Page 39 of Cursed Shadows 4

He lands on the frosted earth.

But under his legs, the ice remains—until it crumbles.

Daxeel lunges for him, arm outstretched.

Before the waters can steal Rune away, drag him under and drown him, Daxeel’s hand smacks down on his wrist. His boots press into the frosted earth—and with a shout of strained muscles and aching bones, he wrenches Rune onto the shore.

They land with a thump.

Rune is splayed facedown.

His back, rising and falling, appeases the quick glance Daxeel shoots at him.

Forehead rested on the chilled ground, Rune is only taking a breath. Taking a moment they can’t afford.

Daxeel flips into a crouch. “Get up.”

The signal that Rune shot up into the misty skies, Daxeel won’t have been the only one to have seen it.More will come. There could be a dozen fae—half of them, litalves—racing their way now.

He grabs Rune by the arm and hoists him onto his feet.

Before they turn their backs on the glacier, Daxeel looks over at the gaping hole, half of the glacier gone. But his gaze homes in on the spot where the ice fell and stole the other dokkalf.

The other doesn’t emerge. The current beneath the glacier has swept him away.

If he’s lucky, he can reach the ice surface long enough to punch his way through it and climb onto the surface. But if the rush of the water is too strong, it will push him down and drown him.

That will take a while with a dark fae. Double the time that it takes to drown a litalf, almost ten times longer than to drown a human. It varies dokkalf by dokkalf, but most take an hour before death reaches them.

That male is still out there, under-ice, drowning, searching for a way out. If he does get out, the sun will scorch him the moment it’s up—and it’s just moments away now.

Daxeel turns his back on his brethren.

Another sacrifice in the face of the mission.

“We need to find shelter,” Daxeel says, but it didn’t need to be said.

They both know it.

Rune and Daxeel have just moments, a handful of minutes, to take cover. The clouds are softening, the mist lightening—the sun advancing.

So they are fast to move.

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††††††

Enough time has passed for my heartbeats to steady in my chest and for the murky grey of the skies to lighten with the faint glow of the faraway sun.

Dark ones will be in hiding now.

And here I am, sprawled over a fallen tree in a river.

I’m wasting time.

Time that I need to eat and find shelter.

My reluctance is in the huff that deflates me. My movements are stiff, frozen solid, as I shuffle the front of my body, legs and chest, around the rugged bark, until I find an angle that I can push myself up to straddle the trunk.

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