Page 31 of Cursed Shadows 4

His face has changed.

His complexion has paled, his lips turned blue, his eyes a smidge wider. He wears less determination. Worry pinches his face, and while he keeps the knife to his mouth, his strokes arepanicked, they are a fight against the current, not to swim the distance between us.

The male doesn’t even look at me.

He’s stolen from my sight the moment my eyes blur with a searing, blinding pulse of pain.

A cry splits me, “Fuuuuckk!”

My shoulder screams with me.

The force of the rapids smacked me, hard, into a protruding rock, more jagged and coarse than an ateralum blade.

The pain is a sudden blinding sensation.

The joints of my shoulder ring horrible sharp pains all throughout my arm, my body—and I might be sick again.

Before I get the chance, the cascade whirls me around. Foamy water drowns me.

I bob back up to the surface, and now my back is to the warrior…

I face our deaths.

Ahead, through the mist and eternal spray, the river disappears. I know what is coming. The descent doesn’t lie.

We are advancing on a waterfall.

That is a drop I likely won’t survive.

Daxeel.

My mind calls out for him.

Gasping for air, my hands grab at the foamy surface. My gloved hands slip and slap over the mounds of boulders.

Daxeel.

My heart calls out for him.

I lunge at the boulders, I grab at them, I lurch through the waters to embrace them—but each one is quickly torn from me, the currents too fast to sweep me away.

Can you feel me?

I grapple with the silent bond, my mind clawing at nothing more than empty space.

The drop looms ahead.

Help me.

All that’s between me and the death drop is a fallen tree, long dead and consumed by the river. Its branches are crooked and snaring like claws ready to tear apart anyone who gets too close.

But it’s so far to the right riverbank that I won’t reach it—but if I don’t, I will fall, and Iwilldie.

If I could just angle myself closer, maybe I could reach a branch, one strong enough to stop me.

Then the thought strikes through me, as cold as the winter waters I’m drowning in, and I think myself a fucking idiot for not realising it before.

Mother.

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