by Shona Husk
Roan opened up the balcony door, the glass now whole. Meryn remembered using a chair to break the glass and escape. The three men stood outside. Roan leaned against the railing. “What’s going on?”
For a moment Meryn couldn’t speak. He’d come so far since the first night he’d stood here, before climbing down and fleeing into the city…only to be arrested for carrying a sword a short time later. Yet in Nadine’s eyes he was still a goblin.
“I told Nadine about my life as a goblin.” As Meryn spoke, he realized how naïve he must sound, to think he could tell the truth and have someone love him anyway.
Dai muttered what could only be a filthy curse in some language Meryn didn’t speak.
“Why did you do that?” Roan rubbed a hand over his very short hair.
“She already knew about goblins, as a child her mother told her your story.” Meryn glanced inside and watched the women talking. Brigit laughed, the sound carrying outside and cutting open the wounds he’d thought healed. He could see love, hear the affection, and yet he was cold and hollow and had nothing. “Amanda and Eliza know the truth. Why should I expect less?”
“That is different.” Roan crossed his arms. “We don’t talk about the curse or goblins for our own safety.”
“Meryn has a point. Plus, if Nadine already knew the tale, what difference does it make?” Dai ran his finger along the top of the metal railing.
Roan shook his head. “It’s too late now anyway. The words can’t be unspoken.”
Meryn wished they could be—or at least spoken better.
Dai looked at Meryn, the glimmer of magic in his eyes. “What happened after you told her?”
What was Dai seeing? Was he looking for lies? “She ran. I thought that if I explained I’d lived her mother’s story, that would make it right. But I am everything she hates.”
“Not hates. She doesn’t hate you.” Dai blinked and his eyes returned to normal.
“I need to find a way to win her back. That is why I called you. I don’t know what to do. You two have both been there and fought that battle.” Meryn pointed to the door where the women were serving up the meal as if there was nothing odd going on. They knew about magic and goblins, they knew about the men’s past. Roan and Dai didn’t have to lie with every breath.
“Her mother told her our story?” Roan was frowning.
Dai glanced at Roan and then at Meryn. “Does she know how the curse broke and what happened to us?”
“Yes, I told her the curse was broken by love long before I told her I’d lived the curse.” Meryn shook his head. He was always going to be an ex-goblin from her mother’s tale.
“No, no. Tell her the real story,” Dai said.
“I did and she didn’t believe a word.”
Eliza pulled open the door. “Dinner is ready if you are.”
“Almost.” Roan smiled at her, then turned back to face Meryn. “She won’t be angry now, and you’ve had time to cool your heels too.”
“She won’t listen to me; she thinks I’m a goblin. I don’t even know if she’ll see me.” His plan so far totaled going to the hospital and praying that she would see him. He knew it was the kind of plan that would fail. Maybe he shouldn’t have bothered coming; his cousins weren’t helping.
“Write it down. She may not read it straight away, but she won’t be able to ignore it forever.” Dai smiled like he’d solved everything.
The idea was good. He could rewrite her mother’s story, filling in the gaps with truth. He was the only one who could give her mother’s tale its proper ending. There was only one flaw. “I can’t write.”
“Leave that with me.” Dai opened the door and went inside to have dinner.
Meryn bit back a sigh and followed. He felt like an intruder on their family dinner. But as he ate and spoke, he kept imagining Nadine there. She’d like to meet Roan, the king her mother had been obsessed with, and no one would have to watch what they said around her, as she knew about goblins. Mostly Meryn wanted what they’d had for those few short hours when she’d been in his arms. He’d never been so human, or so easily wounded. This time he wasn’t going to give up; he’d fight for her. For them.
After dinner, Dai took him aside. With a little magic, Dai got a pen to transcribe whatever Meryn said. After a few false starts, both men were happy with the way it was working and the language it was writing in.
Meryn picked up the pen. Not a large weapon, but certainly deadly if used to stab. He spun it in his fingers. Written words would have to work where talking had failed. And if he failed?
He wouldn’t let himself think of that. If one dreamed of defeat, the battle was already lost. He drew out a clean sheet of paper and recalled everything Nadine had told him about her mother’s Goblin King fairy tale. It wasn’t hard when he imagined her lips speaking the words.
“Start.” The pen stood ready for action, his only soldier in his fight to win back Nadine. In Latin, he began his retelling of The Goblin King tale.
Eliza and Roan had gone home, and Brigit was in bed before Meryn was happy with what he’d done. He carefully folded up the papers, then Dai took him home.
