Page 1 of Cursed Shadows 5

THE FALL OF COMLAR

Evate means many things.

It is the moment a dark male first ever sees or smells a potential mate. It’s a moment of lust and rage, of the animal within stirred awake. The instincts storming within the male, to fuck, to kill; to maim, to kiss.

It is the female.

It is the connection.

Evate is the experience, the mate,and the bond.

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††††††

Dying…

I must be dying.

Can’t move.

The ache in my ribs is blinding, swirled all around me. It burrows deeper into my tissue with every failed inhale.

Can’t breathe.

I’m buried beneath the rubble. The shards of the grandstands that blasted through the courtyard, the stone and debris of Comlar, the fae that were thrown through the air with me—we are a pile of unmoveable rubble.

I need to get out of here.

My chin is turned sideways, pinned, and I can see little more than a cloud of dust and smoke and shadows. The occasional shadow cuts through the smoke, but it’s so quick and fleeting that I wonder if it’s real or if it is the end of my life ebbing into my mind, tricking me.

I worm my boot under what feels like a round rock. Maybe a head. Still, slow, I squirm my boot against it.

It’s the only movement I can manage.

Others are here with me, buried, trapped like I am. Their moans are faint. There’s a blubbering whimper close to me and on the verge of panic.

If I could make much sound at all, my cries would be joining theirs.

But I am silenced…strangled.

The solid weight of a leg is crushing down on my neck. The cartilage in my throat creaks against the muscled leg with every stifled breath that wheezes in and out of my parted lips, up and down my aching chest.

The ringing in my ears is humming through me. My lips part around grating noises that are too soft, too quiet.

No one is coming to save me this time.

Slack-faced, I watch the cloud of smoke disturb with shadows. If it wasn’t for the thudding symphony of boots smacking down on stone, I would return to my thoughts of hallucinations, that what I am seeing is the trickery of death drawing nearer and nearer—but it isn’t. It’s folk, fleeing the thundering, rumbling bass of the Cursed Shadows, of the darkness… of the fall of Comlar.

I can’t flee.

I am trapped.

And those folk run right past me.

This can’t be the end.

Not after all that I survived in the Sacrament.

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