by Chloe Jacobs
She opened her eyes, not even sure when she’d closed them. Everything looked different, one-dimensional. The world had taken on a yellowish-brown tone, like the tiny sepia photograph of her parents in her locket.
“Isaac,” she murmured, hearing the hollow quality of her voice.
Magick. Power. Letting it free would be easy. So easy. It was there. Right there.
But the more she used it, the more it would own her. The more it would consume everything she was and replace her with darkness. She had no doubt about it, because it didn’t belong to her. It was unnatural, and there’d be consequences for using it.
Isaac roared. He was dangerously close to turning. Next to most of the gnomes he was a monster. Huge arms. Huge legs. Huge fists. Full of rage. He looked like a bear swatting at a swarm of bees seething around him.
A blade slipped into her side, right between her ribs. Damn, it burned. She stumbled and bit off a scream, not wanting Isaac to hear it, but he did anyway.
Wyatt must have noticed, too. He called out her name, and she saw him suddenly, fighting to reach her.
Isaac’s bellow of fury shook her to the core. He tried to charge but stumbled. She couldn’t tell which blow had finally been strong enough to take him down, but he clutched at his head.
“Isaac!” Her voice begged him to stay with her. He had to hold on.
She pressed a hand to her side, grimacing as blood flowed warm and thick between her fingers. Her head swam. She swallowed blood from a cut in her lip and straightened to her full height. The gnomes knocked her back down. One of them held a dagger to her throat.
The air was heavy and hot like an electrical storm getting ready to unleash its fury, and the magick crashed through every barrier she had, real and imagined.
Her sword fell from her hands. The power exploded outward like pulling back a bowstring, physically shoving the gnomes back a few feet, too. Yes, so easy. Except that it tore her apart on the way out, and it hurt so much. So…good, the way pain could sometimes be so intense it became indistinguishable from pleasure.
Greta gasped and fell to her knees, watching the black cloud that threatened to encompass everything, destroy everything.
Oh, God, no. It’s going to kill everyone. Gnome and faerie. Isaac. Siona and Wyatt.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. She screamed. Isaac roared.
She blinked through the haze of pain. He’d seen her go down. He would lose it. He would go Lost. She sobbed. Was it already too late?
Siona was suddenly at her side, keeping the gnomes back. She clasped Greta’s wrists tightly.
Greta didn’t care. She craned her neck to find Isaac. Soldiers kept closing in, but he’d stopped fighting them to get to her. When the first sword stabbed him, she screamed and struggled against the hands holding her back like a woman possessed.
“Isaac!” She welcomed the sizzle of heat this time. Don’t fight the power. But something was blocking her access to it. Siona? No!
Isaac suddenly stopped and called her name. Still almost thirty feet away, he gazed into her eyes with an intensity and focus that chilled her to the bone, like a spike being driven into her heart.
He called out for her to stay strong.
She tried to tell him not to worry. She could save him now. The power to do it was right at her fingertips. It might kill her, but it would save him.
His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Only when the light in his eyes went out and he looked away did she realize…
This was his good-bye.
“No.” Her whispered denial turned into a scream. He couldn’t sacrifice himself! Not when she’d already decided to be the one. “No, no, no! Isaac, don’t you dare! Don’t give in.”
She shoved Siona aside and pushed herself to her feet.
Too late. Too late.
He dug his fingers into the earth as the change washed over him. His body contorted and flexed and grew. His growl deepened, his jaw elongated. His eyes were the last to turn. From that beautiful, expressive amethyst to a blood red.
Too late!
He leaped through bodies and landed right in front of her.
She flinched. He won’t hurt me. Won’t hurt me. Not me. But she wasn’t so sure anymore.
She jerked back instinctively with a breathless sob to avoid his razor-sharp nails. He tossed her out of the way and launched himself at a gnome that had been coming up behind her and tore his throat out.
