The Goblin King

by Shona Husk

  She picked up the goblet, the gold rim was delicately carved in an endless knot, then she grasped the jug hoping for wine. Maybe if she got drunk again, she’d wake up at home. It held more water.

  “Can’t you turn water into wine?”

  “I’m a goblin. Not Jesus.” He held out his hand. A wine bottle formed out of the shadow in his palm. He set it on the table and ran his fingers around the neck. The cork plopped onto the table. “There you go.”

  Eliza closed her mouth. She shouldn’t be shocked by his open display of the impossible. She poured the ten-year-old cabernet into her goblet but couldn’t drink the wine. It couldn’t be real. It had appeared out of nothing. No, not nothing, out of shadows. The Goblin King commanded the darkness she had always feared. She didn’t belong here with him.

  Eliza looked at the king. “I want to go home.”

  The words froze the room, even the candles held their breath, not daring to flicker as they waited for the king’s answer.

  “No.” He spoke without glancing at her, his attention consumed by the food on his plate.

  She pressed her lips together. He had no right to keep her here. “I command you to take me home.”

  Long Hair winced.

  The king put down his fork. Then his knife. His blue eyes held her still. “You command no one.”

  “I have a life, a fiancé. I summoned you.” She stood, knocking the chair over. The floor seemed to move as if she’d drunk too much wine. She put her hand on the table. She was giddy like she’d stepped off an amusement ride or spun around too many times.

  The king looked up at her and shook his head. Beads bounced around his biceps. “No, you didn’t. You wished yourself away. A wish I was happy to fulfill.”

  What had she said?

  Her mind raced in pointless circles as if it could avoid the truth. The answer was to awful to voice. The words were the same as she had used nine years ago. The wish that was supposed to help her escape had instead handed her to the Goblin King.

  I wish the Goblin King would get me away from here.

  The rock floor rippled beneath her feet. Eliza swayed and gripped the table more firmly. “What was so different this time?”

  His eyes narrowed a fraction as he assessed her, his captive. The dry desert heat touched her skin and pushed deeper. A fireball in her belly. Last time she had been barely sixteen, wanting to grow up too fast. Now…now she was an adult. Her lips parted in a silent oh. Obviously he had some standards.

  A small smile passed over his lips. “You got what you wanted.”

  “This isn’t what I wanted.”

  “No? It’s the second time you called to me with the exact same words. Yes, Eliza.” The king stood. “I remember.”

  Eliza stepped back and nearly fell over the chair legs. “I wish to go home. I wish the Goblin King would take me home.” At home she knew what she was getting. She knew Steve and understood his unquenchable need for power and money. Once his drive had been attractive, but by the time it had become all-consuming it was too late. She was trapped in his fraud. Here nothing was as it was supposed to be.

  The other two goblin-men looked at their king. He folded his arms in a stance that was both casual and threatening. His face was tight as if she’d wounded the creature.

  “Looks like I’m done granting wishes.” The tight control that held him back seemed ready to snap. “How about you grant one of mine?”

  The heat of lust in his summer blue eyes made her step backwards. Without taking her eyes off him Eliza inched away. One wrong move and she was the next item on the menu. A dessert fit for a king. Her heart pounded so loud it echoed in her ears. The king watched her retreat yet made no move to chase. She didn’t breathe until the wall of the tunnel hid her from view. But out of sight didn’t mean out of mind. She knew he would hunt her at his leisure and there would be no escape.

  ***

  The druid’s summon filled the rock, resonating at a frequency only Roan could hear. Roan’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword as he watched Eliza flee down the hallway. His fingers tightened, but he resisted the urge to follow her the same way he ignored the druid’s call to arms. Fighting the druid would take more of his soul than he was prepared to use. Chasing Eliza would not change the way she looked at him. Part fear, part uncertainty. He should never have taken her. What had he been thinking?

  That he wanted her, and he’d been unable to help himself. But she wasn’t a gold coin to be collected. She was a woman. The young woman he’d met once had grown up and stopped believing in goblins. In him.

