Page 160 of Cursed Shadows 4

I flop onto my front.

My glare follows him as he runs into the mist of smoke and snow. Then my teeth bare in a grimace as a sword of a blasted tree—thicker than my fucking thigh—lances straight through his chest.

His legs buckle.

Impaled by a splintered, coarse spike.

My mouth twists at the sight of it. At the sound of the hollow moans I hear all around me as more and more dark fae are struck.

An inky spray of blood spatters all over the crisp snow.

The smoke is a thunderous rolling cloud that consumes the snowfield now. Visibility is snuffed out, swallowed by this smoky beast that’s thick with debris and fragments of flesh and bones, the wreckage of dark fae too close to the explosives.

Too close for them.

Perfectly close for me.

I was at the rear of the unit. Their bodies blocked the explosions from mine.

Discounting the promise of a bruise swelling over my ribs, I remain unharmed. And that will stay true as long as I stay down.

Floored, I stay flattened on my front, wrists crossed at the back of my head.

I ride it out.

My chin is lifted from the snow, my gaze angled to swerve the chaos, hearing the ragged moans and vicious snarls pummel through the smoke.

The others were close to me, surrounding me, when the attack struck. So I am fast to find Daxeel through the smoke.

His knees are dug into the snow, his body crouched, as though he’s about to push up—but he stays where he is. Same thoughts as mine. Stay down, ride it out.

Behind him, Mika is curled into a ball of steel, arms crossed over her head.

But I can’t see the others. Whether the air is too thick, the visibility too thin, or it’s that they have been blown to pieces and are now scattered around the summit in lumps of flesh and bone and blood, I don’t know. But I see no sign of Dare, of Rune, of Samick.

Through the thrumming echo in my head, dizzying me, I hear the distant booming song of war shouts. They rise up like the calls of the dead, coming from all over.

The dizziness sways me.

I push up onto all fours.

I see them.

Light fae, warriors of the sun, of Licht, unearthing themselves. Literally unearthing from the deep snow bordering the Mother Stone.

They buried themselves—and waited for the explosives to go off.

Now, they are rising, rising, until they become a smear in the distance, like brown wisps of violent brushstrokes over the snow.

They stand between us and the Mother Stone.

I can’t wrap my mind around it.

For a moment, I fix my stunned stare ahead, through the clearing smoke and ash, and I go over it again and again. It wasn’t the treelines they hid in. They did not bide their time in the branches, the dead leaves, in the frosty bark. Didn’t even hide behind the Mother Stone.

My folk buried themselves in the fucking snow.

That is commitment.

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