Page 22 of Cursed Shadows 1

“Stay away from him, Nari,” he warns me. “For your own good.”

I fall silent. Even the tear that runs down my cheek is quiet.

6

††††††

I spent every day leading up to this one doing three things:

Practicing dance

Packing, unpacking, repacking

Drafting pleading speeches I might give to Daxeel

And now that the day has come when I’m stuffed into this carriage headed for Comlar, the place of the garrison and stronghold, I’m only certain of one thing: My dancing. I’m prepared for the opening ceremony for the Sacrament.

The rest?

Not so much.

It doesn’t help my nerves that we are crammed in here like pickled plums in a jar. It’s a small carriage, too small for all of us. Eamon; his mother, Morticia; my father, Brok; Pandora; and two extra trunks of my own that couldn’t fit on the carriage roof.

Taroh and his father are in the other carriage with the servants.

I’m a little more than grateful I’m not squished up against my darling prick of a fiance for the long ride. It is long. Many hours before we reach the bridge that stretches across an unforgiving sea to the isle, and then some more hours before I can even see the wall of darkness as I peer through the carriage window.

And it is a wall. Like the dark knows that there’s a border there it cannot cross, it shoots upwards instead, to the sky,beyondthe sky, who knows?

The carriages are slowing down. The steeds are huffing and grunting. And I understand why. I feel the same. Tiny bumps erect all over my body, prickled, as though a thousand invisible spiders swarm me.

Instincts whisper to me, ‘Do not go there. Stay in the light. Run from the dark.’

The thumps of the hard hooves hitting the dirt are thunderous enough to shudder the carriage. It’s like they’re fighting for their lives out there, desperate to stop themselves before we reach the shadow wall.

And they do.

With the black wall looming in front of us, towering over us with promises ofthere’s-no-going-back, the steeds stop and refuse to go any further. I don’t blame them.

We are sat in silence for a while. My cobalt leather boots scuff on the floor to betray my nerves, and if that didn’t give me away then the anxious fidgeting of my fingers would, the fingers that pick over and over at the long sleeves of my blue sweater and the knees of my narrow black breeches. I’m dressed plainly, but comfortable for travel and warm enough for the cold we should expect in the darkness.

But right now, I feel anything but warm and comfortable.

It feels like a pocket of eternity before the carriage door whips open, and a human servant stands there. He falls into a deep bow, then steps aside.

We pile out, one by one.

I delay my exit for last, then tuck up close to Eamon, as though his dark side will protect me from the shadows ahead.

And there are true shadows ahead—I see them faintly, but enough to make out that there are three of them. My eyes narrow, strained against the late evening light on our side of the land, the darkness of theirs, and the torchlights that the servants ignite around us.

Three dokkalves ahead. Three tall dark figures hidden in the shadows. No, not hidden,melted, like they are one, like they belong.

Just some steps ahead, and I’ll be swallowed up by the dark. But there’s something unexpected about it, something unusual: The darkness that slithers over the ground in thick billows, like they are sentient and malevolent, like they scour the ground for any signs of life and are…hunting.

Something about them trickles chilled caution down my spine. How they wind around the boots of the dark fae standing there like unmoveable statues; how it curls and lashes around them as though to serve the dark ones, to defend them; but most of all, I notice how different the shadows that slither over the ground are; that they are thicker and move more than the eternal dark in the air.

I don’t understand it. But my body understands enough, because a violent shudder rattles me, and I hug my arms around myself.

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