Page 64 of Cursed Shadows 4

But even in my savagery, I am not a fool. Not enough to think I can take on another light one, a warrior, in close combat, even if he is all cut up.

We fall, topple towards the rockpool—and I stick that knife into his gut before we even land. He takes the brunt of the landing.

We crash down on the shore of the rockpool.

I tear the blade out from his gut and flip off of him.

Water splashes all around me.

The heels of my boots dig into the rockpool, and I push my weight into them, scooting away from the sliced up litalf.

I look down my body at him.

Then I still.

His dazed face is slick with the blood that pools in his mouth, dark enough that it almost looks black. Internal blood.

He slumps, his cheek in the shallow water—and the black of his pupils spread like spilled ink.

I scoff, dazed and bitter. Guess I can add another fae to my kill list.

I fall into the water, limp.

The water creeps through my sweater, soaking my back.

I lie, limp, in the shallows of it, blood and water drenched too deeply into my braids.

I turn my cheek to the cold bite of the rockpool and spit out a hunk of blood. Whether it’s mine, the warrior’s, Ridge’s, I don’t know.

My mind is a blur of metal, knives, screams and crimson.

It’s too tangled to make sense of, and my breaths are too heaved to think of anything other than the icy feeling rushing through me. It’s a dizzying thing, adrenaline. Disorientating, and sickly.

As it starts to ebb away, the coppery taste slicking my tongue, coating the insides of my cheeks, it has more of a bite to it.

The grimace that tightens my face is one of nausea.

I roll onto my side.

And the sick burps out of my parted mouth in a stream.

I sick up the death—and then the berries I ate after I tended to Ridge, and I’m sure the little flakes in my vomit are pieces of fish I had after escaping the river.

Mostly, I throw up water and blood.

I finish it off with a spit.

The water doesn’t take it away. The sick pools in front of me, waves gently, but with no current to carry it away, it lingers too close.

I grunt a disgusted sound, then reach for a spot of clean water.

I rinse out my mouth first.

Priorities.

And though I itch to wash my body clean, to undo my braids and rinse each strand in the rockpool, the logic can’t be argued. Dried,deadblood and mud—that’s too good a camouflage to pass up.

But the thought only just passes my mind, I only just shut it down, when the shout echoes over the rockpool…

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