by Shona Husk
“Everyone I love dies.”
“Then grant me that blessing.” Roan released her hand. A king would never beg, but every line on his face was asking for her permission to die.
“I can’t.” She shook her head, her hair skimming her shoulders.
***
Roan didn’t blink as he regarded her. He was damned anyway, but it would have been nice to have been loved by someone, especially the woman who was slowing the fade with one hand while drawing it closer with the other.
“Well, we’re well matched. Unable or unwilling. There is little difference.” He took a step closer, tempted by her presence.
Eliza smelled like flowers and gold. The metallic taste lay over her skin, attracting the goblin, repelling the man. Beneath that she smelled like sex, like him. The way a woman should, although his memory could be wrong after so many years.
“Tell me, Eliza, when you lie with your fiancé do you think of him? Do you call out his name?”
She glanced away, but he caught her chin and turned her head. Her hazel eyes refused to meet his. Her full lips pressed together so no reply slipped past. It should be enough, she’d chosen him, embraced him, taken his ring. But he was driven to press harder, to force what he wanted to hear from her lips.
“You called my name. But I wonder whose face you see when you close your eyes.”
“Yours.” The word was forced, like admitting it would wound them both.
His lips brushed her cheek. Her skin was soft like a warm, ripe peach. Her hand slid up his arm, and her body moved closer.
“Is it easier to sleep with a monster than love to one?” His tongue traced the shell-like contour of her ear.
“I don’t see a monster. I see a man.” Her breathy words cut like white-hot knives.
Roan dropped the embrace. “Then you are blind and careless with your affections.”
How could she ignore what he was? See only what she wanted? She summoned the Goblin King to reach the man, forgetting they were one and the same.
Without touching the magic that ran beneath their feet he changed and become the goblin Eliza refused to see. The part of him she wouldn’t accept. In the Shadowlands he chose to be a man, but it was easy, maybe easier to be a goblin. At least then he could give up the pretense of being human.
“That isn’t you. It’s a mask you hide behind.” Her face contorted. But she didn’t scream or look away. She didn’t reach for him either.
Had he really expected her to? The thought of her mating with this monstrous body made him sick. He knew no good would come out of kidnapping her, yet he’d done it anyway and was now reaping his reward. A longing for something he could never feel. A hunger for something he’d never tasted. Even when confronted with the twisted truth she refused to believe. Until she believed in goblins, she wouldn’t believe in love. Love he was more than willing to return if he’d a heart made of flesh.
He laughed. The high pitch rang off the walls like an off-key bell, a sound that would sour milk still in the udder.
“If it were a mask, I would have discarded it many centuries ago.” Roan pulled up the shadows and slid into the Fixed Realm, away from his queen who wanted to believe he was nothing but a man.
Away from the woman who made him believe there was still hope, when all he saw was death.
Chapter 12
The rocks sang with twisted laughter that made her blood ice. Eliza reached her hand out but grasped only air where the Goblin King had stood only a heartbeat before. She sucked in a heavy breath.
“Damn you. Come back!” Like a child cheated of candy, she stamped her foot.
No swirl and tangle of beads answered her call.
“Roan, please.” How could she be with him when he kept forcing her to see the goblin that he didn’t want to be?
“Fine.” Eliza crossed her arms and tilted her hip. She could wait. She had all the time in the world. Roan didn’t.
The candles stood unmelting, a surreal silent vigil that marked no time. She could wait a lifetime and there would be no change to anything here. The earth would spin, another day would roll past, and she would be standing here waiting for her lover to return. He would return. Roan wouldn’t leave her stranded in the Shadowlands. The Goblin King she wasn’t sure about.
Eliza sighed and dropped into a chair. She could wait just as well sitting. The diamond in her ring flashed like a burning sun in the candlelight. It was an inhumanly exquisite piece of work. The flowers were tiny, glistening roses, some in full bloom, others tightly wrapped buds. The tendrils coiled around her finger and clasped the diamond to its center with a whisper of leaves. But almost hidden by the beauty were tiny thorns. She tugged the ring to remove it and have a closer look. It remained put. She twisted and her skin turned with the ring. Her blood cooled and drained away.
The ring was one with her flesh.
Created for her alone. Born of magic, but lacking the one thing she’d wanted from her next diamond ring.
Love.
By protecting her, he was shielding himself from the curse. Roan had told her he craved only gold. There was no room for anything else in his solid, metal heart. She hadn’t believed him.
Icy fingers tickled her spine and coaxed the hairs on the back of her neck to attention. Eliza turned in her seat. Dai stood in the doorway. All trace of friendliness was scrubbed away by the curl of his lip and the dullness of his eyes. Would he fade while she watched?
“How long has he been gone?” Dai dropped his empty plates on the table. The rest of the food remained on the plates, cold and uneaten.
“How long have you been there?”
“Long enough.” He sat opposite her. Around his neck swung a pendant. Black diamond and platinum.
“Did Roan make that?”
“Yes.” Dai filled a golden goblet with wine. “The diamonds protect the wearer from corruption by the Shadowlands.”
