Page 89 of Cursed Shadows 4

Because that is what I try.

My back to the woods, I slink away with receding steps.

It doesn’t stop me.

It lets me leave.

Those emeralds start to dim away to frost.

The beast watches me go—it doesn’t give chase.

She accepts my offering. Replacement flesh for my own, because it is an easier, safer meal than to fight me and risk lethal wounds from my weapons.

It is undoubtedly a fight that the hound would win, but that doesn’t remove the risk entirely from itself. To the hound, I am prey, yes, but I am also another predator.

My boots flatten on the frosted grass.

Each crunch and crinkle of the ground jolts my muscles and clenches my teeth together so hard that they might shatter in my mouth. Any sound I make might trigger the hound intomovement, into a vicious and violent frenzy, or even give it pause enough to simply change its mind and decide that my flesh, as well as my soul, is a better option than a couple of fish.

I back out of the small clearing, and further, and further, until I can’t see it anymore, and the emerald glints are taken away by distance.

Surrounded by rickety trees, I turn my back on the lingering threat of the beast—

And I run.

I race through the downslope of the woods, with no sense of direction other than it’s far away from the faerie hound.

But I make it only a few minutes before I round a house-sized rock—and I smack into a solid wall.

I stagger back, a sudden eruption of stars in my eyes.

My forehead took the brunt of the impact, the tip of my nose second, and it burns with the rush of blood thumping through me.

Dazed, I stumble. My boots thump on the foliage. My hand presses to my pulsing head and I squeeze my eyes shut on the swell of dizziness.

Ow.

I peel my hand from my head and frown at the wall I ran into. But it isn’t a wall.

Right in my line of sight, just an arm’s reach from me, is a solid chest wrapped in brown leathers, swollen with stone muscles.

A litalf.

I lift my gaze.

My hand drops to my side.

A familiar face is turned down at me, but not one I welcome out here on the mountain. Not one I even considered.

But at the sight of it, dread trickles through me, cold like icicles forming along the edges of my muscles, my bones, my organs. That sickly, glacier sensation creeps over my stomach, then tenses with my breath.

The first thing I notice about him is the boil.

It’s tacked to his chin, too red, too ugly. A most unfortunate Fae Mark on translucent, pale skin.

A friend of Taroh’s.

One I aptly named after the ugliness I see on him.

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