Page 119 of Cursed Shadows 4

No one speaks, not even a whisper to break the illusion of a passing cloud.

Two hours of this, of bated breaths and cautious steps over the polished rock surfaces, and we are nearing the horizon—

It has an icy mist of its own, the horizon.

The longer I stare at it, the more I squint my eyes, the better I can make out the silhouette of the treeline, the lumpish shapes of boulders.

It’s what rises up behind the horizon that frosts my insides. Can feel my heartbeat thumping in my throat at the sight of it—the looming peak of the mountain.

The summit.

Pure white snow arching up into thick clouds painted across the sky. But it’s there.

It’s days away, I tell myself.It’s nights away. Hikes and treks and climbs between us.

But all the reassurance I muster doesn’t loosen the cannonball swelling in my chest, the weighted and cold sensation of dread starting to sink through me.

Because I can see it.

I can see the summit through the wisped clouds. And no matter how far away it is, it’s still just so fucking close.

Time is not my friend anymore.

Her warm grip is slipping from my hand, fading from between my fingers, and with each measured, careful step I take with the group hidden in the mist, I feel time leaving me.

I should be grateful at least that we move slow, that Samick maintains a glacier pace, as though to move too quickly means to shatter the mist around us and disperse it into dust.

The realisation thrums through me, a faint zap, like those times I used to rub my feet on the old rug in the dining hall then touch Pandora to give her a little static shock.

Samick’s mist is fragile.

We keep huddled together, Dare and Samick at my front, Caius behind me, and I feel like we are pickled pixies crammed into a jar, shoulders brushing, breaths tickling, because the mist is fragile—and that means,it can be broken.

A small bud of hope appears in my chest, it blooms in the weight of the cannonball.

Shadows—like the tendrils of darkness that lounge and drape over Daxeel’s shoulders—are slithering through my mind. A snake pit, disturbed, thoughts are peeling and lifting and threading together.

I have an idea.

A faint one.

The whisper of a scheme.

I hold it like a too-loud breath in a frozen moment, because I must wait for that moment, the right one.

I will know when that time comes. One of my companions will give me a sign.

Without realising what I will do about it, one of these males will indirectly tell me in some fashion that we are close to the threat of other folk.

The silence wisping around us, the mist clouding us, our slow and quiet steps, our huddled bodies—and that growing, thickening tension as we get closer to the treeline, it all warns me.

Litalves are near.

Might be up in the trees, on watch for dark fae.

Might be hidden beyond the boulders, scanning the plateau for any signs of us.

But with the way we move, the silence that we keep, I know the threat is there.

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