She rubbed her fingers over her ring. Roan didn’t wear one. There was no hidden jewelry on his body. Dai watched her as he drank. Sitting here with him wasn’t the best idea, but leaving would be rude, so she leaned back in her seat. If they were going to chat, he could fill in some blanks while they waited for the king to return.
“Why doesn’t Roan wear a diamond?”
Dai ran one finger around the rim of his goblet as he considered her request. “He can’t use magic while possessing a black diamond. If we don’t have magic, Elryion would kill us.”
“Goblins can only be killed in battle.” Both Roan and her book had mentioned that, so she’d taken it as fact.
Dai hooked his thumbs in his Kevlar vest. “This isn’t for decoration. Battle weapons, not necessarily a battle.”
Eliza pushed her hair back off her face. She’d cut it a little too short. It wouldn’t stay tucked behind her ears. “How does magic stop—”
“Ever stood in a rain of bullets? Fought an army of skeletons wielding battle axes? How do you fight ghosts who look like family that died a thousand years before but now seek your blood on their weapons?” Dai lifted his cup in salute. “Magic.”
He took a swig of wine. “And every time Roan uses magic he pays with his soul. Much easier for the druid to chip away like a coward than face a warrior like a man.”
Yet, Roan used magic without a thought. Sacrificing himself to protect her with a ring. How much of his soul had he used to make her ring? “Will the diamond stop you from becoming—”
“Goblin.” He twirled the goblet in his fingers. The gold tossed sunspots over the walls. “Not if Roan fades. We’d thought…” He shook his head and drank deeply. “We thought that you coming willingly could break the curse.” He slammed the goblet down with too much force. It bounced and tipped on its side, then rolled spilling the last trickle of red wine.
Eliza jumped. The wine glistened on the table like fresh, blood-filled blisters. Bursting a blister led to infection, but she took the risk.
“I thought it would too.” If breaking the curse wa
s as easy as wishing it, then it would’ve been broken a hundred times over every day she’d known Roan.
“Why do you care?” Dai flicked the goblet back onto its base and refilled it.
He drank as if he was breathing. The gold framed glasses suited him, but he wore them as goblin treasure. Her gold earring hung from his ear. Dai had given up. He was hoarding treasure ready for when he faded. The pendant only prolonged the inevitable.
The temperature in the caves plummeted and she burned as if ice pressed its bitter lips to her skin. “Because there are too few good men.”
“None of us have been good men in a very long time. Wake up and smell the rot.” He waved his hand toward the food.
The food that had been edible what seemed like moments ago was discolored with mold. In the meat, maggots writhed. Eliza clamped her hand over her mouth in an effort to keep her stomach in place. It tumbled trying to throw out the small amount she’d eaten. She turned her head away and drew in several deep breaths in an attempt to quell the rising nausea. She was sure she could feel the cold bodies of the maggots in her stomach. Eating her from the inside.
Dai smiled and took a drink. “What you’ve eaten is fine. The Shadowlands claims what is left. Quick and the dead.”
“Would you rather I was dead?” She kept her eyes averted from the decomposing food. She didn’t want to know what happened to the food next.
He pressed his lips together and thought.
The pause was enough. Short answer, yes. Dai would prefer it if she were dead.
“No. But every action has a price. Your presence denies Roan death. If he were only gambling with his life, I wouldn’t care. What a man decides is his own business.” Dai pointed with his goblet. He’d judged and found her guilty of offering life. “He will risk fading for one more second with you.”
One more second with her. Eliza snorted. “I can tell by the way he vanished and left me here.”
“What did you say to him?”
This wasn’t her fault. Roan’s brother didn’t have the right to question her. She wasn’t on trial. “Didn’t you overhear?”
Dai blinked. The glaze over his eyes loosened for a moment so she could see the intelligence that had once been applied to breaking the curse. Now he wallowed waist deep in wine, waiting for the end. Both brothers were trying to face death while still holding out for a cure. But each shattered hope cut deep, making a wound that wouldn’t be given time to heal.
Eliza softened. How would she deal with an unwanted fate? By hiding in the Shadowlands. “I said I can’t stay here. I need to live in both worlds.”
Except she hadn’t said it exactly like that. Maybe if she had, Roan would have understood. He didn’t have enough soul to keep lashing out and releasing his hurt.
“As queen you have to remain. You are another possession.” Dai ran one finger over the rim of the empty spectacle frame as if he was thinking. “Modern life makes kidnapping so much harder.”
Eliza sat up a little straighter.
Dai laughed. “A goblin joke. You were his first kidnap.” He raised his drink. “And his first queen. Just another sign how close he is to the edge.”
“What do you mean?” Roan had said he had days. Did he have less time? However long he had, he was wasting time by running away. Surely they could talk, make love, and laugh…she remembered the grating laugh as he left…maybe not laugh. They could steal time and make it stop just for them.
“Goblin Kings always steal a queen. A woman captured over the solstice.”
He waited for the words to sink in past the barrier of her skin and deep into her body. Her heart slowed until she could feel the squeeze of the muscle as it pushed her unwilling blood onward. She had come to Roan on the longest night of the year. Samhain might be the night of the dead, but winter solstice belonged to the goblins.
