Page 77 of Cursed Shadows 4

I flinch at the striking sound.

Teeth gritted, I grab onto my bag with one hand, and the bough with the other, and I pull myself up.

The bough is long and creeping—and its branches reach the distance to the neighbouring tree.

Scrambling into a crouch, I spare a look over my shoulder at the dark fae.

He’s tugging the bow over his head, so it sits firm and secure across his chest, and the glossy purple of his eyes flare on me. There’s a flustered rage to the clench of his jaw, the rustled stress of his auburn hair. That particular male rage that comes from ego.

I spare him no more of my precious moments.

Hooking the bag straps over my shoulders, I crouch for the next tree over—then I lunge.

My gloved hands extend for the branch that snakes out towards me—and I pray to the gods it doesn’t snap under my weight.

My hands come smacking down on it and it only shivers in distress… but it doesn’t break.

I swing under it with enough force to propel myself to the next tree. I land steady on an arched branch. I get no moment for pause, no pause for breath. Behind me, on other side of the frosted trunk, a bough groans beneath the sudden weight of the dark one.

He closed the distance too quickly—too easily.

I swing for the next tree. Then the next, I grab onto a vine and swing myself across the path, then I run down another bough, then leap onto the next…

And the male keeps my pace the whole way.

He must be a hybrid.

There is no doubt about it in my mind, because he has the trees respond to him the same way they respond to me. Leaves fall for him, flimsy branches hold steady under his weight, foliage parts like doors for him to leap through.

And that means he’s keeping pace with me just fine.

I hear it—

The sudden sharpzippppof a blade singing through the air.Spearing.

I drop.

I made to aim for the neighbouring tree, but the song of the blade is too close, and so I step off the branch, and I plummet.

The wink of silver zips overhead.

I land, hard, on the snow-dusted earth.

My knee screams on landing, my boots flat on the crunch of the dehydrated soil, and I wobble, unsteady.

A sickening smack comes down behind me.

I spin around, my boots staggering under me, and land my wild gaze on the rough rockpile some trees down from me.

He landed there, boots on jagged rock, in a crouch. His fist presses into the coarse stone, and his gaze lifted.

I don’t fuck around.

That one look sends me reeling through the woods.

Branches whip at me. The whistling winds are lashes against my burning cheeks.

Still, the punishing pace of the dark fae chases me down.

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