Page 43 of Black Hearted
“I am a powerful fae,” she admitted, “but your mother and her entire army, along with an Ethereum lord, are not odds I want to face right now. Faerie has a better chance if I go through the portal and take one of the three lords’ hearts. They won’t be expecting me.”
My stomach dropped out.
Dawn. Aribella. Isolde. Their mates.
I clasped my hands in front of me. “Don’t do this,” I pleaded, my voice trembling. It was my last resort. “There is another way. If you would just try to work with us. Zane is bringing another way to end the curse once and for all.”
She raised an eyebrow, her expression unimpressed. “So you’ve said. But tell me, what do you need to do to end the curse?”
I swallowed hard. “Well, I don’t fully know yet, but—”
“Lies,” she snarled, cutting me off. “These deceptive lords open their mouths and spew their lies, and you girls just fall in love with them? How stupid are you? There is no way to destroy the curse, only to delay it for another hundred years.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but she clamped her hand down on my shoulder. Pain sliced through my chest.
“Please, no,” I whimpered, reaching up to fight her off.
A sudden wave of weakness overtook me as my magic drained faster than ever before.
“It took me a while,” she said, her voice sounding distant and far off, “but I finally figured out how this works.”
She held up my dagger. The moonstone embedded in its hilt glowed a bright, searing pink.
With her daggered hand, she reached out and began dragging the tip of the blade across the surface of the mirror portal.
It cut through the hard glass like it was butter.
I gasped as a wave of dizziness overtook me, and Queen Liliana glanced down at me with a frown.
“I really hoped it wouldn’t have to come to this. But your people, and their children’s children, will thank me. I’m saving us all.”
The cut she’d made in the mirrored surface began to peel open, like window shutters. She hacked at it some more, and then suddenly, I was staring into another world.
A cobblestone pathway stretched ahead of us, leading to a bustling street beyond.
She still had a hold of me and as my magic left me, black dots danced at the edges of my vision as the queen stared down at me.
“Thank you for your sacrifice, Princess Lorelei. I won’t let it be in vain,” she said, tightening her grip on my shoulder.
It felt like my soul was being ripped from my body.
Horrific pain flared from my navel to my nose as I struggled to breathe. My eyelids grew heavy, and I couldn’t keep them open as the last vestiges of my magic were siphoned away.
Then Queen Liliana released me.
I slumped to the ground, my vision flickering in and out.
This was the end. I was dying. I thought about my parents and my wonderful sisters. And Zane. He appeared in my thoughts, too. Those blue eyes with the fleck of brown.
But Zane hadn’t come soon enough, and now I would never get the chance to end the curse. I only hoped Zane could find a way to do it for me.
Zane.
The thought of him again and a phantom spike drove straight into my heart. Oh, how I wished I’d had more time to know him.
As my eyesight dimmed, I watched helplessly as Queen Liliana stepped through the portal and into Ethereum, her mind set on murder.
Then the darkness took me into its sweet embrace, and there was pain no more.
