Page 139 of Cursed Shadows 4

“The longest second passage on record isfourteenphases.” Rune’s voice comes with a weariness that tells me he’s only just risen from his rest, a rest that I pretend to keep, my eyes shut and my body hidden beneath the furs. “We are only four phases shy of that.”

If I were to peer through the darkness, I suspect I would find the males gathered at the entrance of the cave. Their voices have an echo to them, a distance that still creeps over me like a faint breeze.

I don’t feel the warmth of Daxeel pressed against me anymore. The heat of the fire has vanished now, too.

“Maybe we have phases,” Daxeel murmurs, “or maybe we have just moments. What we do know is that each second we spend chasing her, taking cover from the sun, fightingthem—that’s a second wasted.”

Dare smacks his tongue off the roof of his mouth, a dismissive tut, before he says, “We are too close for all this worry. Mother Stone is right up there—and if we can see it, Mother can see us. We all felt the mountain shake with her awakening. She will wait for us.”

“As admirable as your faith is,” Rune sighs, “and as visible as the Mother Stone is, it doesn’t change that it will take at least another phase to reach the summit.”

“One phase, if we don’t encounter another challenge,” Samick says.

“Another fight,” Rune agrees with a mutter.

Dare adds, his tone dark, “Another scheme from that tricky heartbreaker of yours.”

I cringe under the furs. My eyes squeeze just a touch tighter, my toes curling in my socks.

“So we leave now,” Daxeel says.

I can almost hear the shrug in Dare’s tone, “The halfling is awake anyway. Aren’t you, Nari?”

A faint rustle follows his words, like four heads turning my way all at once.

My eyes snap open, and I find my stare fixed on the stamped-out ash of the campfire.

Snubbing the stares spearing into me, I push the weight of the furs off my body, then sit up to stretch my arms way above my head.

Rune and Samick are the first to tug their gazes from me. They each move, branches spearing apart, for bags and waterskins.

They start to pack up.

Daxeel is next, but he moves for me.

I don’t look at him as he crouches by my boots and starts to roll the fur into one messy lump that I doubt would pass a barrack inspection.

A yawn splits me. I stretch my arms out in front of me and distantly notice the smears of ash littering my arms. The woundto my shoulder is gone, but the evidence is raked down my bicep in trails of dried, dark blood.

I must look a fright.

Not that it matters. This is the Sacrament, the Mountain of Slumber, not the High Court.

Still, it’s not particularly a fresh feeling to wake to my wounds healed… but the evidence of them all over my body. I don’t look my best, and—with the crinkle of my nose—I certainly don’t smell my best. But I don’t have to.

The black powder sleep soaked me with sweat. And while it’s dried off now, the stink isn’t. It’s a musky scent I’d rather never smell on myself again.

What I wouldn’t do for a copper tub full of warm, soapy waters and bubbles…

And yet, it isn’t a wash I crave most of all.

My gaze lingers over the greyish metal pot Dare snags from the stamped-out firepit, then shoves into his bag.

I should know better, and yet I croak, “Coffee?”

Dare groans and turns his dark look on me. A frown wrinkles his brow—and I think this might be the only thing we truly have in common, other than being halfbreeds. Our addictions to coffee.

Fleetingly, the wonder passes—does he keep his love for coffee when he’s on mission? If Dare is a hunter, tracker, assassin, I wonder if he finds his victims, kills them, then sits at their kitchen tables with some cinnamon coffee and has his moment of relaxation amongst all the bodies and blood.

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