Kiss of the Goblin Prince

by Shona Husk

  Dai tapped his left bicep. It was that or his upper thigh and he didn’t want Vexion’s hands that far down his body. His nails looked a little less human and a little too sharp.

  Vexion placed his hand over Dai’s arm. Dai turned his head away; he didn’t want to watch. He gritted his teeth expecting the pain that usually accompanied a mark. Beneath Vexion’s hand his skin bubbled as if it was burning and blistering, then as it cooled and resettled it tingled. He looked back when Vexion pulled his hand away.

  “You won’t have a problem finding or gaining access to Birch again.” Vexion stood up, pulled on his gloves, and walked toward the open apartment door. Then he turned. “You should find your cousin before I have to.”

  “Wait.” Dai couldn’t stop himself from asking when he should be letting Vexion walk away. “What are you?”

  Vexion glanced over his shoulder, and his stole turned as well. “When you discover that we’ll talk again.” He shuddered. “Fix that door once you fix your leg. It’s freezing in here.”

  Dai glanced at what had been the glass door leading to the balcony. The curtains around his door billowed in the breeze, catching on the jagged teeth of glass. Meryn had used a chair and broken the glass instead of unlocking the door. In that moment Dai realized the world was not the same one Meryn knew—Meryn was two millennia behind.

  Why had Vexion let Meryn go? Surely he could’ve stopped him? Dai turned back but Vexion was gone, leaving only a lingering warmth on his bicep. Birch was once again refusing to intervene—unless Meryn started breaking their rules.

  For a moment, Dai just sat, trying to gather up the energy to fix his leg and then get up and go after his cousin. He looked at his leg with the sight. The Shadowlands hadn’t taken hold, yet. But the arrow had to come out. That meant either cutting it out or ripping it out. He didn’t have the stomach to cut himself.

  With his teeth pressed together hard he gripped the arrow shaft. On his next exhale he yanked it free of the muscle. He bit back the yell and kept it locked in his throat; he was used to biting back on pain and giving nothing away, then he tossed the broken arrow. It skittered across the floor, taking the Shadowlands strings with it.

  He gathered the severed threads of his leg and started drawing them together, not with the same finesse as he’d used on Brigit. He didn’t have the energy to make a nice scar. He just needed the blood to stop. And it did; the flow between his fingers slowed and stopped but was replaced with a chill that had come straight from the Shadowlands. Shock from the magic use and blood loss, combined with the new ventilation courtesy of Meryn.

  Dai got up, cautiously testing his leg as he stepped over the chair and broken glass, then peered over the balcony and into the night. His fingers were tight on the railing as the world dropped beneath him. Had Meryn scaled the wall? Or fallen to his death? He checked the fragile thread that stretched between himself and Meryn. It hadn’t snapped. Meryn was alive—but there were many places for a goblin to hide in the city, and Meryn was a goblin in a man’s body.

  What had he brought into the world? He couldn’t have done it any other way. And if he had, Birch wouldn’t have let him live.

  He tried to use the fragile bond to go to Meryn. He couldn’t leave him out there alone. But aside from increasing the pain in his temples, and turning his vision black at the edges, nothing happened. He was out of magic. Too tired and too wounded to do anything to help his cousin. He hung his head and closed his eyes.

  Exhaustion clawed through his muscles and scattered his thoughts; only his grip on the railing kept him upright. He’d worked enough magic and spilled enough blood for one night. He wasn’t even sure what night it was. Was it the night after the museum or had more time passed? He felt himself sway. He needed to sleep and to recover before he went after Meryn. If he went like this, he would lose the fight and it was one he couldn’t afford to lose. He would have to search for Meryn in the morning…and tell Roan what had happened.

  Roan would be less than impressed that he’d gone alone, and less than thrilled Meryn was now wandering the streets. Dai walked stiffly back inside, using the wall for support, feeling the bruises that had yet to form.

