Page 11 of Cursed Shadows 4

Time, that knock tells me.

Time to leave.

Time to make for Comlar.

Time to walk to my death.

I don’t bother swatting at the tears on my cheeks. They are mostly dry now, caked onto my blotchy complexion, but it will be no secret to anyone how my fear rattles me. I have no shame in my tears.

I reach for the parcel. And I pluck out the last part of my gift, the final piece of my armour: black leather boots.

Flat soles to make for soft steps.

I pull them on.

The boots are thermal-lined leather, arching all the way up past my knees, utterly comfortable in that they feel something like feathered butter on my feet.

And like every other part of this uniform, the boots mould to my body, to my shape, to my size—and it suddenly feels like I’m wearing nothing more than a second skin.

This must be how dragon’s feel in their scales.

Maybe Aleana didn’t think this was the end for me, or for me and her brother. Maybe she suspected the second passage would be that final battle between us—and I would be the victor.

Or—maybe it is time…

Time to release these silly hopes I cling to.

Maybe it’s time to release Daxeel.

I smile something grim on the thought, because without the smile, all I have is an icy metal fear that will claw at me from the inside out.

And so, with that grim look on my tightened face, I snatch the small leather backpack from the floor, and spare the bedchamber a final look, a room where I have spent phases rotting away in puddles of my own sweat, where I have slept in the arms of the male I love and who hates me, and where I held onto too much hope that it must be considered nothing less than foolery.

Delusion.

For too long, that is what I was. Not hopeful, not desperate, not a warrior in love—but merely a halfling flooded with delusion.

I feel shame in that.

It carries with me as I leave the bedchamber behind, shame on my flushed cheeks, in the proud lift of my chin.

The walk down to the foyer is a lonely, quiet one. The candleflames and the lanterns are dim all the way.

Shadows haunt me down to the lobby.

I am the last to arrive.

Even Melantha and Tris and General Agnar are here before me. If there were any goodbyes to be wept, I missed them—and thank the gods for that. I don’t have it in me this Quiet. To thank and hold and wish the best for anyone else but me.

But, as I lift my bloodshot gaze to the fae peppered around the narrow foyer, I recognise that maybe I’m not the only one too beaten down. The grief has its grip on them, each one, from Rune and Dare who are slouched on the bench, to Samick as stillas an ice sculpture by the door, and even Daxeel who looks up at me with dead, ocean eyes.

I come down the stairs, each step thundering through my legs, screaming at me to turn around and flee.

I would.

I would run.

If it wasn’t for Daxeel’s command—the one he so softly whispered in the bed early this Quiet, the one that prickled me as far as my dreams and echoed franticly around me once I opened my eyes and he was gone.

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