Page 7 of Black Hearted
“When it’s lighter, then,” I told her, and she made a noise that I think meant she agreed.
We’d walked about two-thirds of the way through the town already, and rather than backtracking, I steered her toward the first home that looked mostly intact. It was a squat, A-framed wooden house set back from the street. There was a small decorative fence in the front yard that only reached my hips. It was once white but now held the same grayish hue that everything else did in the village.
The gate was open and, much like the door of the first cottage we passed, hanging from only a single hinge. The front door of the house was still attached, though, and the windows weren’t shattered or broken, which I took as a good sign.
We walked up to the door, and just as I was reaching for the knob, I paused, my ears picking up noise coming from something other than Nellie or me for the first time since entering the town.
“What?” Nellie asked, looking up at me with wide, scared eyes.
I held a hand out toward her. “Stay here,” I ordered and then started around the side of the house in the direction of what sounded like a faint grunting noise.
When I reached the back of the house, I froze, taking in what I assumed was once open space for the town’s members to enjoy but was now a makeshift graveyard.
Dozens, maybe even up to a hundred piles of turned dirt, were laid out in front of me, each one with its own rough stone marker. The marker was similar to what we did back in Ethereum to honor our dead.
Off to the side, I spotted an older man digging another hole in the ground, grunting with each stab of his shovel into the dirt.
“What’s going … ?” Nellie started as she came up next to me, having completely ignored my command to stay put. I rolled my eyes. She crossed her arms.
The man’s head whipped up, and his gaze landed on Nellie and me immediately. I didn’t fear him. Even with my powers somewhat unreliable at the moment, a single fae wasn’t any match for me, but I still nudged Nellie behind me.
“Who goes there?” the fae called, a touch of mistrust in his voice, and I didn’t blame him. Even if it wasn’t obvious that we weren’t from his town, Nellie and I were covered in oil from head to toe. We had to be a sight to behold.
Lifting a hand in what I hoped was received as a friendly gesture, I started to slowly walk toward him. “Just a pair passing through on our way to the Spring Court. We were hoping to take shelter here in town tonight before moving on.”
I stopped before drawing too close, not wanting to spook him more than I already had. Nellie stayed a step behind me, and for that, I was grateful.
With my hand, I gestured up and down my body. “As you can see, we ran into a bit of trouble.”
The fae’s grip on his shovel loosened a little as I spoke. He opened his mouth to reply, but a hacking cough racked his body,and I could hear an underlying wetness to it. When it cleared, he said, “Decided to take a swim in the river of darkness, did you?”
That was an apt name for what we’d just floated in.
Reaching back, I rubbed the back of my neck and chuckled. “Something like that. I’m Zane, by the way.”
He nodded at me. “Evander.” He wheezed, coughing again.
By the lines on his face, I’d guess that Evander was older than me by at least three decades, but he had a strong build and was clearly fit despite the slightly gaunt look of his face. His shoulders were almost as broad as my own, and he was also a tall fae. Again, not quite as tall as me—very few fae were—but almost. His beard was speckled with brown and white, and his gaze was both wary and tired at the same time.
Nellie poked out from behind me, and Evander’s eyes shifted to her and warmed before returning to me.
“And this is Nellie,” I added.
“Did you say you were passing through?” he asked, and I nodded. “Where from?”
He didn’t seem suspicious of us, more curious, but even so, I had no intention of telling him the truth. “The other side of the Harvest Mountains,” I told him, then gave him the name of a town I remembered from the map.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Nellie shooting me a look that I ignored. I might not have been able to hide that I was from Ethereum from her because she’d seen my powers, but it wasn’t something I wanted to broadcast. From what Isolde and the other princesses had told me, these seelie had deep-rooted prejudice against our realm, and if this fae had any help to offer us, I planned to take it.
“What happened here?” I asked, waving a hand toward the graves and then the fresh hole he was digging.
I hadn’t missed that just behind him was something wrapped in a dirty sheet that was approximately the size and shape of a body. I didn’t think this man was a murderer. What killer dug graves for their victims? But just in case, I reached for my magic so that I was ready to lash out if he tried anything.
Evander grunted a half-laugh that was completely devoid of humor. “What do you think? The curse, of course. Many of us stayed, thinking we could hold out and withstand it, but …” He let his words trail off, and sorrow filled his gaze. He shook his head, glancing over his shoulder at the wrapped figure. “This was our neighbor. He passed just this morning. It’s just me and my wife now. Everyone else either left or—” He gestured to the graves around us before hacking into his fist, this time releasing a gray puff of dust from his mouth.
It was clear the cough was because of the dust.
“Cover your mouth with your shirt,” I whispered to Nellie.
