Page 65 of Curse of Darkness
Nothing to attack.
Nothing but light gleaming below me as Finn backs between six ghostly pale figures who encircle him. Our gazes meet, and his nostrils flare as he attacks the closest figure, desperate to get to me.
Then an eddy of mist sweeps between us, and all I can hear is the grunt of his breath and the ringing echo of his steel.
“Finn!” I yell, crouching low.
“Don’t stop! Go!”
Go?Every inch of my soul rebels against that command.
Footsteps crunch over gravel.
A figure stalks through the mist toward me.
An enormous figure with thick dark hair sweeping over his broad shoulders, where the hint of wings linger.
It’s like watching every nightmare I’ve ever had step forth from my dreams. For a second my heart leaps—it’s Thiago, he’s back—but then my eye starts to notice the small details I missed at first glance.
He’s taller than my husband by an inch, and where Thiago moves with the lithe grace of a predator, this bastardstalks. His long black hair blows around a pale face which is marked with black tattoos.
And his eyes are black.
Black as soulless night. Black as the Darkness I stared into when I begged my husband to return. Black as the frigid depths of the lake.
Black as ice.
Everything inside me goes cold.
“Well, you little bitch,” Malakhai sneers. “You might finally be good for something.”
Sauntering toward me, he slowly draws his sword. It’s the same color of his eyes, as if darkness merely coalesced into a blade. Shadows stream off it, and I stare at it in horror, knowing that if it touches my skin, it won’t be mere death that greets me.
No. This is a sword of oblivion.
I forge my bow again, but my singed fingers flinch, and the magic flickers and dies as I hiss. Pain throbs through them.
“Pathetic.” Malakhai steps over a fallen log. “How did that wretched little wyrm ever look at you and see something worthy of him?”
My knife. I have one knife left.
I whip it toward him. “Don’t you dare speak of him. Don’t youdare. Your tongue isn’t worthy to even breathe his name.”
He feints to the left with the sword and I dance out of the way—right into a fist.
The shock of it reverberates through me, but I haven’t spent all these months training with Finn for nothing. I turn with the impact, sweeping low and spinning so that I dive right below his reach, my knife scoring across the back of his thigh.
As I stagger to face him again, he bares his teeth at me, reaching down to wipe at the slash cut across his trousers.
Blood. Black blood.
Rage ignites in those eyes.
And then the sword swings toward me, enormous sweeping blows I can barely dodge. I barely parry one with the knife, altering the sword’s course just enough that it scores through the upper slope of my shoulder.
White fire rakes through me. I scream and spin away, staggering over a rock. I can’t feel my arm. My fingers tingle, but there’s a creeping dread within me….
Malakhai lifts the sword again, lightning flickering in the sky behind him—
