Page 109 of Cursed Shadows 2

My trust in him is deep and so I don’t let the fear steal me away, like it does with the litalf across the courtyard who snatches up her youngling and rushes down the steps.

I don’t know if she makes it.

My attention is snapped back to the shaft of the tornado when it spits someone of out of it. Then another someone.

Then more, in the masses.

Contenders, flung out of the black storm.

Boots are slamming all over.

I watch in terrible awe.

Fae warriors, slicked in blood of crimson and black alike, flip themselves midair and land with thunderous booms all over the courtyard.

Corpses, too.

Those ones don’t land. The winds slingshot them through the darkness and—I cringe. They crash into the stands, crack into the courtyard walls, smack down on the towers and some are even flung all the way out to the battle blocks.

Bodies still spit out of the vicious column of inky winds until no more come. Then—

Shouts rise up from the stands just as the column suddenlysplits with a thunderous growl and spears off like shadow blades. They pierce right into the chests of the iilra, inky arrows spearing through them.

All twelve of them…

The iilra fall to their knees.

Time stands still for a heartbeat.

Their screams are silenced.

Another heartbeat.

They sag—sag onto their fronts, their sides, their backs. But all of them go limp.

A third heartbeat.

The iilra are dead.

I’m stunned into stiffness.

Can’t move.

Can’t breathe more than a short, sharp sound. I’m too fucking dazed to do anything more than sit here, hand now limp in Eamon’s shirt, and my face slack.

I just… watch.

It’s all I can do. Watch.

The darkness draws back together, forming something of a spiral, aiming up into the sky, a never ending but calm current, like it’s fuelling the blackness that belongs here, and I fleetingly think of boneworms,ofparasites.

Everyone watches. No one screams or cries or hollers.

The silence of the courtyard is deafening. And all eyes are on the churning coil of blackness that spirals from the portal to the skies.

I don’t get the chance to find my breath before it happens—the blast of panic. It comes with the violence of a sea storm, shouts and roars erupting all around me—and the cheers of praise screaming in my ears.

But I can only watch.

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