Page 23 of Cursed Shadows 1

Above in the dark skies, there should be morke slapping around, hissing, and stalking us. Morke beasts are… unnerving. Dark creatures that poison fae with their venom, well any fae that isn’t dokkalf.

Humans die fast from morke venom. Light fae and unseelies get sick, bedridden with fevers and hallucinations. But ones like me? Halflings? I don’t know what their venom would do to my body.

Maybe kill me, like it would do a fullblood human.

After all, they are destroyers.

Morke are what wiped out the black phoenixes in the Midlands. Slick, tarry creatures with razored tentacles.

I shudder to think too much on them.

But if there is anything that morke fear—or, like the shadows on the ground,serve—it’s the dark fae. Wherever they are, the morke flee from. Even they are afraid of the dokkalves.

So dokkalves must come to escort us into the dark parts of the Midlands. If not for them, the morke would overwhelm us, overrun us, and kill us all with the venom in their tentacles that they would choke us with, crush our bones with.

Our kinds have been at war so long, but neither side won. So the treaty had to happen eventually. What point is there to a war that neither side can be victor of? We, the light ones, can’t invade the dark lands, not with the threat of the morke. They alone could wipe out our armies.

But then, the dokkalves can’t invade our lands, either. Not when our sunlight burns the males alive. Reduces them to ash.

So here we are, in the shaky alliance—a frailty to it, and for me, a newfound wave of terror as I shadow father around the carriage. I’ve always been afraid of the dark ones. I had nightmares about them when I was a child, nightmares that they would catch me, cook me alive, then force me to watch as they ate strips of my flesh and used my bones to pick at their teeth.

Loving one of them didn’t change that I feared them.

Now, I fear them more than ever—because those shadows on the ground, I’ve never seen anything like them, I’ve never heard any tales of them, or read any scripture about the shadows that slither around the dark fae like a selkie would hold onto a dead and drowned lover it had lured down into the depths of the seas.

Between us and them, the shadows start to peel back. A narrow clearing is made for us. A direct line to the three, unmoving dokkalves ahead, hidden not only by blackness, but by heavy coats with drawn hoods.

Our mixed group walk the made path.

I fight another shudder that threatens to rattle my shoulders. Steeling myself, I’m as stiff as I am unnerved. But I can’t stop the breaths from rattling through me, like they’re being shook by one of those shadows reaching into me and gripping too tight.

Eamon’s arm brushes up against mine. A soothing gesture. A piece of compassion not often found in his darker half.

“Don’t react,” he whispers, and it’s spoken so softly, so quietly, that no one around us seems to hear that he spoke at all.

His words are for me.

He takes my wrist in his firm, comforting grip—he means to steady me just as the unmoving dokkalves ahead break from their statue stances. They move. Three sets of gloved hands lift, and it seems to happen in perfect synchronicity.

Leather-wrapped fingers grip fur-lined hoods. They draw them back as we approach them, and they reveal their faces. It’s the light from our fire-torches and lanterns that illuminates them, otherwise we would be blind out here.

But we see them in the faint orange hues of firelight that doesn’t quite seem to break through the darkness like it does the night in Licht.

And then I realize—

‘Don’t react.’

Eamon’s words were a warning. His hand tight on my wrist is not of comfort, it’s a hold against a threat. He sensed who was ahead, he sensed his cousin among the three dark fae waiting for us in the shadows.

Daxeel.

My heart is quick to slingshot into my throat and choke me.

My steps falter, boots nearly scuffing over the harsh dirt.

It’s Eamon’s firm hold on me that stops me from staggering, and it’s the fear that keeps me from crying out a harrowing shout.

Daxeel looks right at me with eyes that gleam darkly from the shadows.

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