Page 68 of Cursed Shadows 4

I fight it, swallow it down and pray that the shadows creeping down on the forest floor don’t hear it.

They don’t.

The female is further out of sight, deeper into the mist than the others. I know it’s her when she calls out, “Do you have her scent?”

Ronan’s deep voice answers from just three trees away, “There are a lot of scents out here.”

I watch his shadow closely.

“It’s the blood,” the other fae says. “She was covered in it. Must not be hers.”

I am coated in the death of others. I have mud caked onto my face, my hair, my sweater. But I also have enough of my own blood that Ronan might be able to pick up on my scent again, especially now that he’s so close.

The reminder of the blood, of the stream that oozes from my shoulder, is enough to tense me, as though if I relaxed too much, then the blood would come out in spills and alert them to my presence.

The others will smell me. It’s just that they might not recognise it’s me they smell.

Ronan will recognise it.

Yet between the blood of Ridge and the other fae and the mud from the riverbank, my scent must be shielded enough.

Because he makes no move for me.

“She’s smart,” Ronan says, and his shadow shifts through the fog, as though he takes retreating steps. “She might have followed the call of the river.”

“Downhill,” the female mutters, then—tone firmer—adds, “Let’s go. We can’t risk losing her again.”

They do.

They move so fast that they are gone in a heartbeat. And in two, I don’t hear the faint echoes of their bootsteps anymore.

Still, I wait.

I keep my embrace of the tree, and let time pass me by.

I’m left with the silent question,did Ronan know I was here?

Did he know I am up in the tree, hiding, wounded and on the verge of being slaughtered by our own kind?

Was this his kindness to me?

He did suggest the river, another direction, steering the others away from me. But then, he truly might have believed that I went the other way, that he lost my scent because I fled into the river.

The doubt lingers.

I can’t be sure.

I decide I can’t trust him.

So I wait.

For a long while, I stay up in the tree.

My boots smack on the moist earth. My legs wobble and a sudden dizziness washes over me.

The creases of my eyes pinch as I battle back the swell of nausea in my chest. I aim the squinted look at my shoulder, the smear of red and the stink of blood.

I need the black powder, and I need shelter to pass out in. I don’t have long. Less than an hour, maybe, before I lose too much blood and crumple to the forest floor—out in the open. This rag I’ve fastened around it, it won’t hold.

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