Page 5 of Cursed Shadows 5

Grass is damp and rich against my palms. Small stones gloss beneath my fingertips.

I run my touch over the ground—and feel the shift from earth, from nature, to flat pieces of polished wood.

That frown digs further into my furrowed face.

I must look dizzy, stupid, on the brink of passing out.

But no one can see how I look, because not only has the darkness swallowed me whole, I hear no one around me, no one close by.

I roll my jaw, once, twice before my ears pop.

Like lifting my head out of water, sound is no longer distant, muffled. I find myself in the dark, Comlar’s thunderous chaos far to my left, the swell of panic to my right.

I turn my chin to my shoulder.

It’s faint, the little specs of light that flicker and dance from the shouts and the cries and drumming song of bootsteps. The folk who fled Comlar are down there, down in the streets of Kithe.

Which means I am on the path between them.

I understand now, the smooth polished wood beneath my palm. A gameboard.

I am in the place where the gambling tricks went on, where light and dark met before the second passage, and they played, and they gambled, and they laughed…

Ridge was one of them.

My throat thickens at the memory, of him and Luna huddled around a gameboard, and Eamon’s flushed cheeks, and my invite for them both to join us at the Gloaming.

Silly, little halfling. Getting herself into all sorts of trouble.

I have no time to feel sorry for myself or weep about the past. I can’t afford to let the resolve I have held throughout the Sacrament crumble now.

I clutch onto the scraps of that resolve and look down to those faint, tiny flickering lights in the distance, lights that were once much stronger, brighter against the black backdrop of the Midlands.

Those dim lights are where I should be focused.

Not to be dramatic, but I am in desperate need of a healer. And if Comlar is falling, then I imagine the medical tents and healers are down there in town.

I bite down on the anticipation, braced for the pain that is about to sing through every bit of me—and I move. My boots slide closer to my bottom before I lean my weight forward and start to rise.

My teeth bare, gritted down on a strangled groan.

That groan doesn’t let up. It is drawn out, eternal, and—as I stand, wobbly, uneasy—the groan hitches into a whimper.

The pain is shredding me, searing my thighs and punching from the inside of my skull.

Something isdefinitelybroken in my shoulder. I can’t lift my left hand, not higher than above the elbow.

I let it dangle limp at my side as I stumble one boot forward.

My head spins.

The darkness somehow worsens it, dizzies me more, and I don’t know where my next step should be, which way I am facing. I land my boot on the grass, harsh, too harsh, and I mutter a garbled apology before I stumble into a tree.

My head knocks off the bark, and the scrape of flesh is fast followed by a warm sensation.

I rest for a moment.

One heartbeat; my lashes shut on the rugged bark pressing into my face, droplets of blood misting my forehead.

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