Page 80 of Cursed Shadows 4

A ripple of relaxation runs through his body, like a ribbon unwinding through the lovely summer air.

Limp, the male slips off the surface of the boulder and into the bog…

I watch the dark liquid wash over him.

There is a reddish hue to it, a rusty brown shade, slinking over his flesh like claws creeping over him—and then a sickly sensation burns down my insides.

This isn’t mud.

It is blood.

The kind that comes from deep within a body, from the organs. This is a bog filled with the blood of death.

And it’s in my fucking mouth.

A gurgling retch is quick to escape me. My body heaves once, twice, then—

A spill of sick falls from my parted lips.

So fucking disgusting.

It’s blood.

It’s definitely blood.

My heartrate is jogging now, threatening to break out into a sprint, a full panic, as I watch the dark fae’s body sink into the sludge.

The crimson snakes over him. It trickles and stretches, and he’s pulled under. Like the bog knows he cannot fight and so it will claim him now.

Fleetingly, I wonder if that is how this bog became. Maybe so many contenders from previous Sacraments have fallen hereand the blood of dark and lightbecamethe bog. Or it’s entirely new, and I’m in the blood of the mountain itself.

Another heave crawls through my body.

My shoulders curve before another flow of sick escapes me, and it’s remarkably close to the blood that was forced down my throat when I landed in here.

The flurry in my chest is ice-cold. Like the python is slithering around in there.

It’s all I can do to steady my breaths, nostrils flaring around the whistle of my hiked heartrate.

Don’t panic,

don’t panic,

don’t panic,

don’t panic.

I tell myself that over and over.

The mantra is doing little to soothe the sudden thunder of my heart or the tears falling down my whitened face.

I’ve never been stuck in a bog before.

There are plenty in the Queen’s Court, and I scramble through the ghosts in my mind, searching for an answer.

I know father warned me of them once upon a time, when I was too young to ever need the advice because I was too afraid to chance getting near them.

Still, I force my eyelids to shut as though it’ll help me think clearer and loosen a steady breath from my tightened chest.

---