Page 8 of Cursed Shadows 5

Every other step, I push up on the toes of my boots and frown over shoulders and heads. All I see are more shoulders, more heads, some panicked faces, all through a haze that’s settling in me.

A female backs into me, and I am knocked into a stumble. Her babe is swaddled firm in a wrap, and she holds it close to her chest as if to protect it from what holds her gaze.

Brow knitted, I stagger around and trace her stare to Comlar, to the storming spiral that powers from the stone courtyard up into the sky. Less volatile than before the second passage, it’s a steady stream that echoes with a thunderous rumble.

My mouth tightens as I search for the tower in the distance,mytower. But I don’t see so much as the outline, the silhouette…

It is gone.

Fallen, like the rest of Comlar.

All that’s left is the steady stream of darkness that floods the thick black of the sky, a darkness that presses down on us in Kithe, dims the streetlamps, the glowjars, the torches—and ifmore aren’t lit soon, I imagine we’ll all be plunged into utter blindness.

A burn of nausea singes my insides. It draws me back to the present, reminds me of the healer.

Halfway there.

Just need to keep going, a bit more.

But as I turn my back on Comlar, and my ears begin to ring, I find that my head feels heavy and it’s starting to loll.

I lean my weight forward—and push on.

Something knocks the back of my head.

There is not enough fight in me to even snarl as a youngling is passed from parent to parent, over my head, and its horrid, honeyed hands reach out too close to my face.

The stickiness of those chubby hands has my face twisting as I cringe away.

All that escapes me is a grumbled sound.

I shove past the parents and take pause at the rear of a carriage. I sag against it, my lashes consuming my vision.

I just need to rest a moment, only a moment.

“Nari!”

I frown.

My hooded gaze drags around the bodies entombing me.

“Nari!”

My sagging shoulders tense, my neck arches and I force a hand up into the air, but it does little more than raise, it doesn’t flap or wave. Whatever scraps of energy I have fought to hold onto, they are gone now, slipping between my fingers like water in a fisted grip.

But my voice manages a faint whisper, something that sounds so close to a beloved word, a name etched into my heart…

“Eamon.”

“I’m coming, Nari!” He sounds far, a thrum of noise between us. “Stay right there!”

I couldn’t disobey even if I wanted to.

My knees creak louder than the carriages that rattle all around the street. Beneath my weight, the fault of my muscles slowly sinks my legs downwards—and before I can hit the ground, arms come swooping around me.

I blink on the foggy dimness encasing me.

There is no Eamon to face me. He grabs me from behind, his arms hooked under my pits, and he hoists me into him.

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