Page 3 of Cursed Shadows 5

Come to watch me die.

Samick stands there.

He is a stroke of ice on the edge of the smoke cloud. So close to me that, if he reached out his hand for my face, the whisper of his fingertips would graze me.

He does not touch me.

His head tilts to the side as he considers me, and it would look passive, almost fleeting if it wasn’t for those pale, green eyes like blades of grass caught in a blizzard.

I look up at him.

He stares down at me.

He risks his life in the collapse of Comlar, in the violence of the Cursed Shadows lashing through the courtyard and whipping through the stone.

He risks fatal injury out here.

He should run to Kithe with the rest of the fae.

But he doesn’t.

He just watches me.

I think he means to watch me die, to watch as I take my last breath…

That thought wisps through my mind, a ribbon swishing and swishing, tangling in on itself—then it vanishes the moment Samick takes a step closer to me.

I would flinch if I could, if I wasn’t starting to see the stars of unconsciousness, of suffocation dancing through my vision.

In the star speckled darkness taking over me, Samick moves for the stone above me.

My head is locked in place, my chin tucked to the side, cheek pressed into a metal plate of armour, and so I can’t see what he does. I just know he touches his bare hands to the rubble—and everything suddenly is cold.

Cold, like the mountain. Cold, like frost and ice and the river when it tried to drown me.

Cold like Samick…

I am losing my fight against the gods of death.

My eyes are rolling back now, slowly, and I struggle to watch as Samick turns his hands to the rubble beneath me. Lashes flutter, disturbing my warping vision.

Still, I make out Samick drawing back with a reeling fist.

A startled breath tries to suck in through my parted lips, but my lungs are empty, burning me from the inside out.

Samick’s eyes flare like emerald flames, then he collides his fist into the frozen rubble—and a sudden breath floods me.

It happens in such a blur, clouded by the smog and the blasting debris, but Ifeelit all. I feel the grips of Samick’s icy hands snatch me, fast, too fast, and yank me out of the falling rubble; I feel metal and boots and buttons scrape over every bare spot of my skin; I feel the weight disappear.

And I am limp, floating, as Samick throws me over his shoulder.

Still, I feel it all.

Not just the crushing pressure of my middle on his solid shoulder, or the thumping of dizziness through my body with every one of his steps.

I feel the cries of the folk still in that rubble, the shifted weight and the crushing bones.

Samick leaves them behind.

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