Page 116 of Cursed Shadows 4

Samick chucks the ice-hunk to the ground, right next to the firepit, throws it like it weighs nothing more than a pillow. As his fingers slip from the frozen water rope, the ice starts to meltaway—until it’s nothing but a sudden puddle of water soaking the earth, and eight dead fish slap down.

The look I throw Samick is a cautious one.

I sidestep my way around the stone-circled firepit to perch myself beside Dare on the log. I scoot a little closer than I would without Samick and his strange powers so close by.

“Where’s Caius?” My voice is a whisper in the stagnant chilled air of the clearing, as though all the surrounding leaf-curtained trees suffocate us.

Dare lifts his chin and jerks it to the side.

I trace the gesture to the sturdiest willow.

Takes me a moment of throwing my gaze around the glistening leaves before I spot Caius, all the way at the heights of the tree. His upper body protrudes from the draping greenery, and if I wasn’t in such a severe mood, I might find the sight of it a little on the humorous side.

It’s a decent vantage point.

And at least he’s far from the camp, far fromme, so far that I can hardly make him out through the thickness of the willow.

My eyes squint as though to better see him. But he’s still a shrouded-in-shadows lump of meat and muscle.

He extends, as though sprouting an extra limb.

Dare traces my frowning stare to Caius—and the moment he does, I realise what Caius is doing. Lifting his arm way above, a black pole of sorts in his grip.

Then a spear of light arcs into the clouds.

A gleaming pillar soars from the tufts of the willow, reaches all the way up to the misty clouds—then erupts into a glowing confetti of red, as though a ball of embers and bleeding rubies swells through the clouds.

Shooting sparks.

Caius ignited shooting sparks, just like the ones I removed from my bag before I left Hemlock House.

The red, like glistening rubies, is different.

Mine were black and silver.

The red must mean something to the dark ones, a message, a signal that the litalves aren’t in on.

That signal is about me.

‘Got her.’

I guess the message means something along those lines.

‘Now make for the summit.’

It’s a guess, but it feels like the right one.

My mouth slants.

I watch the fiery eruption roll through the skies like a bleeding thundercloud. It churns overhead. I expect it to extinguish any moment, but it doesn’t. It grows, brighter, stronger, then starts a roll over the mountainside before it begins to fade away into the distance, like it’s on a patrol, making sure every dark one sees it before it dies out.

I drop my dull gaze to the tufted peak of the willow.

There, in the gleam of the crimson cloud, I can better make out Caius.

His pale blue eyes are faint as diamonds in dusk. Cheek to us, he seems to run his focus up the incline of the mountain. Whether he’s on watch or eyeing up ways to reach the summit, or assessing the movements of the crimson cloud, I don’t know. But it keeps his scowling face out of my way, so I have no complaints.

I hug my arms around the chill of my damp sweater, and I wonder aloud, “What will he sacrifice?”

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