Page 97 of Cursed Shadows 4

Silent, Dare watches me as I trudge through the bloody mud to a satchel. Boil’s satchel.

Toppled onto its side, it’s just an arm’s reach from his corpse. I drop into a crouch and snatch it closer to me.

If Dare is surprised to see me looting through the satchel, stealing from a dead fae, he doesn’t show it.

Some fae have superstitions around this sort of thing. More so among the warriors. But I’m no warrior, I’m just a survivalist, and I will loot what I can from the dead.

Dare shadows me to the pool—so much blood that I think Boil is emptied out completely—then stands at the corpse’s limp arm, washing his gaze over the torn, shredded flesh littered all over it.

I pick through a handful of phials from the satchel. Some black powder, some white powder.

“I admire your trap.” He kicks into Boil’s side. The body flips over onto its back. Dare studies his slack face for a moment before he adds, “Personally, I never would have fallen for it, but it was elegant in its brutality.”

A scoff jolts me. “I don’t believe you. A halfling ready to spread her legs for you? You would fuck first, kill after.”

A faint laugh, curt, comes before he says, “You know you didn’t have to go in for the final blow. If you had kept this male alive for Daxeel, you could have watched as he carved him into pieces.”

I rifle through the satchel in search of a soothing ointment. Already, the lies have prickled my tongue like needles and my throat is starting to tighten, as it sometimes can when a bee stings me.

I throw a baffled look over my shoulder. “Why would I want that?”

Why would I want toseethat?

A wispy smile ghosts over his rosy mouth. “Romance.”

Blankly, I stare at him.

The look in his eyes tells me he isn’t joking. And I wonder what the blend of dark and light blood does to some hybrids.

Romance is a very litalf thing, and dokkalves care nothing for it except to woo their light lovers. But Dare is as serious as a common cold in my halfling body.

To him, romance is brutal torture, it’s carved flesh and drawn-out deaths.

It’s twisted.

I push aside the thought as my backpack comes skidding over the dirt. Dare knocked the side of his boot against it, tossing it to me. I flip open the flap then stuff inside all the treasures I found in Boil’s satchel.

A little jar of soothing balm, good for things like nettle rashes and plant stings; a sachet of black nuts; three white salmons; phials of the white and black powder—

And I pause on the painted pocket picture. A little portrait, compact enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

I eye it for a moment, a sinking sensation weighing me down. “It’s me.”

It’s my face sketched and painted roughly onto a cloth of threaded material. I turn it over and, on the back, is a crudely penned number.

My bounty.

The exact amount of my tocher…

Dare’s mouth flattens. He jerks his chin in an uphill gesture. “We need to go. The scent of fresh blood is too strong.”

“I know,” I mutter under my breath. My fingers unfurl from the fabric portrait. It flitters down to the blood pool and quickly starts to soak up all the crimson.

I heave a sigh, then fasten up my backpack.

I sling the straps over my shoulders.

Dare reaches out for me, offers his hand to help me stand. A glimmer of his litalf side piercing through the stoic dokkalf nature.

---