Page 52 of Cursed Shadows 4
My breath is bated, my chest unmoving, and my hand like steel around the hilt.
It’s only when there comes a sigh from Ridge that I move.
I look over at him.
He’s slumped against the boulder, his bottom planted on the foliage, and his cheek is turned to the direction that the dokkalf disappeared.
His senses, I trust.
The dokkalf is gone. Not for long. But for now.
Lilac eyes lift to me. “Why did you help me?” There’s a hoarseness to his breath that flurries a panic in my chest. “He wouldn’t have killed you.”
I know what he’s really asking me.
Why save me when there is a chance, however small, thatImight kill you?
I lift my chin and look down my nose at him.
Our gazes lock—and hold for a long moment.
I frown and, slowly, lower the knife to my side.
I don’t consider him now, right here before me. I consider the Ridge who, in memory, helped me up from the mud when I was a child, and walked me home. I consider Ridge who I have suspicions loves my dearest friend, who smoked valerian with me on the roof of Hemlock House and visited the human realm to skate on ice and drink at loud clubs.
“You won’t.” I speak it with such certainty that it is no compliment, it just is.
I push into step towards the dead dokkalf that Ridge took down, the burly sword-wielding creature of nightmares.
If I had the energy to be impressed, I would tell him so.
This dokkalf would be no easy defeat.
But I am short of the urge to chit-chat, and so I tuck the knife into my holster as I advance on the fresh corpse.
Before I reach the puddle of black blood, a small smile flickers over Ridge’s lovely pink mouth. An unspoken response to my certainty that he won’t harm me.
I pretend I didn’t see it and crouch at the limp arm of the fallen dark one. I spare him a frown for only a heartbeat, then reach out for his trousers.
I riffle through his pockets.
A ghastly thing to do, a depraved act I never thought myself capable of, but now that my hand is buried deep in a trouser pocket, and I’m wrangling out a small pouch of what feels like nuts, I decide it all came too easily to me.
“He will come back for you,” Ridge wheezes.
I throw a look over my shoulder at him.
He’s moved from the boulder. Now, he’s standing, his back leaning against the mossy trunk of a tree.
My frown settles on the slick crimson of his glove.
He has his hand pressed to his side, where the dark male plunged a knife.
The stream of blood leaks, all the way down his leg.
“He’ll find more of his kind,” Ridge says with a faint nod, and I suspect his mind is slowing down, “and return.”
The truth of his words doesn’t strike me.