  His blood was streaked across the floor, but he didn’t have the energy to clean it up, magically or manually. So he left it. He paused at the book Vexion had dropped on the floor. His arm throbbed from the new mark, but Birch’s mysteries could wait. He’d never wanted to sleep so badly in his whole life. The sofa had never looked so comfortable. Then he looked at his hands, his arms and legs. He was covered in blood and the dust of the Shadowlands. He couldn’t sleep coated in the stuff nightmares were made off. He had to wash.

  As he walked to the shower he stripped off his clothes, leaving them in a gray and scarlet mess. Tomorrow he would clean up and fix what he could. He ran the shower and checked his arm. A birch tree in full leaf was burned onto his skin. As the muscle flexed, the tree swayed as if in the breeze; its roots seemed to tap into his skin. If he looked closer, he would see them weaving into him. A mark that couldn’t be cut out, like most of the other ones, it went soul deep.

  He ran his hand over the knitting wound on his leg. It was healing, faster than it should. Maybe that was why he was so tired; healing took more energy than he was used to expending. He’d have to look in the library and find out. The water swept away all traces of the Shadowlands, and when he was unable to stand up anymore, even leaning against the tiles, Dai got out and dried off. His never-used bed was where he fell.

  And he slept.

  Chapter 21

  Amanda bit her lip as she waited for the doctor to finish checking Brigit over. She couldn’t push aside her dream of falling. Of trying to grab a rope that was too slippery for her to hold, but never hitting the ground. It had jerked her awake and left her with a sense of loss she couldn’t explain. She waited for the doctor to give her the bad news—that Brigit was getting worse. That next time the attack could be fatal.

  Brigit glanced at her with a smile on her face like she was hiding a secret. She forced her lips to move in response but didn’t feel any joy.

  “Well. I think you can take her home, Ms. Coulter.” The doctor wrote a note on Brigit’s chart. He shrugged and kept writing.

  “She’s okay?”

  “Perfectly healthy even though it says here she is a chronic asthmatic.” He looked at Amanda like she was an over-protective parent who was making her daughter’s condition out to be much worse than it was.

  “She is a chronic asthmatic and has been for years.”

  “Well, I can’t hear anything. She has the lungs of an average seven-year-old.”

  Brigit beamed as if she were a cat that had just caught and swallowed a mouse. “Can we go now, Mom?”

  Amanda looked at the doctor. “Any further tests?” Usually they wanted a follow-up, or a review of her medication.

  “No.” The doctor hung up the chart. “Have a good day.”

  She blinked at the doctor not quite understanding. Had the doctor just given Brigit the all clear? “Do you mean she doesn’t have asthma?”

  “Maybe it was a misdiagnosis or an allergic reaction, because there’s nothing wrong with her.” He gave Brigit a high-five.

  Brigit jumped off the bed. “Let’s go, Mom.”

  She glanced from Brigit to the doctor as if they were in cahoots. It wasn’t possible. She shivered as if someone ran their nails down her back. Not possible, but exactly what she hoped for. A cure.

  Brigit skipped down the hallway at her side. “I don’t need my bag anymore, do I?”

  Did she? Did she believe a junior doctor who knew nothing about Brigit?

  “Did the doctor take away your asthma?”

  “No. He’s just a doctor.”

  Of course. “Well what happened?”

  “Magic,” Brigit said easily, like people were magically cured every day of the week.

  “Magic?” There was only one person she knew who could use magic that shouldn’t exist. �
�I thought you didn’t want anyone doing magic on you.”

  “This was different magic. It was Dai’s magic.”

  Amanda’s stomach contracted like she’d been hit. “What did Dai do to you?”

  “Fixed me.”

  When did he fix her? How had he convinced Brigit and the doctor there was nothing wrong with her? “What did he do?”

  “Magic. He just wanted you to believe him…you do, don’t you?”

  Amanda hugged Brigit close.

  Dai had no right to help Brigit and heal her. Her stomach twisted. She should be grateful; her daughter was well. Yet she felt betrayed. He hadn’t asked. And if he had, what would she have said? No, you can’t use magic, let my daughter suffer? She wasn’t sure she believed in real magic. It was one thing to knot a fork, but another to heal a child. She sniffed and blinked back tears.

  “How about we go and see your usual doctor? We’ll double-check with him.” She tried to sound like she was happy.

