Page 99 of Cursed Shadows 4

Dare keeps his cheek to me, smooth marble, his high cheekbone shining like a polished blade. “She was advancing on Rune—and though there was hesitation in her, I couldn’t risk that.”

My nod is bitter, my lips sucking inwards. “So he went after me for revenge.”

Dare is quiet for a moment. He fishes his hand into his pocket, then tugs out a tiny glass jar of beige ointment. “Put this on your wound.”

I snatch it, moody. “Doesn’t make up for it.”

His smile is small and fleeting.

Our steps don’t falter as I tug down the cloth wrapped around my forearm. The gash isn’t so deep, more like the blade slipped over the edge of the flesh before sinking into Boil’s face or collarbone or neck—wherever I could reach.

This wound doesn’t need black powder, and it’s not worth it, either. It’ll knock me out too long. So I unscrew the flimsy metal lid and finger out a generous scoop of the balm. This will heal me, ease any infections that might want to snake into my body. But the scar will remain. Probably thin and flimsy, but permanent all the same.

The pad of my middle finger grazes over and over the gash. With each measured stroke, the bleeding is slowed that bit more.

I don’t know how long we have been hiking uphill, but I do know my legs feel stretched and pulled like rinsed laundry by the time I tug the cloth back over my now not-bleeding-but-angry-red-and-scabbing wound.

Dare’s question is soft on the stagnant air of the mountain. “What happened?”

I hand him the jar. “With Ridge?”

He nods, faint, a severe tension to his jaw.

I tell him.

And he doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t speak once, doesn’t ask a single question, but the whole time his jaw gets tenser and tenser, his eyes turning into gilded blades.

‘I’m not doing this for the gold…’

I huff, exhausted by our climb, “He knew about the bounty. He basically said as much. And Eamon said he was approached—” by Ronan, but I leave that stab of betrayal out, because how much more treachery can I withstand, really? “—to kill me, too.”

“Daxeel didn’t work so hard to keep you confined to Hemlock for no reason,” Dare says. “Any time you were allowed out of that house, it was with a team of escorts.”

My mind flickers to Eamon, to Ridge, to Aleana, when we once went for lunch, and then I managed to worm my way out of the group and head to the scripture hall.

Daxeel wasn’t too pleased.

But I didn’t see rage.

Maybe Eamon did, when I wasn’t there.

Might have been chewed up and spat out.

And Ridge…

He was with us. He could have turned on us, on me, at any moment…

Why didn’t he?

As though reading my thoughts, Dare sighs, soft, “We trusted that litalf. Seems he was around to gather intelligence on us and reporting it. Biding his time.”

Ridge shouldn’t be getting all of our thoughts right now. The image of my portrait crudely drawn onto a cloth, it’s burning in my mind, seared—permanently.

I already face down the threat of litalves on this mountain. But the bounty is the real worry, it’s the cause of the flurry in my chest, that sickly sensation that nearly wobbles me.

Boil meant to take his time with me.

Ridge waited out the powder so he had more time, more awareness—to do what exactly?

---