Page 134 of Cursed Shadows 4

I just fall.

I don’t scream or weep.

I fall.

And I’m just about to shut my eyes on the glaze of the air, the eternal frost that numbs me to my heart, when a black rope cuts through my vision.

The loop of a shadow ripples above me. I watch it catch around my boot.

Faintly, I am aware of shouts coming from all directions, of blood spattering around the edges of my vision—but only the shadow holds my distant focus.

Just as it lassoes around my boot, and a violent jerk rips me out of freefall, my lashes shut on the sudden scream of pain that tears through my leg. My mouth parts around a hollow cry that gathers in my chest but never quite makes it to my throat.

If my soul was still in my body—if it hadn’t abandoned me the moment that litalf and Caius knocked me off the cliffside, or even earlier, when the litalf shot me with her arrow and stole too much of my blood—maybe I would understand what has happened to me, that the force of the shadow’s tug has snapped a bone in my leg, or the impact of being yanked into a boulder has broken a rib.

Maybe I would understand the pain that ignites beneath my flesh like a fire blazes through a village. Maybe I would understand that familiar voices call out for me and Daxeel.

Instead, I only understand the darkness that ebbs into my sight… I understand that it’s a blessing. Because it steals me away entirely to a numb place of nothing and peace.

29

††††††

Darkness envelopes me, but it is a fresh kind, different to the pitch-black nothingness that has encased me in a soothing grip for… How long? Truthfully, I don’t know.

I do know that this new darkness is blended with the warmth of red gleams, the sort that I feel roasting my flesh.

My heavy lashes fringe the familiar orange and red glows of firelight. I watch those warm tones flicker over the stone ceiling curving above me—and it takes me only one, two, three heartbeats before I understand my surroundings.

I am in a cave.

The heat of a campfire burns at my side.

Shadows flicker and arch over the grey stone ceiling above me.

And I cannot move—

Not more than a blink.

The weight of a fur is pressed down on my body. It pins me in place, on my back. So heavy that it’s a faint surprise my chest can lift against it with each steady inhale of air I draw in.

I blink against the dark warmth.

So much familiarity in this sluggish weight…

The black powder.

It’s in me, healing me, but fatiguing me, too.

The black powder will drag me back down, steal me away to the unconsciousness I dared to escape, surrounded by the walls of a cave, the warmth of a fire—and whatever else has me surrounded.

Without the strength to turn on my side, all I can manage is to let my head loll to the side, to press my cheek to the cool damp touch of the stone ground.

I turn my heavy gaze to the fire—

And my heart flutters.

It slingshots up into my throat where it lodges… and I suddenly can’t breathe.

---