  “Why?”

  Because Dai was a mystery, and nothing added up the way it should. And even though he’d told her the questions she needed to ask Roan she hadn’t listened. She’d been too angry and upset and scared for Brigit to do anything other than hate him for causing the attack. What he’d told her wasn’t possible. What had happened to her daughter shouldn’t be possible yet Brigit was bouncing with life, and for the first time in years she wasn’t tired with worry.

  Maybe everything Dai told her was true. Every awful bit and the only way he’d been able to prove it to her was to heal Brigit.

  “Because I’m a grown-up.”

  ***

  In his dream Dai leaned back against the ruined temple in the Andes. He tipped his face to the sky, but it was dark. He wanted the sun. He crossed the globe to Wales but it was night. The Sahara was blanketed in darkness. Antarctica cloaked in black. Everywhere he went it was night when all he wanted was the sun. He ran, punching through reality, searching for daylight. But the sun was hiding as if she could no longer bear to shine on him.

  Dai jolted awake and blinked in the sunlight streaming through his bedroom window. The sense of loss moved through him with each breath. It wasn’t the sun he’d lost; it was Amanda. He didn’t remember falling asleep. For a moment he just lay there and let the pain radiate. It was easier to be searching in a dream than acknowledging the reality—he didn’t know how to win her back, or even if it was possible. Magic or not.

  He pushed back the blanket that he must have pulled over himself during the night and sat up. His body ached like he’d been thrown to the ground too many times. The arrow wound on his leg was a shiny pink scar. Soon it would fade and match the rest like a permanent souvenir he would carry with him to the end. He traced his finger over the fresh skin. Maybe he didn’t have to keep the scars. It was possible he could erase them all. The tattoos would remain; he couldn’t remove them. But the scars?

  What would getting rid of them change?

  It wouldn’t change what happened. He’d earned every mark one way or another, and while there were many he’d rather forget, they were part of him. Just because he could didn’t mean he should. He hauled himself off the bed and tugged on jeans. He couldn’t lie in bed when Meryn was out there alone and thinking gods knew what. The world was very different than the one he’d last lived in.

  Dai got to the bedroom doorway then stood there, stunned at the wreckage of his house. Blood, glass, a shattered door, and a broken dining chair lay across the floor and out onto the balcony. His place had been trashed by a fight that had never happened. He sighed and he reached to the shards of glass; with a turn of his wrist he pushed them back into the broken mesh that made up the door. With the glass gone he padded through the living room. As he went he gathered the blood and clothes, destroying the evidence and letting the remains of the items join the fabric of reality to be reused and recycled elsewhere. He put the flak jacket and all but one knife away in his room.

  With the knife in his hand he squatted down near the book Vexion left. He couldn’t leave it where anyone could find it, but touching the gift might have its own consequences. He put the fingers of his other hand out, not game enough to touch its dark green cover, but interested to see what impressions he’d get off the little book. Deep magic rippled off the surface. The book seemed to have its own power source. And while it was certainly old enough and powerful enough to be considered alive, and it wouldn’t be the first sentient item he’d handled—the faint crescent of a bite mark was still visible on his palm in the right light—it wasn’t, nor was it possessed. He used the knife to flick open the front cover, half expecting to get a zap just from touching the thing.

  The book didn’t bite. It was blank. He ruffled a few pages with the tip of the knife. Every page was empty. Another one of Vexion’s tests. His lips curved; he was on familiar ground. He had a place at Birch and access to their library. He could spend centuries trolling through their texts…except he no longer had centuries. He was human, with a human lifespan. Spending the days he had left in a library wasn’t as appealing as it had once been. He wanted someone to share the discoveries with.

  Dai frowned and gingerly picked up the book and placed it on the coffee table. He scooped up the arrow he’d pulled out of his leg and put it next to the book and a now empty package of cookies. He hadn’t eaten all of them. Meryn must have finished them off.

  Would he ever have Amanda over for coffee again? He closed his eyes as the crushing loss bound him tighter so he couldn’t breathe. It was better the cookies were gone. She didn’t want to see him, and he didn’t know what he could do to make her believe. He crunched up the package and it vanished.

