Page 71 of Cursed Shadows 4

And this creature might strike at me before I even lift my hand from my backpack.

It’s closer. It has the advantage.

Snuck up on me while I slept.

We are in a standoff of sorts, a locked stare ofwho-will-make-a-move-first.

One wrong blink, one flickering glance away, a breath too loud, and those glassy fangs might just sink into my face.

My mind lurches through schemes.

Can’t reach for my weapons. Not before the python bites me first.

Can’t unfasten the rope around my middle, then descend the tree. Not before the creature has dropped onto my head.

Can’t lift my hand to swat at it. Not before it has coiled its body around my neck and—snap. How easily my bones would break.

I’m slow. Too slow. In mind and body.

The black powder works against me.

It knits my shoulder wound back together, I feel it, the threading of my flesh, the easing of my blood, and it saves me there. But the thick, sluggish haze of it has me at a disadvantage.

I almost wish the python was the face of a fae. I might have a better chance. At least a shot at survival, however small.

But I don’t stare into the eyes of a fae. I stare into the watchful, intense gaze of creature foreign to me; white, frosty eyes, textured and thick, an echo of ivory-hued brushstrokes over a rough canvas.

A jolt of fright rings through me.

My back scrapes against the bark of the trunk, my shoulders curving inwards, as though I can sink into the tree and disappear.

But the python makes no move for me. Not yet.

Its head swerves to the side. Its gaze flickers away from me—just for a moment—then it snaps back into place, and returns to its threatening stare, sizing me up.

Stiff against the bark, my jaw tenses and I trace its fleeting, distracted look to two branches away from the bough I’m stuck on.

It takes me a moment to spot it in the camouflage. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, if it weren’t for the python’s flickering attention.

But there it is.

A whitish rodent, a rat or a voder of sorts. It emerges from a frosted nest.

I hadn’t the faintest clue that a nest was even there at all, it’s so perfectly blended into the white of the dead woods, a camouflage like nothing I have seen before, since the nest looks like a pile of snow, and nothing more.

My mouth turns with a frown. Perhaps a little impressed, but mostly just a bit sorry for what this creature will face.

I look up at the python.

It’s watching me, still, but its pupils dilate each time it glances at the rodent, and it doesn’t quite know what to settle on—me, a potential threat, a body too big for it to comfortably consume, a meal that will leave it weighted and vulnerable for too long… or the rodent, far on the other side of me, but a lovely, easier meal it needs to survive.

I make the decision for the threat.

I make the decision to appease the python.

Peeling myself from the bark scraping at my back, I slowly inch closer to my knees. I start to fold over myself, running my hand down the length of my boots.

My movements are glacier.

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