Page 6 of Black Hearted
Lifting my chin, I crossed my arms over my chest and leveled the queen with a hard stare. “I won’t kill any of the Ethereum lords. So asking me to go through that will be pointless.”
The look that washed over her face was nothing short of evil and caused a full-body chill to creep over my skin.
“Oh, I know that, dear.” She reached out and grasped my shoulder hard, pushing me down and forcing me to kneel before her.
“That’s whyI’mgoing to do it. If your Ethereum lord doesn’t come for you like I hope, I’ll go into his realm and carve his black heart from his chest myself.”
Zane. The handsome man I’d met only briefly already had my heart beating frantically just thinking of him.
“Or any of the others. It’s nice that I have so many to choose from.” She grinned as she dug her nails deeper into my shoulder, and I whimpered at the pain.
“You can’t. Only a Spring Court royal can go through our portal when it opens,” I told her.
“Yes, that’s what you’re here for, dear.” Bending down, she picked up my faestone dagger and fisted it in her palm, and my heart rate spiked.
“You know, there is a lot about these daggers that is unknown— how they are capable of harnessing the power of Ethereum to open the portal home, among many other things. But I read a curious thing recently …”
I felt a tug at my navel and then a sharp stabbing pain in my stomach that caused me to keel forward, splaying out my hands to catch myself. The dagger in Queen Liliana’s fist glowed a lightpink, the same color as the moonstone embedded in the hilt, and I gasped as I felt my magic being sucked from my body.
“They can also transfer power from one fae to another.” She grinned, her eyes going from blue to … purple. Like mine.
5
No.
I writhed out of her hold, trying to kick out, but it felt like someone had sliced my stomach open, and I was bleeding out all over the floor. Except it wasn’t blood, it was my magic.
I wasn’t prepared for the sudden weakness that washed over me, making my eyelids droop. My breathing slowed, and I struggled to stay conscious.
Fear flashed in Queen Liliana’s eyes when she saw how weak I was getting, and she released my shoulder just as the darkness took me.
Chapter Three
Zane
It was unnaturally quiet as Nellie and I left the oil river behind us and headed toward the town of Orange Hills. There were no birds flying through the air, no leaves rustling in the trees, no insects chirping or detectable life of any kind as we walked over the blackened, dead grass. Even the wind itself seemed to be holding its breath.
As fae, we shared a close relationship with nature. We respected and nurtured it. Some even had their magic rooted in the life-giving properties of nature itself, which I was told was the case with Lorelei and the fae in Faerie, who had seasonal-based magic. But as I looked around, it was obvious there was no life here anymore, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Everything about this place was unnatural. Wrong.
This land was nothing but death.
Nellie and I remained silent as we reached the first house on the outskirts of town. It was a small cottage painted blue with red shutters and a thatched roof. Even the colors of the home, whichwere probably bright and vibrant at one time, were faded and muted, covered in a layer of what looked like gray soot.
As we passed, I noted that the front door was open and hanging awkwardly from only one of the three hinges. Whoever lived there was long gone.
We walked deeper into town, passing boarded-up storefronts and homes with shattered windows. There wasn’t a single sign of life—not so much as a lit candle flickering in a window. I supposed that made sense. The residents must have fled to another court for shelter because who could survive in this land of death?
Everything in the town appeared to be covered in what looked like a fine layer of dark dust or soot, dulling any colors that would have given this village a livelier look. The sun was still nowhere to be seen in the sky above, but the daylight had darkened, telling me that night was going to fall soon.
I wanted to press on—the need to reach Lorelei was like a living beast, constantly rattling in my chest—but when I glanced over at Nellie, her eyes were drooping, and her steps were unsteady. It was clear she was exhausted, and unless I wanted to carry her through the dark in an unfamiliar and most likely hostile land, we had no choice but to stop here for the night. With any luck, maybe one of these homes still had running water. I would give half my fortune right now to get cleaned up or at least find a fresh set of clothes that weren’t covered in the oily substance we had basically just bathed in.
“We should stay here for the night and get some rest,” I said to Nellie, and she nodded woodenly. “We can set off first thing in the morning when it’s light.”
Nellie glanced up, and the look she gave me was nothing short of eerie. “The sun’s never up anymore,” she said, her voice hollow.
I swallowed, thinking of how much trauma she’d been through recently, how much she’d lost already, and at such a young age. I vowed to myself then and there that I’d make sure I got her to her aunt in the Spring Court, no matter what it took.