Dai placed his cup down and leaned on the table. “Perfect, isn’t it?”
“He could have taken any woman.” Her voice was quiet and shaky.
He shook his head. Long black hair slipped over his shoulders. “You don’t understand what you tamper with. Kidnapping and rape would have completed the curse. No other woman would do. You were willing.”
It had nothing to do with her and everything to do with what Roan was. He wanted a queen that wouldn’t cost him his humanity. And she was desperate enough to fall into his hands. She slumped back into the chair. It supported her body but not her spirit, which slipped through the wood and lay on the floor, waiting to be reconnected with life. Her skin resisted and argued. It remembered and trembled under the imagined touch of his hands. The summer heat of his eyes that had burned through her, searching for something, but not knowing what it would be if he found it. Did she believe the man, or the goblin?
“What happens to the human queens?” She wasn’t sure she had the stomach to know, but she had to ask. If the curse won, she would become one of those women.
“That depends. The lucky ones succumb to the Shadowlands magic, surrender their souls, and fade.” Dai refilled his goblet.
Eliza’s fingers curled as she resisted the urge to snatch it from him and make him sober up. “And the unlucky ones?”
“If they are captured by a rival troop, they are eaten.” He pulled one of the knives that decorated his armor out and stabbed the table. “They don’t kill their food first.”
Her throat closed. Roan had made a comment about goblins sending her bones back. She’d thought it a threat, not the truth.
“And those that aren’t captured find out how long the human body can last in the Shadowlands at the mercy of their king, before they get the relief of death.”
As a goblin, Roan was all anger and raw power. There would be no gentle touch or kind word. The hands that touched her would be cold and gray. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried not to think about the night he’d revealed himself to her, his body pressed against her, his yellow eyes glowing in the shadows.
“He promised to take me home before he fades.”
“Bit hard when he’s not here.” Dai pulled the knife out of the table. He ran the tip along the table, lifting a curl of wood.
“Roan will come back.” She said it to convince herself as much as Dai.
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s easier to face death alone.” Dai flung the knife at the wall. It quivered, stuck in the rock between two of the swords hung for the dead.
“You mean to keep the vow.”
“I have no wish to be goblin.” He thumbed the hilt of another knife.
She couldn’t give up on Roan. If she did, she was giving up on a life she’d only dared to dream. “There must be a way—”
“What do you think we have done for close to two thousand years? I have trawled through forgotten tombs for forgotten texts written in forgotten languages.” Dai pulled the knife free of the rock and returned it to his vest. “Roan visited magicians, wise women, religious leaders, hermits, gurus. Nothing. The magic the druid used is forgotten.”
Eliza understood why Dai had given up. He’d failed. It had been his responsibility to find a cure. Now they were truly at the end of the line. If Roan fought the druid and didn’t kill him, Roan would fade, dragging Dai along for the ride.
Sadness bubbled up and drowned the hope she’d been clutching. “There’s really no solution.”
“No.” Dai removed his necklace. He dropped it into a black bag and tucked it into a pocket. “I will take you home.” He held out his hand.
“I thought I had to stay here since I’m queen?” Eliza slid off the chair, placing it between them. Dai had already admitted he would rather she not be here, involved with Roan.
“I doubt he has the heart to take you back.”
Roan had no heart, it was gold. “Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t. I’m more goblin than man.” His eyes blinked yellow then blue so fast she could have imagined the change.
“I’ll wait here for Roan.”
Dai looked at the ceil
ing and sighed. “After everything I’ve said.” He gritted his teeth. “You aren’t safe here alone. Elryion would use you to kill Roan. The Hoard creeps around in the dust looking for tasty human. And every breath you take is one closer to corruption. The longer you spend here the more you become part of the Shadowlands.”
Eliza glanced at her hands. She could fade by just being here? She looked back at Dai, if he wasn’t staying here with her…“Where are you going?”
“To find Roan.”
She jumped like an overeager puppy being taken for a walk. “I’ll come.”
Dai shook his head. “He’ll find you when he’s ready.”
Her toes gripped the inside of her shoes. They both knew that may never happen. She wanted to wait for Roan, needed to see him again before he was lost to her forever. But the price required, remaining trapped in the Shadowlands on a chance, was too high.
“Swear you’ll take me home.”
Dai placed his hand on his sword. “On my life. Besides, I can’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go while you wear his ring.”
Eliza glanced at the ring; as beautiful as it was, the intent was as black as the diamond in its heart. She was Roan’s until the end.
“I’ll wait for him in the Fixed Realm.” She clasped Dai’s offered hand and hoped he was telling the truth. The candles blurred, and she blinked clearing the tears. “Tell him I’d like to say good-bye.”
“I can’t make promises for a king.”
***
Roan stretched out his legs. A black spider danced past, away from the intruder who’d ripped through its silk interior decorating. The tree house had been vacant for years. It sighed around him, longing for the laughter of children to call out from its windows. He was a poor substitute.
Through the window he watched the house. The lights remained on, but the man no longer flickered against the blinds. He slept. If Roan reached out, he would be able to snag the edge of the dream and twist until it broke. Roan forced out a breath. This time he let Steve sleep.