  To her he was a creature to be feared. Maybe she was right. He should stop playing human and get on with dying or giving into the curse.

  A tremor ran through the floor of the cave system. He ignored the vibrations shaking the rock and the way the Shadowlands magic pulled at his body as if to draw him outside piece by piece. At least here he wasn’t compelled to answer.

  Dai spoke when the rock had finished grumbling. “You should’ve taken the opportunity.”

  Their ancient language rolled lightly around the room. A language assumed dead, now spoken only by three damned men. It was because of his brother he still clung onto his soul like a drowning man to a piece of wood, hoping someone would throw him a lifeline.

  “I didn’t want a cold meal.” Roan sat and ate without tasting to reinforce the point. He didn’t need to eat and they both knew he could’ve been to the Fixed Realm and back in less than a breath.

  His brother was right, keeping Eliza here was wrong. But she’d asked, and he couldn’t bring himself to take her back. Not to the man who’d let her be taken. He knew darkness when it bled into the soul. That man was born with it lining his veins and thickening his blood. Protective custody.

  Eliza was here for her own good.

  “What are you proving by keeping her here?” The wine bottle danced as the table shook to the druid’s call. Dai lifted up the bottle before it could spill and poured himself a goblet. “Nice choice.”

  Roan couldn’t tell Dai that he was so close to giving into the burn for gold that he would trade his soul for more. That with every breath he fought the curse, and that every time his drew on the power of the Shadowlands he paid with a piece of his soul. Sliding between realms on people’s nightmares was the one thing he could do without cost, and it kept him sane. Escaping to the Fixed Realm wasn’t a solution, but it was all he had to keep him going. If he faded, then Anfri and Dai faded with him. He couldn’t condemn them to an eternity of being soulless goblins.

  “That I’m a nice goblin and a terrible human.” Fighting the lust for a woman was good. It meant he still had enough of a soul to want something other than gold. Keeping her was keeping him human.

  Eliza was here for his good.

  Dai sighed and flicked his gaze at Anfri. “A terrible human is still human.”

  Anfri admired the sheen of candlelight on his gold knife. Mesmerized by the play of the flames, the gold reflected in his eyes. Was his skin duller? His finger joints more swollen? His ears a little longer?

  Roan checked his own hands for signs of becoming goblin. They were all running out of time. Unable to find a cure for the curse, their only choices were now death or fading. He knew he would have to take Eliza home before he reached that point. He let a smile form. Until then he would enjoy her company.

  Chapter 4

  Eliza knelt on the floor of the cave that served as his bedroom. In front of her was the old cardboard box that she’d pulled out from under his bed. Roan watched as her fingers traced the letters scrawled in black marker on the flap. He curled his hand. His fingers had traced the same path, those same eight letters countless times. Thank you.

  In nearly two thousand years only one person had ever thanked him for answering a summon. He’d defeated armies, killed princes, stolen treasure, yet his greatest achievement had been breaking up a teenager’s out-of-control party and saving Eliza from unwanted attention. In that night he had been
more human than he’d been in five hundred years. It wasn’t the words of her wish that had drawn him, but the desperation in the young woman’s voice to do something. That girl, now grown, turned.

  Eliza jumped up. “That night really happened.”

  Roan looked at the box, the bedsheets pulled back and the open chest. Only his clothing in the drawers remained untouched by her hand. She’d been through his things, pawed through his personal belongings like a scavenger looking for scraps on a carcass.

  “You always knew it happened. You never wanted to believe.” He kicked the box back under the bed. The two bronze torques inside clanged together with the hollow ring of his failure to save the men who’d worn them.

  Roan slid his hand between the mattress and the headboard. He held up a sheathed, short, double-bladed sword. “This what you’re looking for?”

  He tossed the sword to Eliza. Weapons were the first thing he’d looked for when he’d woken up in the Shadowlands.

  She caught the sword and held it awkwardly. “I was hoping for a gun.”

