Page 2 of Black Hearted (Cursed Fae #4)
She lifted her hand, palm out, and aimed it at my chest. “I mean it. I’m really powerful. If I think my life is in danger from you at any time, I’ll kill you.”
I held my hands up again. “I will not harm a hair on your head. But I’d like to get down this mountain before night falls. I imagine it gets very dark here.”
She shivered. “Unnaturally dark.”
Squaring her shoulders she peered up at me with a steely look of determination. “Okay, fine. Let’s go. But remember—”
“You have super scary powers, and you’ll kill me if I try to hurt you,” I finished for her, and she nodded.
“Yep.”
“I’m Zane,” I said, holding out my hand and dropping the lord from my title so as not to scare her even more.
“Nellie.” She shook my hand quickly.
“Shall we go?” I offered her my hand again, but this time to help her step up out of the closet. But she shook her head and climbed down herself.
She walked over to a cupboard, grabbed something that I couldn’t see, and then tucked it inside her clothes. It must have been small.
“You okay?” I asked.
She swallowed and looked around the room and although we really had to move on, she paused and said, “It’s just my nana’s favorite necklace. I want to keep it with me.”
I realized how hard this must be for her, leaving her home in fear of what might happen to her if she stayed.
“Okay, take a few more minutes if you need it.”
But then she shook her head.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she said. And with that, we left the house.
When we reached the porch, we both stood there, black liquid almost up to Nellie’s knees and my shins. Going to the railing, I glanced out over the edge of the cliff, where the oil poured over like a dark waterfall.
Nellie hooked her hands into the straps of her backpack. “How are we getting down?”
“You ever ridden piggyback?” I asked.
She made a sour face. “Not since I was five. And that was a long time ago.”
I shrugged. “Well, how about just this once because I can’t think of another way?”
She didn’t look at all impressed with me but nodded, and I crouched down to make it easier for her. When she climbed onto my back, she pinched my ribs with her knees and hooked her arms around my neck.
“Hold on tight and close your eyes,” I told her. She did exactly that. Actually, she held on so tight that she squeezed my throat and restricted my breathing.
“Could you just release your grip a little bit?” I asked in a bit of a muffled voice.
“You just told me to hold on tight!” she huffed.
Phew, this was going to be hard work in more ways than one.
“Fine,” she said, but there was a wobble in her voice that betrayed her fear.
I hated that I didn’t know what was on the other side of this cliff. How far down did it go? How flooded was it at the bottom? I had no idea, but we couldn’t stay here, so what other choice did we have than to descend?
When I went to pull for my magic, it didn’t come at first. Fear knotted my chest, but before I could panic, a bolt of lightning grew from my palm, and the knot of dread loosened.
I threaded the black lightning’s edges with shadows even as I grew it and then lassoed the large willow tree next to the cottage.
I took my time braiding the thick rope of magic so that it would hold our combined weight.
I was more proficient with my lightning magic than I was with the shadows, so it had taken me a long time to figure out how to do this, but I was glad I’d had the patience to learn.
This shadow-coated lightning rope was going to save both of our lives.
“Okay, don’t be afraid. I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” I said as I began to wade further into the deep, oily water.
“My nana said that right before she died,” Nellie sniffled in my ear.
“Did your nana have shadow powers?” I asked her as the current of the thick substance rushed past my knees and up to my thighs as I walked down the porch steps.
“No,” she answered, and I could hear a touch of disgust in her voice. “Nobody here has powers like that.”
I was about to respond when I lost my footing, and we went down. Nellie screamed. Keeping my grip on the lightning rope, I twisted onto my stomach so that Nellie was above the liquid as it pushed us toward the edge.
“We’re okay. We’re going to go over the edge, but my lightning rope will keep us from falling. Don’t be afraid.”
“We’re gonna dieeeeee!” Nellie screamed in my ear so loudly as we went over the edge and began to free fall so quickly that I winced.
But then, just when I was hoping that the lightning rope would pull taut, it suddenly did, stopping our descent with a sharp jerk that made my shoulder ache.
We hung in midair, black oil raining down on us. Concentrating, I slowly extended the rope, trying to look down to gauge how far it was to the bottom, but every time I did, black oil dripped into my eyes.
Nellie sputtered behind me.
“Don’t swallow it,” I warned her.
“I’m trying,” she snapped, and then I felt one of her hands fall away from around my neck. She cried out.
“Keep both hands on me.” Fear gripped me as her legs slipped down my waist.
“I’m slipping! Zane!” she cried, and then she was gone—no longer hanging onto me.
A surge of desperation slammed into me, and I felt sick. It was as if time stopped, and my brain processed a million thoughts in a single second. The way she had said my name clawed at my heart. I had promised nothing would happen to her, and now …
I did the only thing I could think of.
Keeping the lightning rope connected to the tree above, I released the tension, allowing myself to plummet downward as I frantically searched the falling water below until I caught sight of Nellie, about to smack face-first into a lake of thick oil.
I pulled harder than ever before for my power.
As I felt my gift respond, I flicked my free hand quickly toward her, wrapped another rope around her waist, and yanked her back up to me.
The second I had her in my arms, I pulled the upper shadow rope taut, slowing our descent before jerking to a stop.
But something was wrong. I felt it briefly, and then, perhaps because my conjuring the two ropes had been too much, the one connected to the tree above snapped. We both began to fall again. Nellie’s scream didn’t last as long this time.
Luckily, we were only ten feet from the lake of oil, and we went in with a splash.
I bobbed up immediately, searching for Nellie.
“Zane, I can’t swim,” she called out, flailing in the thick oil a little ways from me.
I still had one rope attached to her, so I pulled on it, and she came closer as I treaded to keep us from sinking.
She reached me and frantically climbed onto my back, clinging to my neck. “I thought I was a goner,” she sobbed.
“You’re okay,” I said. I tried to console her, but I was shaken myself. Why had my power failed? Two ropes should not have been too much. But I hardly had time to think about it as I searched for the shore.
The lake that we’d fallen into funneled us into a river of oil.
Since I could keep our heads above the thick substance, I decided to let it carry us farther down, away from the mountain.
As we traveled, Nellie held on tightly, and I tried to imagine how scary this was for her.
She was a young girl stuck with a strange person from another place, and she was unable to swim in a thick river of black oil.
I spoke calmly to her, and eventually, she seemed to become less tense.
It wasn’t long before I saw a town with a desolate landscape. It wasn’t as bad as what we’d just come from—there were withered crops, but oil didn’t cover the ground as it had the mountain.
Pulling us from the river, I rolled onto the shore, panting as Nellie lay beside me, both of us covered head to toe in the foul stuff.
Her chest heaved as she stared at me wide-eyed. “We’re alive.”
I chuckled at her assessment. “We are.”
She peered at the town and shook her head. “Sad that Orange Hills looks like this now.”
I perked up, remembering Orange Hills on the map.
“How far is the capital of the Spring Court from here?” I asked her.
“Three or four days’ walk. Less by horse.”
We needed a horse. Lorelei was so close.
I helped her up. “Come on, let’s see if we can find some people that can help us get a horse.”