Page 79 of Cursed Shadows 4

The breath spears through me, curt and sharp.

I jolt into a hard, sudden left, then drop to the ground. I flip into a roll—and it takes me downhill.

“Fuck,” he grunts.

His steps stagger, growing quieter, and I know he’s stumbling back around to chase me down to the red field.

Into the bog.

I tumble down the hill.

My head smacks off a pebble, a twig spears into my temple, the air is knocked out of me with each crashing thud.

But the dirt starts to soften. Damper, softer—

I throw up my hands to shield myself.

But I bounce off the soft soil, and right into the thick, brown liquid.

I splat on the sludge, face-first.

I’m splayed on the bog.

The liquid is quick to shove into me. It’s a hot, slick rush down my throat—nothing like mud… and a lot like blood.

I shove up from the thick sludge. It clings to me, like sticky fingers gripping at my body, trying to drag me under.

My hands dig into the watery mud—and I start to push my chest up when I hear it.

The smackingcrackof a hard landing.

My chin grazes my shoulder.

I look back at the dark fae.

Smart enough to avoid landing in the bog, his boots are firm on the smooth surface of a black boulder. It glosses under him, as though a swollen, enlarged pebble, or as though painted with a varnish.

Whatever it is, the boulder is tucked back some distance from me. He can reach me, if he steps off the safety of the rock and into the bog I am stuck in.

But I doubt he will.

With his furrowed brow and slanted mouth, he considers me, the bent knees of my legs stuck in the bog, so close yet so far from him, then the bog itself, the thickalmost blacksheen of it.

He settles his attention on the next boulder over. Glossier than the one he’s crouched on now, but if he makes it, he can grab at me.

My legs writhe against the bog. My hands push deep into the sludge—and I am starting to sink.

It’s taking all my strength just to keep my chest up from the slick mud, like I’m stuck in a barrel of oil and taffy.

The dark fae makes the jump.

My breath hitches as he lands on the boulder, the one right there, an arm’s reach from me.

But before I can thinkhe’s got me now, his boots slip over the slick surface and are taken out from under him.

Panic alights his face before the fall.

Then his back comes crashing down on the boulder, and his skull connects with a sickening crack.

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