Page 24 of Cursed Shadows 4

In and out, in and out, in and out.

Once my chest rises full with fresh air—and the burn is minor enough that I can move without stumbling—I dig the toes of my boots into the hard, dead soil.

Gloved hands press into ground, fingers spreading carefully around damp branches and fallen nettles, a careful avoidance.

There’s a sagging weight to my shoulders, drooping my head, slowing my movements, but I shift my weight back onto my boots—and they sink onto the forest floor until I’m squatting in the snow.

The force of my landing should have knocked me out. If it weren’t for the branch, I might have died on impact. Instead, I am trapped in a sluggish daze.

So sluggish that, I almost don’t hear it.

Almost.

But I do—

A clatter.

Faint, soft, but I am fast to pinpoint the source.

I lift my chin, a frown burrowing into my brow,

The weariness of my gaze aims up the gradual incline of the rocks and boulders poking out from the snow. A blockfield that rises uphill alongside the forest.

I watch a small rock, a stray, bounce and jolt down the larger boulders, falling. But only falling because it must have been disturbed.

I lift my stare.

I trace the incline of the blockfield, searching for what might have dislodged the one little rock. But at the peak of the small boulder field, rock gives way to forest.

I swerve my gaze over the edge of the woods.

Snow doesn’t quite take the ground up there. It’s a falling white powder that dusts over the crisp foliage, not unlike the icing sugar that Knife would sprinkle over my honeycakes on the days I didn’t knock him over or lock him in a cupboard.

I study the forest floor. All over, light clouds of snow sprinkle above dried foliage and icy boulders and leathered boots—

Boots.

Panic jolts through me like an ice sword rammed down my throat. My heart flutters and my eyes widen into something wild.

I glare up the slant of the sparse woods.

I glare up at the fae watching me.

And a sickly sensation is quick to roll through my gut.

I don’t know what I was hoping for, if anything at all. Maybe a rodent to have skittered too close to the little stone and knocked it down the slope, or a wildcat lurking through the woods. Even the obvious hopes of Dare and Samick and Rune and Daxeel, I would take over this.

Maybe I hoped for any dark fae who won’t harm me, because I am bonded to Daxeel, and they simply cannot kill me without killing him, but they would simply maim me.

My luck is unfortunate.

So cursed that there should be ballads written about the unlucky halfling and her misadventures—because of course it is a male of the light who stands above the blockfield.

He stares down at me with a frown that tugs his mouth, a glare in his sharp gaze. A slow understanding of who I am.

His face is unfamiliar—but he sure recognises me.

I see that in the frown he spares me, in the way he starts to turn, his cheek to me, his shoulders moving where his boots do not. And it’s as though he means to leave me behind to fend for myself—a hopeful second that is shattered like glass weaved from prayers. Because it strikes him. The awful realisation. The understanding of exactly who is frozen on the frosty forest floor. Me. Daxeel’s bleeding heart.

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