Page 50 of Cursed Shadows 5

The only discomfort I suffer at present is the threat of this sticky youngling, a toffee apple fastened to his lopsided belt, and I fear the boy might contaminate me.

A wooden sword swings from his sticky grip—and as he skids to a stop in front of me, I cringe back on instinct.

The youngling doesn’t notice, he is undeterred in his flurried excitement. “Watch! Watch me! This is you!”

I blink down at the boy.

His feet swing apart to plant wide, and he throws out his arms, as though they are clawed at the hands, and he snarls something throaty, but warbled, the war cry of a youngling.

He lunges with a sudden hiss.

I flinch.

My boots scrape over the cobblestone, a swift two-step stagger back, away from the little vicious creature gnashing at my knees.

The urge to boot him is strong enough to tense my toes in my boots.

I steel myself.

“Did you watch?” His viciousness vanishes, and he lifts a blank look up at me. “I was you.”

The youngling’s mother finally reaches us.

My face sours—her quick steps, while fast-paced, are too slow for my liking.

The look I level on her is anything but kind.

She doesn’t notice. Her flushed face is turned down to the child as she rushes out the words, “Run off again and I will clip your ankles.”

My brow hikes.

Dokkalf parents I do imagine are harsher than litalf ones, and I don’t question this dokkalf mother to a litalf child. Kithe is teeming with all sorts of blended families. At this point, I doubt I would be too shocked if a pixie flew past me now, followed by a brood of waddling ducklings for kin.

I do wonder one thing; how true the threat of the mother is. Will she really do it, clip his ankles?

Dokkalves can lie, after all.

And the threat doesn’t strike the child.

He keeps his bright look up at me.

Snatching the scruffy creature by the wrist, the dokkalf throws an exhausted glare up at me. “He has not ceased his obsession with you since the second passage,” she sighs and tosses her purple tinted hair over a shoulder. “We hide the swords, he finds the true ones; we put him to bed for the rest but find him later in the tree. And he won’t stop,” she enunciates with a rattle of his wrist, “giving the dog his meals as offerings.”

“No trade, no life,” the youngling says with a nod, a nod like he has it all figured out, as thoughIdo.

But I don’t.

I don’t know what to say, so I just say, “Oh.”

“I will be like you!” The youngling bounces on the balls of his feet. “Fren and foe beware!”

Those last words are spoken with too much confidence in their errors. Certainly a phrase he has heard around,friend and foe beware, but not one he understands—or articulates.

Uncertainty pinches my face as, slowly, I lower to one knee. I place the tins flat on the ground and level my stare with the child’s.

There is too much hope and admiration in his eyes, the way he is looking at me; and I need it to stop. But it feels wrong to kick him away.

So I bring my thumb to my teeth, then bite. Rubies are quick to spring from my flesh.

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