Page 5 of Black Hearted (Cursed Fae #4)
He glanced at the half-dug grave at his feet, and then the hardness in his gaze melted away, revealing a deep well of sadness and vulnerability.
“We just kept hoping, kept believing, that one of the princesses would return with an Ethereum lord’s black heart.
If just one of the princesses had succeeded in killing one of those evil bastards, none of this would have happened.
But now—” He coughed and had to clear his throat before going on.
“Now I think Elida and I have no choice. It’s abandon our home, or end up like so many of our friends and fellow townspeople. ”
I didn’t take offense to his words. Just like Dawn and the other princesses, the fae in this realm only knew what lies they’d been fed about Ethereum and my brothers and me. This man’s grief was raw and real and founded on so much loss.
For the first time ever, I stopped to wonder if perhaps we’d been wrong all along. What was one life compared to all this death? Was my life, or any one of my brothers’, really worth more than any other fae’s?
I never considered myself better just because of the power flowing through my veins.
The only thing that made me different from the man standing before me was that I’d been born with a black heart and the destiny to become an Ethereum lord.
But in the face of all this death, was it selfish to not offer myself as a sacrifice to stop this curse?
I took a shaky breath and tried to center myself, hardening my resolve. What the princesses and all my brothers have worked so hard for, and the reason I’d traveled to this barren and hostile realm, was true and right.
Even if I wanted to forfeit my life to restore these lands, it wouldn’t be possible without one of the princesses’ faestone daggers to carve my heart from my chest. And we didn’t even know if that would stop the curse in Ethereum as well.
Maybe the magic from my heart would only stop the curse here in Faerie, leaving my realm and everyone in it doomed.
And even if the best happened, and it did stop the curse in both realms, in a hundred years, this cycle of death and destruction would just start over again until another Faerie princess murdered her Ethereum lord mate.
No, I was doing the right thing. What this curse was doing to all our lands and subjects was wrong. Evil. It had to be destroyed once and for all, not just postponed.
“I’m sorry for your losses,” I said to Evander, knowing my words wouldn’t even begin to soothe his apparent pain, but they were all I had to offer.
“We’ve all experienced loss these days. But thank you, just the same.
” He cleared his throat again, reining in his emotions.
“You two look like you could use a bath and a good night’s rest. There’s another shovel over there,” he said, nodding toward a shed a little ways away.
“If you help me dig the rest of this grave, my wife and I can offer you both of those things.”
“We’d appreciate that,” I answered him and went to grab the extra shovel.
We made quick work of digging the rest of the hole he’d already started. He stopped many times to cough up gray soot and phlegm, and I had to agree with his earlier statement that he’d end up like the fae wrapped in the sheet at our feet if he didn’t leave this town soon.
When the hole was deep enough, I helped him carefully lower the body of his neighbor into the grave and covered him with dirt again.
By the time we finished, Nellie was curled up against the side of the shed, fast asleep, so I scooped her up into my arms and followed Evander to his home, only a short walk away.
When we reached the house, I was introduced to his kind wife, Elida, who was short in stature as Evander was tall, with a round face, a kind smile, and the brightest green eyes I’d ever seen.
Once I got a sleeping Nellie settled, she showed me to the washroom, and after using half a bar of soap and two buckets of boiled water, which Evander explained was still fresh as they had a deep well, I was clean.
It wasn’t until I was standing with a towel wrapped around my waist and looking down at my soiled clothes, that I remembered to check my satchel. It was covered in the black sludge from the mountain and the river we’d basically swum in, but it was an oilskin bag and could be cleaned.
The items inside didn’t fare quite as well.
The map of Faerie was completely ruined.
My heart sank, but then I thought that I knew fae here now, so I could ask them the way.
Isolde’s faestone dagger, the other princesses’ faestones, as well as the pieces of the Shadow Heart, were covered in the black oily substance.
It wasn’t great, but they could all be cleaned.
It took me a little bit to find the vial and, specifically, the rolled-up note for Lorelei in the bag, but when I did, I sighed in relief. They’d been at the very bottom of the bag, protected by the oilskin and covered with the other items, so they were miraculously relatively unharmed.
The clothes I’d arrived in were ruined from my slide down the mountain and dip in the river of darkness.
Since Evander was almost as tall and broad as me, he graciously gave me some of his clothes to wear, telling me he’d had a pair of pants that were too long for him anyway.
Elida had gone to the house of one of the neighbors who used to have a girl around Nellie’s age and found some clean clothes for her to put on when she woke.
After gulping down a small bowl of stew Elida had made with roots and lettuce she’d grown indoors, I stared at Nellie’s sleeping form, wondering if I should let her sleep and if the oil sitting on her skin might be harmful.
I decided in the end to wake her, and Elida helped her clean up and dress in the fresh clothes she found for her and eat a bowl of stew.
When we finally settled into bedrolls in front of the fireplace, my mind was wrought with worry.
How were things back home in Ethereum? Were Dawn and the babies okay? Was Lorelei waiting for me in the Spring Court? And what if Dawn’s mother hurt her?
I felt absolutely feral just thinking about Lorelei being subjected to Queen Liliana’s brutality. It was a long time before I drifted off, but when I did, it was with Lorelei on my mind.