  A dusty handprint lingered on the surface of the table. Dai placed his hand over it and Meryn’s gray smeared face formed in his mind. The arrow turned of its own accord. Dai spun it, but it spun back. He smiled. A magical lodestone that would always point to Meryn. It made sense; Meryn had crafted the arrow.

  Using the arrow for guidance, he freed his mind and stepped through the fabric of reality. He opened his eyes to find he was in a hospital room. But it wasn’t Brigit sleeping in the bed. It was Meryn. Dai glanced around but the other occupant was sleeping. He took a couple of paces toward his cousin, then stopped. He didn’t have a plan beyond taking Meryn home…and then? Supervise him to make sure he didn’t escape or do something that would draw Birch’s attention? He wasn’t his cousin’s jailer.

  He looked at Meryn again and saw the bandage on his head. What had happened? He should’ve taken better care of him. The world was very different than the one he’d last walked as a man. But he couldn’t have fought Meryn and healed Brigit at the same time; he’d been too weakened from blood loss and magic use. And he couldn’t have left Brigit when he saw how close to death she was. Whatever choice he made, he failed someone.

  Dai sighed. Meryn didn’t even recognize him in the Shadowlands. He was more goblin than man. Yet Dai struggled to believe his cousin was totally lost. He looked the same as before the curse. His dark hair and skin free of the gray dust. Dai reached out his hand to heal the wound and wake Meryn, but stopped.

  The wound was little more than an abrasion. If Meryn didn’t remember him he would do more harm than good. Dragging him home to see Roan would serve no purpose but to soothe Dai’s conscience. He couldn’t force Meryn to remember any more than he’d been able to force Fane to fight what was happening.

  His fingers curled. He had to give Meryn space and time. All he could do was keep an eye on him. He hoped Meryn wouldn’t give in like he did in the Shadowlands. That first summons had broken a man who lived only for his wife and kids. The knowledge he’d never see them again was too much for his heart to take. Dai had an inkling of how bad that could feel after Amanda had left him to die in the Shadowlands. Losing a lifetime’s worth of loving ties would be devastating. Dai closed his eyes. Is that was Meryn was feeling, the remembered pain? Did he remember anything of being human?

  He glanced
at his cousin again, and while the sticky, gray thread that connected them was changing, there was other damage in Meryn’s body. He was full of holes, like all the connections he’d ever made had been ripped free. With a jolt that hit the pit of his stomach Dai knew that was exactly what had happened and why Meryn had turned goblin. They were wounds he couldn’t fix with any amount of magic. With all the loss, did Meryn even remember who he was?

  “I’ll be back, Meryn,” he whispered, not wanting to wake his damaged cousin. With clothes and a plan. Until then Meryn was safe—unless he tried to flee again. After years of running with the goblins maybe rest was what his mind and body needed to start healing.

  How was he going to explain any of it to Roan?

  Footsteps came down the hallway. Dai glanced at the door, then stepped back into his apartment. He turned a full circle not sure what to do next. Roan wasn’t going to like it at all. Dai closed his eyes. But it wasn’t about Roan. He had to do what was best for Meryn. For the moment that might be nothing…he’d go back and check on him. Once he was awake maybe they could talk. And if Meryn tried to kill him again?

  He pushed the thought aside. Meryn would recover. He would not let him give up and become goblin—because the next time it would be permanent. He considered going back, but made himself be still. He couldn’t force Meryn to do anything.

  However, he did need to tell his brother.

  Dai glanced at Vexion’s book. He’d have a quick look at it, then go and see Roan, but he knew he was stalling because he didn’t know what to say. He flicked the pages of the book without touching them, controlling their movement with magic. Every single page was blank. Not even numbers marked the soft, cream-colored paper. He ran the edge of his thumb over a page. No, that wasn’t right. There was information there. The book was brimming with knowledge, waiting to spill out. A smile formed, turning his lips into a grin of understanding…he wasn’t thinking the right question.

  For the first time in his life he didn’t know what to ask.