Page 170 of Cursed Shadows 4
Slowly, Daxeel brings his face to mine. Strands of dark hair tickle my brow as he brushes his nose against mine, softly, tenderly—and he murmurs, “Goodbye, evate.”
I blink on his words.
And still, I wait for the pain to tear through me, for Mother to reach out from the mountainside and snatch me up. I wait for death to come.
Daxeel plants a boot into the snow before he starts to draw away from me. As he rises, he takes the dagger with him.
I should feel the blade slide out from my insides, my heart, my bones, my flesh. Instead, it feels like… warmth, then a slight fuzz on my skin… then nothing at all.
Daxeel towers over me. The dagger is loose in his grip, merely tinted with a faint smear of crimson at the tip. But the rest of the blade is clean.
His breaths are charged, his shoulders rising and falling with them, but there is a fatigue weighing him down. A mild frown of regret.
He stares down at me. “I will destroy you,” he rasps, soft. “I’ll see you on your knees, and you will weep at my feet. You will beg.” He scoffs a bitter sound, and I faintly understand these words to have been spoken before, promised to me back at Comlar. “And when all that is done,” he adds, his mouth twisting into something grim, “you will meet my dagger.”
‘That is a fae’s promise…’
He pushes back a step. “I never did specify which dagger you would meet.”
My eyes threaten to bulge right out of my head.
A panicked sound rushes between my parted lips. I suck on a gasp and look down my body at where he plunged the dagger. My chin presses to my clavicle. All I see is a fine line of crimson. One little flecked line.
A dupe dagger.
He stabbed me with a dupe dagger…
My lashes flutter on the stunned truth.
Daxeel has forgotten me, left me here, frozen somewhere between a fright in death and a slow understanding.
He walks towards the Mother Stone.
“Take the bond of evate,” Daxeel whispers the words like a prayer he doesn’t feel, one he knows by heart, and recites from need, not want. His jaw tenses and he shuts his lashes on the rest, “and deliver the Cursed Shadows to the iilra.”
He drops to his knees—and lets the dupe dagger hit the snow. His head bows… and he waits.
My mind whirls behind my panicked eyes.
I press my cheek to the snow and look down at the battle. Some fights still rage on, but most have stilled. Gone stagnant. Warriors have broken apart—and gape up at us, at the Mother Stone, frown at me and wait for my death, blink their tears of disappointment.
So many think I am seconds from death. But each one of them understands that Daxeel got what he wanted. He made the wish—and offered the sacrifice.
Now, it’s Mother’s move.
My throat bobs.
Still time…
There is still time… right?
If Mother hasn’t answered him yet, and the mountain hasn’t yet been struck with the avalanche and the quake, and the iilra haven’t pulled us out—then that means Mother hasn’t yet granted Daxeel’s wish.
We wait for Mother…
But does Mother wait for me?
The thought has my heart slingshotting through me.
