Page 51 of Cursed Shadows 4

Still, the muscled statue just watches me. Blood drips from his sawdust hair, sandy like the shores around the seas of the Queen’s Court, but stained with death.

A bitter grin steals my face, and I’m sure it’s as ugly as the writhing of my insides.

I press the blade firmer.

Warm droplets roll down my neck and catch on the dip of my clavicle.

“We both know my fate if I let you take another step towards me,” I whisper—but he hears me just fine, and his jaw tenses, sharper than a fistful of knives. “I won’t go with you,” I add. “I won’t let you harm my friend. You have nothing—no choice, no play. You know as well as I do, you must leave.”

Thin trails of blood still roll down my neck, then curve over the bump of my clavicle, and some gather into little stagnant pools in the dip of my collarbone for a beat before falling down my front. The threads of my sweater soak up the blood.

The dokkalf’s face thins. His mouth purses, his pride thrashes within him, battling with his scheming mind.

Whether this dokkalf is smart or a fool, I can’t be sure. I just know that this won’t work on all of them.

This is nothing less than a stroke of luck in the place of the gods. And maybe I’m starting to see that I might be favoured among them.

The dokkalf takes a step back.

A retreat.

His head lifts, a proud twist snarling his mouth. It physically pains him to withdraw.

But he takes another step back.

And another.

And I watch, blade cutting into my flesh, as he slinks back towards the direction of the river.

His gaze doesn’t leave mine.

Ridge traces him with a narrowed stare.

His voice is harrowed, thinned by wounds he wears, “I will tell her if you return—if I sense you again,” he warns him. “Do not return.”

The plan shatters in the dark one’s mind.

I see that in the darkness that clouds his face. He cuts his mint gaze between us, searching for another scheme he might unearth, a way to trick me, catch me.

But if he loiters around us in the woods, I won’t drop this knife. If he returns, Ridge will sense him and warn me.

And, as far as this dark one understands, I will cut my own throat.

He doesn’t know I can lie.

“If you come back,” I tell him, firm, as though it’s the absolute truth, “I will take my own life before you even set your eyes on me.”

Ridge’s brows hike.

I don’t take my gaze off the dokkalf, but my peripherals find Ridge.

He throws a startled look at me. He’s quick to mask it. To set his face, firm, then turn it back on the dark one.

He watches us. From dozens of trees in the distance, his gaze is cutting. But his slow retreat continues—until he’s far out of the clearing and out of sight.

I don’t lower the blade.

Stiff, I watch the trees.

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