Page 117 of Cursed Shadows 4

Being too near the lake brought me closer to the eternal mist in the air. I feel that cold pebbling my skin through my damp sweater. I rub my hands up and down, up and down.

Dare returns the dagger to his thigh holster. “Who?”

Samick throws more wood onto the fire.

I say a silent thanks for it, though I know he only does this to start cooking the fish he’s gutting his way through.

“Caius.” I scoot closer to the roar of the flames. “What will he sacrifice to Mother?”

He has no evate to sacrifice, like Daxeel will offer me up to Mother.

“I haven’t asked.” Dare braces his forearms on his thighs and leans closer to the glowing red of the fire. “He’ll offer up something, but I don’t know what.”

The stink of gutted fish floods the cosy clearing.

My nose wrinkles against the pungent stench.

Still, I watch as Samick throws the flesh of the blackfish onto a metal grate that he fixed over the flames.

The sizzle hisses around us.

“There have been those who reached Mother’s ear…” Samick says, his tone quiet, but not soft, never soft, and I fleetingly think of a sword being sheathed. “And failed.”

I frown. “Were their sacrifices not accepted?”

Dare shrugs and fights a yawn. “Some lost their anchors, so Mother devoured them. Some were killed in avalanches. Some met fates that remain a mystery to us and our scriptures.”

“Two on record succeeded where all else failed,” Samick says and turns over the fish one by one. “Motherlistened. And yet they still failed. Mother was… displeased,” he adds and lifts hisglacier green eyes to mine. “By their promises, their sacrifices—or their hearts.”

Dare scoffs. “No one sits down for a tea with Mother and discusses her reasons for devouring souls or rejecting bargains. It’s speculation.” He cuts a glance at me. “Old lore, that’s all.”

He means to reassure me.

Samick doesn’t. His eyes flash, like emerald shards caught in the light.

The glow of the fire dances off his face, ivory painted with strokes of red and orange. “One word on record argues otherwise.” He turns his gaze to me. “It is written in the scriptures of the iilra—one word that both of the failed dokkalves heard before the avalanches reclaimed the mountain, and our kind were thrown back to where we belong.”

The way he speaks of our presence on the Mountain of Slumber, it’s the same sense I had when I first landed.

We don’t belong here.

This mountain belongs to the gods.

I never picked Samick as the most devout of souls, and yet now, as I study the flare of his eyes, the harshness of his fine features, the tension in his slender body, I think he is so devout that if he was born female, he might have been iilra.

The crackle of the fire and the sizzle of the fish almost drown out my whisper, “What was the word?”

He’s quiet for a moment before, “Unworthy.”

My toes curl in my boots.

The way he says it, drawls it in a layer of frost and ice, it chills my insides.

Dare rubs the back of his hand over his left eye. “That’s what theyclaimto have heard.”

Weariness has its claws deep in him. He wears the fatigue with the same early-phase moodiness I’ve seen on him a few times before.

Little sleep, and not enough coffee.

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