She whispered his name, praying for recognition to flare. Blood dripped from his muzzle. Muzzle, not chin. It smeared across his face.
Another arrow screamed through the air and lodged itself into his back, and another.
He reared up and swung in a wide circle, roaring as the gnomes converged again.
“Leave him alone!”
Siona wrapped both arms around Greta’s waist and kept her from lunging after him.
Isaac was wild, filled with a rage so terrible it seemed impossible that anyone could overcome that. He will. This is just a slip. It’s just—
Throwing his head back, the thing that had been Isaac let out a furious roar. The whole of Mylena must have heard it. It shredded her heart.
Her stomach clenched at the thought of the havoc he would cause and the bounty that would be issued as soon as word got out…
That the goblin king was Lost.
Chapter Nine
The gnome army was completely focused on Isaac now, but Siona held Greta back and the faeries refused to step in. “Help him!” she cried.
“He’s too dangerous.” Siona tightened her grip on Greta.
She was so furious her chest rattled with it, her vision glossed over with hot tears, her hands shook. “Nobody hurts him!”
“Danem, we must go, or it won’t be the goblin king who is hurt.” Siona tugged her away insistently. A goblin turned Lost was one of the most fearsome creatures in this world. Strong and deadly, like a wolf and a bear and a devil all rolled into one horrifying killing machine without conscience or mercy.
She shook her head. “I can’t leave him.”
Before she could grab her sword or draw on her magick, Dryden stalked forward…and then everything went black.
She woke up with a jerk and a gasp that hurt her jaw and sent pain shooting down her side. Someone put an arm around her shoulder. Wyatt, not Isaac. She leaned into him and tried to take stock. She couldn’t decide what hurt more, her face or her side.
The magick was so close, blurring her vision, singing in her veins. She felt less resistance to using it than last time. Her conscious mind knew how to access it now, wanted to access it, even as she felt it coating her spirit with suffocating black oil…
Siona knelt down beside her. The surge of unpredictable darkness receded, but the pain in her side wasn’t getting any better.
She opened her eyes and struggled to sit up. She looked for Dryden. He stood behind Siona with his arms crossed. She burned through him with her gaze.
“Jerk! You sucker punched me.”
Siona patted her shoulder. “Dryden’s methods were…harsh.” She frowned up at him. “But we had to get you out of there.”
She shook Siona’s hand away. “Where is he?”
Everyone looked away from her, and nobody answered.
“What did you do to him?” Her voice cracked with worry, bringing the magick rushing back to the forefront. She gritted her teeth against it, but apparently having given in to it so completely, even just one time, had put a serious crack in her control.
“We didn’t do anything,” Wyatt answered. Siona was back to soothing her with a hand on her arm. “If he survived the gnomes, then he’s still out there.”
If he survived the gnomes.
“Where are we?”
“Not far. You’re pretty heavy, you know that?”
She grunted and looked down at herself. She was covered in blood and immediately pressed her hand into the wound at her side. “I’m bleeding.”
&nb
sp; “The wound isn’t serious. You took a blade in the side, but it didn’t go deep. The bleeding should stop soon.”
She nodded and pushed herself to her feet, using Wyatt as a crutch. He handed her sword back, and she nodded thanks. Where would Isaac go? What would he do now that he was…
She couldn’t even think the word.
This is my fault. The heartbreaking guilt choked her. He never would have given in to the beast if he hadn’t felt like he had to save her.
Well, if she’d wanted the goblin kingdom to accept her, she was off to a pretty hellacious start.
She turned to Siona with a shiver, sick to her stomach. “I have to go after him.”
Siona’s eyes widened. “Danem, you can’t. It’s already too late. You saw him, you know it’s true. It isn’t safe for you to be anywhere near him now…or ever again.”
Greta shoved her sword into the sheath at her waist and gritted her teeth. “I’m going.”
Wyatt crossed his arms and frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t think Mylena has ever known a more dangerous creature than a goblin king gone Lost.”
