Page 168 of Cursed Shadows 4

The movement strikes through me like lightning bolts from the storm. I turn on my heels and shove my weight into a run, a chase so violent that, as a pair of fighting, stabbing, shouting fae fall into my path, Itramplethem.

I don’t break pace, I don’t let hesitation trip me up.

Get in my way now, and I will trample.

The urgency won’t let me slow down.

That same urgency strikes Daxeel.

His shout is a roar in my bones. It tears through the echo of our bond and claws at my insides.

I grit my teeth against the clawing sensation, the rage and panic that blasts from him.

I don’t need to look over my shoulder to know that he has finished the litalf who stormed at him—and is now charging after me.

We race to Mother, not as evates, not as lovers, but as the enemies we were born to be.

Light versus dark.

My boots dig into the crunch of snow.

I skid to my side, dodging a litalf who staggers back from the blow that a warrior kicked into his middle.

He loses his footing right in front of me, but not before I’ve skidded to the side, then flipped myself over him.

I land in a kneeling position, my hand splayed on the snow, then a grunt catches in my chest as I shove myself forward—and race for the Mother Stone.

Hair whips my snow-burned cheeks. My lips dampen with falling snowflakes and spatters of blood. My legs are screaming with the force of my relentless run, and my lungs feel as though they have been grated inside and out.

But I don’t stop, because with the battle left behind, Daxeel is closing in on the Mother Stone before me. He’s advancing, fast, too fast, and my ragged breaths are threatening to slow me down.

I don’t let them.

Daxeel staggers for the Stone, his chin lifted. His words carry on the snowy breeze, “Mother, I—”

His prayer to Mother is cut short.

I smack into him hard enough to send us both tumbling.

The air is knocked clean out of me, my lungs empty and screaming—then my back hits the boulders lining the foot of the Mother Stone.

Daxeel cracks into those same boulders, hard enough that I hear the crunch of his skull.

I spare him no look at all before I’m moving.

“Mother,” I rasp and flip onto my front. My hands smack down on the scattered boulders and I arch my neck to look up, and up, and up. “Aghhh!”

Daxeel snatches my ankle and yanks me off the boulders. One knocks my cheekbone, it chips beneath my skin.

I twist and, lifting my other leg, boot out at him.

A growl snarls through him as he reaches for my throat… tosilenceme, I know it.

And so I know, I’m onto something.

This is a true risk for him. Our evate bond, our soul bond—it means I can talk to Mother as well as he can.

I throw my arms up to protect my neck from his grip. My head smacks back into the thick snow, and I scream up at the Mother Stone with every ounce of breath I have in me, “Protect the light! Mother, please!”

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