  He pressed his lips together to hide the smile. He doubted she could use either weapon, yet she was willing to fight him to get home. He’d been that desperate to escape once, taking on the druid, searching for cures that didn’t exist. Over the years resignation had taken hold. The only reason he fought on was because of his brother, but the death of each man made it harder to hold the gray at bay.

  Roan tapped the Colt on his side. “Too bad.”

  He drew the scabbard off the sword. The twin blades, separated by a finger width, were liquid in the candlelight. He couldn’t remember whose it had been. A summoner chancing his luck only to have it fail? Payment for murder and mayhem? Or treasure taken from a tomb?

  Eliza gripped the sword. Her knuckles whitened as if grasping could control the blade. She lifted the point and aimed at his belly.

  “Now what? You going to try to decorate my blade with my guts?” A slow death even for a goblin.

  “You’re going to take me home.” Her voice didn’t waver. Her gaze didn’t lower.

  Roan’s jaw tightened. The child who had once thanked him now wanted to command him like a slave. Like every other summoner. But she was different. Eliza tested his humanity. While the goblin in him wanted to possess her, the man desired her. The child she’d once been was still there, full of fight she didn’t know how to direct effectively. But in the woman it lit her eyes with a fire that gold couldn’t match. She might have stopped dreaming of him, but he hadn’t stopped thinking of her and wondering what had happened to her—the girl who’d treated him like a person and not a monster.

  Now he knew. And he wanted her to look at him like that again. To see him as the man he once was and not the Goblin King. Wanting Eliza was all that kept him from fading and becoming a Hoard goblin, one of the many tribes of true goblins that roamed the Shadowlands. He couldn’t fail. He would win Eliza. She would be his.

  “No, I’m not.”

  She pointed the sword at his heart.

  He tapped the point down. “My heart was replaced with gold long ago.” Driving the sword into his chest would have no effect. It had been tried. Gold didn’t bleed.

  The twin blades wavered. “How do you live without a heart?”

  The golden flecks in her hazel eyes gleamed, drawing him closer. Roan ran his finger along one lethal edge.

  “Shadowlands magic,” he whispered as he stepped behind her.

  Eliza straightened her back, stiffening at his nearness. She grew by all of a hairbreadth. He pried her fingers from the hilt and adjusted her grip, his hands over hers. Her perfume had worn away, but her skin remained sweet and uncontaminated by the Shadowlands. He couldn’t help but breathe in her scent as he swung the sword, carving the infinity symbol into the air.

  “Be one with the sword.”

  His hips moved against hers, until gradually her muscles loosened and her arms became fluid. They moved as one. Her hair rubbed against his cheek and her body melded to his. If all he had to do was this for eternity, he would be happy. There were worse fates than the subtle torture of a woman’s body. Without the sword they could almost be lovers.

  The ice-burn of the metal in his chest spread its fingers. Cold tendrils crawled through his blood. She was already his, she was here, and he could take her. Even this he couldn’t enjoy without destroying the moment and seeking to own it forever.

  Roan spun away to face her. “Never take your eyes off an opponent.” He growled. He should walk away, but he had to have her. His need for Eliza was like his lust for gold. Undeniable.

  She raised the points to his neck. “Take me home.”

  “This is your home.”

  Her face creased and she shook her head.

  “I want a queen.” The goblin in him spoke; the words coming out before he could think them through. Only goblins stole queens. But the man he still pretended to be was intrigued by the woman who dared challenge a king with his own sword.

  Roan looked at the woman wearing the black evening dress and waving the weapon. He’d taken her—the deal was halfway done. No goblin bride went willingly. Kidnap was the first date, the engagement, the foreplay. Eliza was bringing out the worst in him yet at the same time raising the human. Before her summon he’d been ready to surrender and die just to be free of the curse. Now, his fingers caressed the hilt of the sword hanging at his side. He wanted to fight until the curse turned his eyes yellow with greed.

  Both her eyebrows lifted. “You’re holding me hostage. You don’t want a queen…you want a ransom. Gold.”

