Page 23 of Cursed Shadows 4

The prime place to take cover.

Yet, Daxeel hesitates.

His boots falter on the ice and he squints through the mist of glacier fog. His eyes return to the bloodied face of the impaled dokkalf.

Mostly smeared in fresh black blood—inkiness that spurts out of his mouth as he chokes on those final breaths of life—it’s difficult to make out his features, to observe if this dying dark male is one familiar to Daxeel, if he is a soul brother.

The dokkalf jerks with a final jut of life.

And it draws Daxeel’s focus to the weapons belt that clangs. From a distance, he sweeps them over, dagger to knife, throwing star to sword, and the relief comes in a soft breath. He recognises none of the weapons to belong to his brothers.

He turns his cheek to the dead dokkalf and runs for the black hills.

7

††††††

More are falling. More are coming.

The distant thuds of boots slamming onto cold, hard earth is a surrounding patter accompanied by the snaps and creaks of branches. But it’s when I hear the clash of striking blades that my insides constrict.

In the trappings of my boots, my toes curl and flex as I struggle to find breath. The constriction of my lungs is easing, but each inhale is a grating burn down my chest, and I’m running out of time.

Too many fae, too close.

Already, I risked too much movement since landing. I could have been spotted at any moment. But luck sprinkled over me like the snow that coated me from the fallen branch.

Now, I am frozen, on my hands and knees, swerving my gaze over the gaps between the trees, watching leathers move in blurs.

The breaths splintering through me are ice, as cold as the snow still clinging to me, but it’s the daze of my vision that lures my focus.

For a beat, I squeeze my eyes shut, then spring them open again; over and over until the blurs start to clear, and I can makeout the battles all around me, pairs of fae locked in fights, swords clashing, knives striking.

Any of those weapons can turn on me in just a heartbeat.

There are too many of them. They are sprinkled around the snowy hill, through the trees, beyond the boulders, up the slope. The agility of the warriors turns my mouth down with a frown. There’s no victory in a fight with any of them, not for me.

Best I can hope for is to sneak away before I’m noticed, before the blood-spilling slows enough that distractions don’t keep the attention off of me.

I need to get far away from here—and fast.

The frosted trunks of the trees shield me from open view; the frailty of my slow, gradual breaths keeps me silent among the greys and whites of the forest floor.

That, I decide, is where I am. A crisp and cold forest dusted with foliage and boulders and nettles, whose trees are thin and wispy, and whose gales whistle much too eerily, much too like the whispers of witches and gods.

A shudder runs through me at the thought.

I can’t let my mind get carried away. Can’t let my focus slip to the harrowing realisation of whereexactlyI am. The Mountain of Slumber. The place of the gods.

A place I do not belong.

It’s a wrangle to bring my focus back to survival.

The panic is ice spreading through me, the urge to flee from the mountain. I must focus on the fae.

I must creep away from these oversaturated woods of fae, of swords clashing, of battle cries echoing through the woods, and I need to find shelter.

Shutting my eyes, I feel snowflakes dissolve on my cheeks. My breaths start to slow, start to soothe.

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