“And what do you know about Mylena? All you do is hide from it,” she snapped.
Wyatt recoiled, lips pressing into a thin line. She immediately groaned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just…” She shook her head and turned away. “I need to go.”
Siona pulled her away from Wyatt and the others. “What can you possibly do for him now? I hate it as much as you do, but unless you wish to be the one to stick the blade through his chest and end his misery, you must let him go.”
“And what if he hurts someone? What then?” She swallowed the hard lump in her throat. She knew the exact moment he’d given up on coming out of that fight intact. That moment when he’d felt her giving in to the magick and decided he should be the one to let go instead. Her weakness had failed him.
“If it comes to that—but it won’t—but if it does, then yes, I have to be the one to take him down. Nobody else.”
The pity in the hunter’s eyes made Greta want to hurl. “You will only be hurt if you do this,” Siona said, “and I can’t let you be lost to Mylena, too.”
“Siona, don’t be melodramatic. I’m the only one in Mylena who can’t be Lost.”
“I’m not talking about running with the moons, danem. This is about the goblin kingdom and what is best for Mylena.” She paused. “This is about the darkness growing inside you. It threatens to consume you just as completely as the moons rule Mylena. There is no getting him back. Now there is only ensuring that the dream he had for a peaceful, united Mylena is continued by the successor he has already named.”
“But we could find him and help—”
Siona gave her a sympathetic look. “Would you really risk going after him now when it’s because of you he went over the edge?” Greta winced, but Siona had a point.
She swallowed hard. “I’ll control it.”
“You can’t.” She said it so matter-of-factly, and all doubt about whether or not Siona had somehow been bolstering Greta’s control over the magick was gone.
Siona’s voice softened. “He chose you to be the one to continue in his place if anything happened to him. You need to think about what’s best for his people. Your people, now.”
That probably wasn’t technically true. Proclaiming Greta his future queen did not make her the current queen just because he was gone now…whether that’s what he would have wanted or not. She didn’t know who’d been slated to take the throne before last night’s banquet, but she was pretty sure no one would just let her have it. Not without a fight.
“That’s what I’m doing.” She didn’t want to hear about moving forward without Isaac. This was a problem, but she’d figure something out. In the meantime… “I can’t leave the goblins unprotected while the gnomes ransack the kingdom. They need Isaac.”
“You can’t go back to him or the goblin people like…this.”
Wyatt stepped in. She wondered how much he’d heard.
“Whatever you’re planning, you can’t go anywhere without getting that wound looked at first.” He wouldn’t look her in the eye. He sounded pissed. And worried.
They were both right. Maybe not for the reasons they thought, but the scent of her blood on Isaac’s trail might be worse than waiting a few days to make sure her problems were taken care of and she could track him down safely.
“All right.” With a final glance into the shadows of the woods, she nodded.
“Really?” Siona looked startled and a little guilty.
“I guess. Going to the Glass Kingdom will kill a bunch of birds with one stone. I need the faerie queen’s help, she wants the goblin king’s allegiance, and Wyatt needs to know where to find the other boys.”
“Then let’s get you patched up,” Siona said.
Greta looked around. “Um, did you leave all our stuff behind?”
Siona put her hands on her hips. “Should I have fought through the horde of gnomes to rescue your tattered old pack?”
The flowers Isaac had given her were in that pack. “No, of course not.” She swallowed her tears.
Dryden approached, having apparently anticipated that they would need a few things, because he carried a bag and handed it over when he stopped in front of them.
“Everything that we managed to salvage has been divided up. This is yours for the three-day journey,” he said in a gruff voice, his gaze lighting on Siona and pausing there for a long moment. Was it just Greta, or did his icy faerie crust melt just an iota when he looked at her? “There are bandages and some dried rations inside. Be ready to leave in an hour’s time.”