  He laughed, deep under his breath. “A good idea, but then I’d have to give you back.”

  At this moment, gold wasn’t close to what he wanted. He had more gold than he could spend if he lived forever. Goblins didn’t live forever and they never spent their gold.

  Still the unavoidable lust for more made him ask. “Besides, who’d pay?”

  Hope softened her gaze. “Steve. My fiancé.”

  “Ah, yes. That charming man who banged on the door while I granted your wish.” Roan stepped closer so the tip of the blades were a whisper from his skin. “Tell me, what has he done for you?”

  “You’re deranged. Take me home.” The blades shook as her arms began to tire.

  Her elbows bent, granting him more breathing space.

  “What’s in it for me? Here, you are mine.” He closed the gap.

  She had the weapon, but he was gaining ground. The end of the sword skimmed the front of his black T-shirt as Eliza dropped the point to his groin. She’d noticed his interest.

  “If you were going to take me, you would’ve done it by now.”

  “Would I?” He pinched the tip of the sword, sidestepped, and pulled her closer. “Don’t you find the anticipation exciting?”

  The moment right before the battle cry sounded, the air was always the clearest. Mind sharp. Nerves tight. Release only heartbeats away. Life could only be that raw when death was asking for a kiss.

  They turned together in a dance as old as time and more lethal than the sword. Their gazes locked, neither willing to back down. Her tongue slid over her lip, but she remained silent. She hadn’t said no. That was almost a yes.

  “Here you can have everything you ever dreamed of. Riches beyond your wildest dream. Rule beside me.” If she came willingly, it would ease his soul and he could enjoy being human for longer. If he forced her, he would become goblin. It would be a better fate to throw himself on the sword and end the magic that had bound his men and the druid for two millennia.

  “Rule what? A desert built of nightmares. Population three?” Her head tilted as she mocked him.

  He gritted his teeth. “You forget who you talk with, Eliza. There are others, Hoard goblins. True goblins who would flay your flesh for fun then dance to your screams while they all took turns.”

  Her skin paled, but her voice still taunted. “What are you then?”

  “We were human once. Once there were
more. A curse placed us here.”

  Her eyebrows raised in a move so small he almost missed it. Doubt? Confusion? What did she trust? If she were smart, not him.

  “If I were queen, there is one thing you could never give me.”

  Roan pulled her closer. The blade between them became sharper. The danger of walking the edge of attraction swept over his skin in a rush he hadn’t felt in too long. The slide of metal and scabbard. The battle had started. Eliza was considering his offer. The first kiss of conquest was within reach. He could give her anything she named.

  He lowered his voice. “What else could you possibly want?”

  “Love.” She smiled as she trapped him.

  Roan snorted. He tugged on the sword, so she was forced to lift her chin to look at him. “Love? Do you love Steve?”

  Her mouth opened, but no words followed. First blood claimed. He’d found the weakness in her armor, and he pressed the advantage home.

  “Would you die for him? If you swear on your life that you love him, I will take you back to his arms now.”

  ***

  The hilt of the sword clanged on the rock floor as Eliza dropped it. Her eyes were wide as her own words closed around her. She couldn’t lie to escape when the Goblin King saw the truth.

  “You would marry a man you don’t love? You would be a wife but not a queen?” He flicked the sword up, tossing it into his palm.

  Armed, the Goblin King went from dangerous to deadly. The sword was held lose in his hand, the point ready to strike, like the metal was an extension of his body or a missing limb now found. He’d probably been born with a blade in his hand and cut his way out of his mother’s womb.

  “It’s not that simple.” Her words were nothing more than a dry whisper. How could she explain the ties that bound her Steve? An engagement could be broken…but blackmail and lies bound her more securely than love.

  “It’s always that simple.” He snagged the scabbard off the floor with one of the twin points. “One warning. If you kill me, you kill my men.” He sheathed the sword and replaced it between the mattress and the headboard. He smiled and faced her. “Then you really will be stuck here forever.”