Page 5 of Cursed Shadows 4

They fall silent.

And stare at the sliver between the drapes, the tiny gap that they can look through to see that Kithe falls away.

Morticia slides an arrow across the bow. She readies it.

Eamon flexes his grip on the dagger’s hilt.

The darkness thickens.

And this, if anywhere, is where the strike will come.

Out of the borders of Kithe, there are no lanterns or lamps or jars to break the dark. No folk. No witnesses.

These arebarrenlands.

Even wild lands soften the darkness in white blades of grass or pearlescent fruits that swell on gleaming blue trees, and orange fireflies flitter above the ground.

Here, it is desolate and dead.

And without dark ones around to spook them away, Morke skitter somewhere above in the skies.

Eamon listens to their thick, wet, slapping sounds as they battle and tangle far over the carriage.

The presence of Morticia and the rider spook the creatures. Dokkalves are repellents, true, but there aren’t enough dokkalves around to disperse the morke completely.

Just hearing their slick, slapping sounds, their music of movement, Eamon can picture them above. Thousands of them coiling and skittering backwards, tentacles curling inwards as if to make a path for the carriage, for the dark ones spearing through their territory.

His muted dark blood has no effect on the morke. He is half of the light.

Morticia’s blood is enough to repel them, to keep them at bay—but they won’tscatterfor her.

It is the dark male who draws the carriage, he is the one who has them falling over themselves, making that wretched whispery hissing call of theirs, thatskrrt skrrt skrrtthat Eamon feels scraping over his bones.

It sets him on edge. His shoulders curve inwards.

Morticia, too. Her teeth are gritted, bared.

Because, beneath the sounds of the morke, there thunders the punishing pace of hooves hitting the packed dirt ground. Steeds, not their steeds.

Distant ones… and they are advancing.

Morticia’s fingers tighten on the bow and arrow. Her lashes shut before she draws in a long inhale through her nostrils. Her chest expands with the breath—the scent of the air, the taste.

Eamon leans closer to the curtained window. His finger hooks around the edge, then tugs. He peers through the wedged gap and out into the sheet darkness of the barren lands.

His eyes take a moment to focus, but when they do, he sees them,almost.

Two black-like-night steeds, so close to being melted into the absolute darkness.

He can’t rely on the visual. There could be more, or just the two. Two is enough. But Eamon needs to know exactly how many litalves are after him and his mother.

He counts the harsh thuds of the hooves hitting the dirt. He finds the pattern, the pace.

Morticia sucks in a deep, icy breath through her flaring nostrils. Her fingers tremble as she notches the arrow and cuts a look to Eamon.

The look he returns is a tight-mouthed, grim one.

He lifts the dagger. “Litalves.”

---