aching body.

A wince cuts through me as I peel myself from the ground. I must move before I am trampled.

The pain of standing is instant, it’s a sharp and shredding spear right through me. The hum of my spine is more of a scream that wobbles my weight; and there’s a fresh streak of blood falling down the side of my face that I only now feel sweltering at my temple.

I stumble a step, then my legs give out.

I fall down.

My ass hits the ground, hard enough to jolt me. I drop my head into my hands and wait for the pulsating dizziness to stop spinning me.

That nausea returns, stirring and stirring and stirring.

Then it strikes and, twisting over myself, a force of sick spills out of me. I watch it splash on the grass, nothing but regurgitated water—then it settles on the thick, lush blades of nature herself.

I slump with a wispy moan snaking out of me, silenced by the rush of fae parting around me, a river around a rock.

The flesh of my palm glistens with blood, my blood , seeping out from a wound just above my temple, a gash I didn’t know I had until I tried to stand.

I push a breath out of me, and my lips shiver around it.

Slowly, I shift onto my front, on all fours.

My hands press into the earth, the dirt beneath the lush grass, a green as dark as the deepest shade of moss, and I have the urge to bury my face in it and kiss it and tell it I love it and that I only ever want grass around me from now on, and that if I see snow or ice again I will destroy it all.

But I have no energy for that. I have no energy to even smile at the grass so lush beneath me, not when I must force all scraps of strength into moving.

Can’t stay here on the cusp of the hill.

I need to get up, I need to get to the courtyard where the stands are thinning and the fae are crawling all over the bodies, the corpses, the survivors, desperate to find the ones they love, and the rest of them are gawking up at the Cursed Shadows, still swirling above, still thickening the air, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh , an awful pulsation that dizzies me more.

Nausea has its grip on me, still.

My eyes burn with tears as I push all my strength into my wobbling, trembling legs and I rise up, unsteady.

My knees buckle under my weight.

I stagger for balance, one hand spread out, the other pressed to my pulsing, gashed head.

I blink away the tears. I am not ashamed of them.

I still have breath in my lungs.

I am alive.

Alive …

Yet, no relief hits me.

No tears of joy flood my eyes or wobble my bottom lip. My tears are for the pain shredding through me, the booming of the black thunder above, growing louder and louder, thicker and darker—

I swallow back a groan and, eyes hooded, I push into step. I make for the courtyard.

A frown digs into my sleepy brow.

Now that I am moving for it, I notice that walls are gone.

Once, there stood stone walls curved around the courtyard, some ruined into rubble, but strong enough that I sometimes walked them.

Now, I see nothing but debris—and bodies buried in it.

Dead fae, thrown from the portal, dozens, maybe a hundred, and the impact of the corpses hitting the walls has crumbled them.

A shoulder knocks into me.

It hits the thought of the walls and the bodies out of mind. A dark female, an elder by the way she moves, slower and with a slight gait, rushes past me. Panic wets her eyes.

She only glances at me before she’s gone staggering down to the battle blocks, I suspect to check the bodies downhill.

I turn my back on her and limp over the grass.

Bootsteps are thundering closer to me.

From the courtyard, three silhouettes are gaining on me.

The fright of the mountain has stuck to my bones, because I tense—and my free hand reaches for my weapons belt.

It is empty.

No cool kiss of a blade to graze my palm.

Not that I need one.

I am not on the mountain anymore.

And these fae aren’t my enemies on the summit.

Three fae run past me, a dark one and two of light. Not in leathers, but in tunics and blouses and breeches.

Spectators.

They only spare me fleeting glances, as if to confirm that I am alive, that they need not check my face for familiarity, and then they’re gone.

I look over my shoulder as they run downhill, then splinter off.

Swaying on the spot, hand still pressed to my gashed head, I stand a while and watch them scramble from limp body to limp body, and then the dokkalf chases the hollow sound of moans further into the darkness.

I can’t see that far.

Whether it is because torches are not lit, or that the Cursed Shadows are already spilling too much blackness into the dark, and so it’s stealing my sight, or it’s that my headwound has distorted me too much, I don’t know.

I just know that my eyes are squinting, as if to see better, as I turn my back on the moans, and I hobble to the rubble that was once a lovely, solid courtyard.

Each step burns up the back of my legs, all the way to my bottom that I’m certain is made from steel now.

I bite down against the stiff pain flaming inside of me and clammer, wavering and wincing, over the crumbled stone.

My leg catches on the jagged edge of a rock.

I tumble over the edge.

Before I can hit the rubbled ground, impale myself on jagged and torn rocks, a pair of hands snatch out at me.

I suck in a sharp breath, a wince—then suddenly feel light as a feather, a pixie in the wind, as the strong hands lift me up.

I blink through the thickening darkness.

A familiar face mirrors me. Eyes like spilled ink, blots of darkness painted onto such porcelain skin, and hair crafted from tendrils of shadows.

General Caspan.

Hands clutched under my arms, he has me held up at eye-level with him—then a faint smile tugs the corner of his mouth and he sets me down.

Not a happy smile. Not joyous or friendly.

I read it for what it is.

Not quite a gesture of respect, but rather one of surprise.

But this guy fucking terrifies me, so I utter a rushed breath, something I hope he takes for a ‘thank you’ , which of course I would never say, and hobble off.

