Page 110 of Cursed Shadows 4

“Don’t be silly.” He ducks under a branch. “Rune and I were merely eavesdropping.”

I rush to keep up with him, but I’m just under the branch, and he’s already a length ahead of me, standing on a boulder.

His chin is raised as he scans the area. “You both should learn to close windows for your vicious fights. Anyone could be lurking on the rooftops.”

My lip curls into a silent snarl I throw his way.

But one look at him, and everything warps around me.

Dare has flickered and melted through the mist in a glimmer of porcelain white and ink black. The sheer speed of his movements is a swift brushstroke over a naked canvas.

I startle and fall back a step, but not before he’s standing in front of me, his hand flattened to my mouth.

Liquid gold eyes have hardened to rocks.

He looks down his nose at me and his free hand lifts.

Slowly, he presses his gloved finger to his full lips and shushes me. Then he turns his chin and his gaze slides to the peculiar wall of rocks and dirt—a wall that almost looks made by fae hands, not born of nature. But it is old, crumbled, and utterly uninteresting.

Whatever he sees, I don’t.

Whatever he hears, I don’t.

Whatever he smells, I don’t.

Dare’s instincts are two sharpened sword edges, one of darkness, one of light, then blended seamlessly together.

I trust his instincts as well as I trust my own. Better, even.

I keep silent as his hand slips away from my face.

Steel-gazed, he steps back. His bootfall is utterly silent.

He takes me by the elbow and, careful-footed, leads me to the rock-and-dirt wall beyond the trees.

He pushes me down, hiding me behind it, then he flattens his hands against the air. ‘Stay,’ the silent command tells me.

I really hate commands.

My mouth purses in answer.

I crouch against the ribbed earth, my fingers digging into the soil. Slowly, I inch closer to the edge—and peer around it.

Beyond the wall, the ground elevates into a plateau. Uneven, flat ground that spans miles in every direction. It goes on so far and long that I can hardly make out the landscapes on the horizons through the wisps of mist clinging to the whitish stone.Boulders and lone trees are dotted around the flat ground, but not enough to move through, to take cover behind.

If we walk this plateau, we do so exposed.

Dare crouches beside me. His hand comes down on my shoulder, firms, then adds enough weight to pull me down from the ledge.

I shoot him a dark look.

I make to speak, to ask him how he passed this flat, exposed area to come down the mountain, but the slow shake of his head silences me.

My brow knits into a frown.

Silence has us gripped.

Dare pushes his weight onto his boots, then slinks back away from the dirt wall embedded with grey rock. He raises his hand in a repeatingstaygesture, then creeps away, back into the trees.

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