Page 13 of Cursed Shadows 4

At my side, Daxeel maintains a slow, predatory pace, as do the others: Rune ahead of me, Dare to my left, Samick behind me.

Melantha and General Agnar follow.

Eamon should be with them.

Aleana should be here.

And I’m certain that Aleana’s glaring absence is the reason none of us speak as the packed dirt path turns to stone beneath our boots.

It’s grief that silences our throats and stills our tongues. It was only some hours ago that Aleana’s body burned, and we watched the black flame eat her away to nothing.

Just some hours ago…

Almost feels as though I can simply reach through time itself and steal her back to us.

But time cannot be meddled with, things passed cannot be undone, and here lie the consequences.

I face mine.

I move deeper into the courtyard as the horn blares.

I don’t blink, I don’t flinch, I don’t even throw my gaze around to find the iilra and the scribe who blow the final horns, one of gold, the other of ateralum.

I am numb in my daze as the horns quake the uneven stone of Comlar—and chunks of the crowd start to shift. Spectators draw away from their beloveds, from the courtyard, and make for the grandstands that overlook us.

The crowd thins—and as it does, I find I can breathe.

Still,hundredsof fae are packed into the courtyard. So the air doesn’t quite restore the freedom of my lungs.

I drag my dull gaze over them, and I decide that each of them is a foe to me.

Brown leathers, black leathers, some white, some grey, and I suppose those ones are determined to camouflage on the Mountain of Slumber, to hide in the snow.

We are all contenders here, now.

Unity.

That word creeps into my mind. I almost smile something bitter at the reminder of it, when light and dark came together in the hall of Comlar, shared drinks and games and laughter.

Unity.

It was a lie then, a lifetime ago, and will be forever onwards.

The horns blare again.

Like a sea parting around a cliff, two streams of fae split apart. The light moves to the left, where the litalves are seated on the grandstands, and the scribes are dotted around the more powerful iilra. The contenders of Dorcha take their stance on the right.

I watch the divide split the courtyard into different colours: black leathers on one side, and on the other, those of brown like the soil, and white as stark as snow, and greys the shade of stone.

Down the centre, the shimmer of the portal is spilled tar.

I hang back.

Between the edge of the portal and the mouth of Comlar, our group is stagnant for a beat. I watch the last of the crowd part, and it looks nothing short of a stand-off with a thundering spiral of shadows pulsing up into the skies, erected from the tarry portal glossed over the stone.

Those pulses are felt in my chest. Thump, thump, thump. Only, mine are laced with nausea that dizzies me.

Without a word, Melantha touches her spidery hand to Daxeel’s tense shoulder. The look they share draws in my weary gaze.

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