Limping—not from wounds burrowed into my legs, but rather the worsening dizziness of this pulsing head-gash—I stagger my way through the throngs of gathered folk who have spilled out of the stands and now swarm the courtyard.

There should be chatter. Whispers and chants and murmurs, even screams.

There should be buzz, whether weaved from fear or victory, I do not know, I do not care.

This silence is too uneasy, and it’s churning my gut.

It grows thicker the deeper into the courtyard I push my way through. Distantly, moans and flattened murmurs of the wounded are heard, but only barely, mere faint whispers drowning under the thunderous current of the darkness.

Folk crammed into the courtyard like an army stuffed into a bottle. They stand around… in shock.

I read it on their slack faces, on twisted mouths, in glittering eyes, in clenched fists. If the spectators didn’t watch it all unfold on the tarry pool, then they would know from the Cursed Shadows in the skies above whooshing around and around, skittering then receding, like a dog circles before it finds that right spot to settle into: Dorcha has won.

Darkness is victorious.

I lost.

He won.

The whole of the human world, and maybe more, will pay for me breaking a dark fae’s heart. I wonder if they know that. These spectators, watching, horror slacking their faces. I wonder if they know that they are collateral in the world’s worst breakup.

Something is lodged in my throat. Guilt. It sits there, like a ball that is stuck, on the verge of choking me, and yet it doesn’t.

I swallow it back as best as I can and squeeze by the stiff, motionless fae.

My steps are quiet in the suffocation of the silence. But my gaze is alert as I throw it around the courtyard, looking from face to face.

I don’t quite know which face I want to see, if I’m searching for anyone in particular, but I know that the moment golden brown eyes, flooded with panic and tears, flicker back at me, as though doing a double take, a breath of relief escapes me.

Honey.

Tree bark.

Gold.

Warmth and cinnamon and butter.

His name is a whisper from my lips, “ Eamon …”

In a fluttering heartbeat, I propel myself forward.

I charge through the throngs of spectators and iilra and battered contenders towards my brother of the soul. My one true beloved. My one true family.

Eamon shoulders through the other side, the gleam of his gaze fixed on me, as though to look away would mean to lose me entirely.

But a violent tide of movement swells as a gasp ripples over the crowd, and not a blink later, the sea of bodies pushes against us.

I falter.

Eamon hesitates.

Distance between us, eyes widening with shared fear—

The sudden thunder bellows from above and the portal twists with screams. The stone ground shudders beneath my boots. The stands rattle, violent, too violent.

A ripple of tension washes over the courtyard, murmurs hushed, whistled gasps of fright.

Heads snap to the side all over, until every pair of eyes has landed on the circle of black-hooded iilra. Huddled around the tarry black mirror, the portal itself, their hands are raised, bony and white and dark and sickly…

Bile crawls up my throat.

I swallow down the burn in an audible gulp.

Whispered murmurs circle the iilra, whirl around them in a thrum of chants I don’t understand. Their hands lift higher and higher, as if reaching to the skies, to the Cursed Shadows, but it’s what they surround that has me stumbling back a step.

It is what they circle that drains the colour from my face.

Daxeel kneels in the tarry residue of the portal.

His fists are pressed into the stone ground, his head is bowed, black blood spills out from nose, his mouth, his ears, his head… but his eyes are open.

They are blazing blue oceans.

He is very much alive.

His mouth twists as ribbons of darkness are peeled from him, like flesh. Layers of dark peeling back and back from his shoulders, his arms, his spine. Whatever it is the chanting iilra are doing, it’s hurting him.

He grimaces against it, his hands fist deeper into the stone that cracks under him.

The violent rumbles of the stands look ready to collapse, and the shuddering quake of the ground, it urges me to abandon this wretched ceremony, it tells me run, don’t watch .

I turn my back on Daxeel and the Cursed Shadows and the iilra. And I rush through the crowd towards Eamon.

I don’t get more than few steps before a cloud of debris blasts through the courtyard and throws me clean off my feet.

My body whacks into hard muscle.

Fae tumble. Screams lift from the courtyard and the crumbling stands. The cry of a child scrapes down me like talons over my flesh.

I land in a heap of limbs and chokes, tangled with a half-dozen fae.

Darkness blasts through the air like a cold, frozen storm and swipes away every scrap of the Warmth. It blasts through the stands and tears them apart as though they are nothing more than sticks and twigs.

I am fast buried beneath the fragments and bodies and solid limbs that crush down on my windpipe.

And I can’t move.

So this is it.

The darkness has won, Daxeel has won.

The Cursed Shadows pummel through the worlds, to this one where they do not belong, and they flood the skies, too much, too fast.

All under the control of the iilra.

The darkness will consume the human realm.

I would pray for them… if I had it in me.

I don’t.

I pray for myself.

Pushing out of the tangled limbs, I know I am losing consciousness. So much blood falls down my face that I wonder how many seconds I have before I die, will I die from the loss of blood, or the leg crushing my windpipe?

Will Daxeel even care?

Can’t see him, not from this angle. Can’t turn my chin or arch my neck. It’s like a stone wall has pinned me down.

I am stuck, and it’s all I can do to just watch all the standing, surviving fae turning their backs on the iilra—and breaking out into a violent run for Kithe.

Comlar is being torn apart like claws assault the stone itself, and the stronghold is falling, the tower is crumbling, the iilra strip away the last scraps of darkness from Daxeel…

I only pray for myself.

I send out that one, final hope to the gods.

Save me.

Please…