Page 16 of Cursed Shadows 4
The breath that spears me is sharp enough to flood my lungs and, with a tilted chin, I welcome it.
Heads bob at waist-level for me, now.
I search for familiarity.
I sweep my gaze all around the faces of the light contenders. I catch no glimpse of Ronan or Ridge.
Arms hugged around myself, I keep to this little spot on the crumbled wall, at the foot of the grandstand.
Here, the body heat is less of a sweaty blaze, the air not as suffocating than if I were to slip down the rubble to the courtyard floor again.
I scan the crowded courtyard.
The iilra flitter through the clusters of muscled warriors with too much ease, spectres shifting through space and time. A dozen of them spread out to form a rectangular border around the tarry portal.
I stare at it a moment. The portal.
In the first passage, I watched that mirror-like surface, as though it were a window, and I saw battles, I saw blood, but I didn’t see the caves.
Now, I see the distant crevices and jarred edges of a frosted mountainside. It’s faint, shrouded in grey mists, but the harder I stare, the better I see the sheer size of this mountain—an impossible climb if one was to land at the bottom of it.
I have the gut-wrenching suspicion that it will be different this time, that the portal will reveal all to these spectators. They will see everything we see.
It feels true to even think it: On the Mountain of Slumber, there is no hiding.
That doesn’t work for me.
At least in the first passage, there were caves that the warped window of space and time couldn’t penetrate, couldn’t see. Now, the sickly sensation coiling through me tells me that it will be different on the mountain.
There are parts of myself, horrible and ugly parts, that might be revealed if I’m not careful.
I can lie.
No one in my family knows that.
Only Daxeel and Eamon are aware of this rare talent.
I can lie—
If I’m not careful on the mountain, my father might learn that awful truth about me by watching me in the tarry windows.
Father will watch.
I know it as a fact that is as heavy as lead in my gut.
He’ll be here now. Up there, on the grandstand, trying to lure in my gaze if he’s spotted me already.
I can’t fight the niggle to look at him anymore.
My eyes burn, my jaw clenches, tight.
I angle my chin to scan the faces of the spectators.
That’s all I do as the iilra start the low thrum of their chants; a whisper that hums all over the courtyard, blending in seamlessly with the thundering spiral of darkness that feeds the skies above.
I don’t watch the iilra.
I stare up at the grandstand. My gaze flickers over face after face, in search of my family. Then, out the corner of my eye, movement flaps. A hand waves at me. A warm brown hand, slender, fluttering back and forth, back and forth.
