Page 56 of Cursed Shadows 4

He is a piece with autonomy outside of their plans.

Daxeel can only trust himself to do what must be done, and to do it painlessly.

But first…

He needs to find Nari.

16

††††††

My calculations were off.

Not a half-hour, it turns out to be the full hour before we reach the rockpool with the overhang.

Ridge—in all his honour—doesn’t slip away to fever sleep. He fights to keep awake, to keep his weight off my shoulders, and his boots moving.

I’m glad for it, because it’s better for his bones that I don’t have to roll him down the forest floor and into a rockpool, all because I can’t carry him alone.

The water of the rockpool is shallow, barely reaching the ankles of our boots. We kick our way across, the exhaustion of the second passage already weighing us down. Slowing us down, too.

Even my legs are bendy beneath me, my lashes are draped over my eyes, and I’m sagging with the poisoned fae.

I hardly feel the sting of the cut on my neck or the moisture that’s glistened all over my brow.

We cut through the pool, because we have not enough energy to walk around it for the overhang that’s something of a stone umbrella curving out from the cracked and deformed cliff to shade over the edge of a small pool.

My mood doesn’t sour at the sight of it. It lifts with a flutter of relief.

It’s better than I expected.

Beneath the stone shade is a sort of cavern. Not a cave, exactly. Small and delicate, I consider it more of a hollow that’s carved into the rock of the mountain.

It’ll be a tight fit.

We don’t have time to search for something better.

We move for the overhang. At least it shields us from view. The only way anyone will know we have taken shelter here is if they come to the rockpool for water—then they will have a direct view into the stone hollow.

That’s if no one picks up our scents.

With Ridge bleeding so freely, I don’t pin too much hope on our hidden scents. I’m covered in mud, still, and my scent should be muted, but Ridge…

I could always leave him behind.

Look out for myself. Find shelter away from him.

I could help him settle, feed him white powder… then leave when he falls into the fever sleep.

But a dokkalf might catch his scent, his blood. Might hunt him down. Find him alone, unable to defend himself in brutal dreams, and then Ridge will be killed.

And it will partly be my fault.

No, I can’t leave him.

It wouldn’t be fair to him, Ridge who has helped me before, befriended me, been kind. It wouldn’t be right to steal him away from Eamon, who has done so much for me.

I find that I care.

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