Page 9 of Cursed Shadows 4 (The Dark Fae)

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I am going to drown. I am going to die.

If the river doesn’t kill me, the litalf swimming after me will.

I have no strength to battle him, the waters, or my fate. The fight is unribboning from my body muscle by muscle, and my bones are weakening to hot, stretched seaside taffy.

The violence of the current is formidable. The chances of swimming myself to shore are so laughable that the thought doesn’t even pass my mind for longer than a fleeting, bitter moment.

The water releases its grip on me—and I’m soaring to the surface. No sooner is my head above water that I throw it back and suck in a searing, strangled breath.

The wretched gasp is quick to mangle into a scream.

The river drops.

I feel the drop. With it, my heart slingshots to my gut.

I’m freefalling for what feels like a heartbeat too long, a promise of forever that’s not delivered on, because the moment passes, and I smack down into the river again with a splash.

I am trapped in a cascade: Continuous small drops in the riverbed, boulders surrounding me… and probably headed towards one hell of a waterfall.

I claw my way to the surface—

The panic is ice through my veins. I suck in a sharp breath that’s nothing less than a sword spearing through me, but just reaching the surface of violent rapids isn’t enough to slow the racing thrum of my heart.

Water attacks me from all angles, the foamy surface encasing me. It sprays my face, soaks my hair and trembles my lips, but it floods me too. The urge to be sick is a wave through my insides. All that comes is a retch before I’m shoved down again.

I’m choking.

My fists beat against the water, but my fight is lame, and my opponent too strong.

And I’m thrown off another ledge, another drop in the riverbed. Feels as though the river itself moulds into large, strong hands and shoves me off a miniature cliff.

I claw myself up again—but slower, this time, my lashes heavier now, and the kick of my legs weakening by the lethargic heartbeat.

A wretched burp crawls through me. With it, water sicks out from my soaked lips. My tears are lost in the river.

The agitation of the water starts to turn me. Twist me. Too fast, I’m whirling.

I catch fleeting, blurry glimpses of the litalf who chased me into this death river. He’s closer now, just a dropping riverbed behind me.

Last time I laid eyes upon him, he was swimming towards me, a knife in his bite, buttercup eyes alight with bloodlust.

His face has changed.

His complexion has paled, his lips turned blue, his eyes a smidge wider. He wears less determination. Worry pinches his face, and while he keeps the knife to his mouth, his strokes are panicked, they are a fight against the current, not to swim the distance between us.

The male doesn’t even look at me.

He’s stolen from my sight the moment my eyes blur with a searing, blinding pulse of pain.

A cry splits me, “ Fuuuuckk !”

My shoulder screams with me.

The force of the rapids smacked me, hard, into a protruding rock, more jagged and coarse than an ateralum blade.

The pain is a sudden blinding sensation.

The joints of my shoulder ring horrible sharp pains all throughout my arm, my body—and I might be sick again.

Before I get the chance, the cascade whirls me around. Foamy water drowns me.

I bob back up to the surface, and now my back is to the warrior…

I face our deaths.

Ahead, through the mist and eternal spray, the river disappears. I know what is coming. The descent doesn’t lie.

We are advancing on a waterfall.

That is a drop I likely won’t survive.

Daxeel .

My mind calls out for him.

Gasping for air, my hands grab at the foamy surface. My gloved hands slip and slap over the mounds of boulders.

Daxeel .

My heart calls out for him.

I lunge at the boulders, I grab at them, I lurch through the waters to embrace them—but each one is quickly torn from me, the currents too fast to sweep me away.

Can you feel me?

I grapple with the silent bond, my mind clawing at nothing more than empty space.

The drop looms ahead.

Help me.

All that’s between me and the death drop is a fallen tree, long dead and consumed by the river. Its branches are crooked and snaring like claws ready to tear apart anyone who gets too close.

But it’s so far to the right riverbank that I won’t reach it—but if I don’t, I will fall, and I will die.

If I could just angle myself closer, maybe I could reach a branch, one strong enough to stop me.

Then the thought strikes through me, as cold as the winter waters I’m drowning in, and I think myself a fucking idiot for not realising it before.

Mother.

The gods.

Nature .

I should be calling out for nature, not a dark male.

I am litalf, female.

I am one with the earth and the water and the beasts.

I can do this myself.

Shutting my eyes on the looming plummet, I wrestle the straps of the backpack off my shoulders.

Help me.

My watery grunts are gurgled as the flow sweeps me around boulders and tree stumps and a watchful white otter.

Catch me.

The tickle of swarming fish flap around my writhing legs. But they are as doomed as I am, and I am doomed if I don’t make this shot.

Save me.

The leather of my glove creaks. I firm my fist around one strap of the backpack, then spread my arm out wide. The other strap of the backpack floats behind me, something—I hope—of a lasso.

My gaze homes in on the fallen tree—on its dead branches that splinter out into the river.

I shout something guttural, desperate .

And I fling my arm over the water. It arches over my head, the strap flimsy in the winds—

My breath pins to the tensing of my throat.

I can’t breathe.

I watch, and it’s almost as though it happens in a slowdown of time.

The strap falls downwards.

The tree is advancing on me, and the churning river is about to sweep me right by it.

All I have is this backpack—one strap clenched in my fist, the other falling, desperately, for the tree.

My breath loosens in a cry.

The strap loops around a spiny branch.

I dare to hope, I dare to let tears burn my eyes as the river rushes me to pass the tree.

The other strap still fisted in my gloved hand, all I can do now is pray with my entire soul that the branch doesn’t snap the moment the river’s thrust yanks my weight against it.

My eyes shut on the tears, my prayer coming from damp, blueish lips, “ Gaia …”

Agony jolts through my arm.

Like a lightning bolt thrown from the gods themselves, my arm screams with me—but my cry suddenly jerks into a grunt.

My body jolts. Then… stops.

I blink my eyes open.

The river rushes against me—but I am not carried with the current. The backpack creaks between me and the tree, the straps looped to us both…

Gaia listened.

She answered.

Nature came to my rescue.

I don’t waste the blessing.

I throw my other arm through the air and clutch onto the strap with both hands.

A guttural sound rises through me.

I climb along the bag. My arms tremble with the ache of pulling my own bodyweight against the ferocity of the river.

Water rushes over my face, forces its way into my mouth, my ears, my nose.

I choke on it, sputters wracking me.

But I pull and I pull and I pull—

Until my hand smacks down on a thick, damp branch, rugged and porous against my gloves.

Breaths heaving, I still.

My grip is tight on the tree, desperate, as I swerve my bloodshot eyes to the fae tumbling down the river. He’s trapped in the frenzy of foamy waters, as I was.

But his searing eyes are on me.

He reaches for the blade bitten in his mouth.

I flinch as he reels it back, then pifts it through the air.

It zips right at me.

My hand slips from the branch.

I fall underwater, just before the knife plants itself in the tree. The whirl of silver is all that disturbs the misty white.

I grapple with the bag and haul myself up to the surface.

Water spills out from between my shuddering lips.

The river plummets. It falls into a waterfall.

And takes the litalf with it.

I watch the drop for a moment. My ragged breaths are drowned out by the thunderous crushing ballad of the river.

The warrior is gone.

He must have been resigned to his fate in the currents. He used the last of his energy, of his fight, on me.

But he failed—and plummeted knowing that.

The sigh I heave is a guttural one, my throat suddenly made of sandpaper.

I climb up the bag for the tree until I’m slumped over it.

My belly is pressed painfully against the prickled wood. But I drape myself, arms spread—and I go limp.

I rest.

My breaths are heaving. Water chokes out of me.

I stay draped over the tree.