So efficient, but where had he been when the fighting started? Who’d fallen asleep at their post, or gone off to take a piss at exactly the wrong time? Why hadn’t the faerie warriors been patrolling the area surrounding the camp and noticed those gnomes coming long before they were right on top of everybody?
The three of them found some privacy but Greta refused to take her shirt off until Wyatt turned his back, so he stood guard a few feet away while Greta’s injury was cleaned and dressed.
Siona frowned as she looked Greta over. “I’m fine,” she reiterated.
“I don’t have another tunic for you to wear,” Siona said.
“That’s okay. Just because I spent a few weeks in the goblin castle doesn’t mean I don’t remember what it’s like to live day-to-day.” With a shrug, she reached for the bloody, torn shirt she’d put on clean and fresh only yesterday morning. “So, if we’re heading in the direction I think we’re heading, we should make Eyna’s Falls before noontime, and I’ll try to clean up a bit as we walk along the river’s edge.”
“We aren’t following the river. We must cross it.”
“And just where do you expect to cross it?” There was only one way—
“At Solem’s Bridge.”
Her mouth dropped open. “But that means passing the bjer. Are you abso-freakin’-lutely nuts?”
Siona’s forehead creased, but she didn’t laugh and say, “Got you good!” and her stoic expression wasn’t exactly reassuring.
“Whose idea was this? Wait, let me guess. The faeries. Don’t they realize it’s a suicide mission?”
“The faerie queen has already heard of the battle with the gnomes. She has ordered her people to return to the Glass Kingdom before the moons are full in three days’ time or be banished, and the gates shut again…this time forever.”
“How has she given these orders?”
“Her mental connection to the faeries allows her to stay in touch.”
She remembered mention of that neat trick. “Great, but they’ve got to know it’s impossible reach the Luna Pass from here in three days’ time.”
“Unless you cross Solem’s Bridge,” Siona said.
Greta groaned and pulled her coat back on. They rejoined the rest of the group, which, from the look on Dryden’s face, was waiting on them to leave. She stalked up to him. �
��If you think I’m going to try to cross Solem’s Bridge without a plan for defeating the bjer, you’ve got another think coming,” she said.
He raised a pompous brow. “I have it on good authority that we have two bounty hunters in our midst. I believe it’s in your job description to manage such threats, and I assumed you would wish to carry your weight on the journey.”
With that, he made his way to the front of the mini procession that had already formed. She felt like calling after him that going to the Glass Kingdom had never been her idea in the first place, so she wasn’t going to pull any damn weight, but that seemed counterproductive, so she bit her tongue.
This was the first time she’d traveled the wilds of Mylena without constantly looking over her shoulder. Having this many pairs of eyes watching the woods was a novel experience. It reminded her, though, that somehow these same faeries had missed a large group of bloodthirsty gnomes raiding their camp, so she wasn’t about to let her guard down.
There weren’t quite as many faeries left as there’d been before the attack. The fighting had taken its toll, and only four faeries—including Dryden—remained to protect the prince and princess on the journey back to the Glass Kingdom.
Greta had already calculated that they’d reach Solem’s Bridge well before nightfall. That didn’t leave her with a lot of time to remember what she’d heard about the bjer guarding it.
“Have you formulated a plan for gaining access to the bridge?” Dryden’s voice startled her. She hadn’t expected him to willingly draw her into conversation, but when she noticed Siona watching, she had a pretty good idea why he’d used this excuse to approach them.
“I’m thinking,” she answered tightly. “Have you ever seen a bjer, or known anyone who has seen one?”
Whenever Greta started out on a job, the first thing she did was gather as much information as she could about what she’d be hunting. She’d learned to hang back in the shadows of taverns and public houses, listening to the locals tell stories. It was a good place to start even if the tales had a tendency toward exaggeration. If a goblin was standing in the middle of Maidra’s with a crowd of rapt faces glued to his every word, raving about a twelve-foot-tall beady-eyed monster with talons the size of rapier blades, she knew she was likely going after a pretty average ghoul.