“Good luck. Let me know how it goes…or better still, bring her around to meet the rest of us.” Dai put his hand on Meryn’s shoulder briefly. Then Dai stepped back and was gone with little more than a sigh of air.
Luck had nothing to do with it. Battles were about planning and understanding your opponent—that, and having the best weapons. Would a few sheets of paper be enough to win back Nadine’s heart?
***
Outside the small apartment, in a nondescript brown building in a dodgy suburb, she hesitated. Nadine cast another glance at her car. It wasn’t new, and it wasn’t flashy either. A small, cheap coupe shouldn’t be high on thieves’ lists. But that didn’t mean some kid wouldn’t take it for a test drive and then set it alight.
It would be fine, and if it wasn’t, at least she had insurance.
She knocked on the door and tried to ignore the peeling blue paint and the faint traces of graffiti that someone had attempted to scrub off, and waited, her gaze flickering over the parking lot and other apartments. Many of the curtains were closed as the residents didn’t want anyone peering into their lives. Solomon was home. She’d rung on the way over, but she hadn’t said why she was coming.
The door opened. Her father stood there in tracksuit pants and a T-shirt. He looked at her and nodded. Then he let her in, as if he knew why she was here without her breathing a word.
His apartment was sparsely furnished with odd pieces. Nothing matched. It wasn’t like the home she’d grown up in; her mother’s touch was missing. But it was still more of a home than Meryn’s spacious apartment. This place was lived in.
“Tea, coffee?”
“No. No thanks.” She glanced around, not sure what to do. On top of the TV was a picture of them as a family. Her mother was smiling at her father. She closed her eyes and turned away as the heartache threatened to crush her again.
Her father looked at her, resignation lined his face. He knew she wasn’t here to chat. “Why are you here, Nadine?”
She took a breath—she could only do this once—and jumped. “Mum used to tell a story, Le roi des gobelins. Was it real?” Had the Goblin King been a cursed Celtic King as Meryn said?
“Michaline loved fairy tales. She believed there was truth in all of them.”
Maybe there was more truth to some. “She used to say goblins ran the earth on winter solstice. Have you ever seen them?”
Solomon sighed and sat down on the sofa. “Yes. When we were dating, she made me sit up one night with her to watch the Wild Ride. At first I saw nothing but shadows and moonlight. Then it became clear—an army riding straight out of Hell made up of gray demons.”
“Did you see the goblins take her?”
“I don’t know for sure what happened. Maybe it was goblins, maybe it was humans. Only you know the truth.”
Nadine wiped her eyes
with the back of her hand. The tears wouldn’t stop now they’d started. “I don’t remember.”
Flashes of her nightmare played in her mind like an old film. The face in the window. The monster that hid in the shadows and crawled around her sleep.
“You do. You just locked it away to protect yourself. Only you can set the memory free.”
In her mind, the glass broke for the last time.
Only it wasn’t her being dragged out the window by goblins in her dream; it was her mother. The person left holding the cross and doing nothing wasn’t Meryn. It was her. She’d watched her mother be stolen and done nothing.
Her legs buckled and she knelt on the floor. It was her fault her mother had died.
It was her fault her father had been imprisoned. If she’d remembered… If she’d done something, anything, she would’ve had a family.
Solomon was at her side, holding her the way he should have done twenty years ago. “I wish I’d been there. I’m sorry, Nadine.”
“I should’ve stopped them.”
“You were a child.”
“I should’ve remembered and spoken at your trial.” She lifted her head. “You’re innocent. We have to clear your name.”
“No. No one believes in goblins. I want to move forward. I don’t want to look back.”
“I’m sorry I never wrote you or came to see you.”
“Prison is no place for a little girl. I don’t blame you for anything.” Solomon smiled even though his eyes were wet.
She hugged her father for the first time in two decades. She knew the truth and had her family back. “You don’t hate the goblins for what they did?”
“How can I hate a creature so damned they gave up all emotion in exchange for greed? They suffer every day in a hell of their own making.”
But Meryn hadn’t given up everything for greed. He’d been cursed along with the king of her mother’s story. “Is it possible for a goblin to get free of the Shadowlands?”
“At solstice?”
“To be a man again.”
“I don’t know. I guess his heart would have to outweigh the goblin’s greed. It would be a rare man to claw his way back.”
Yet that was what Meryn had done. Could Meryn really be one of the men her mother had talked about? “What about the Goblin King and his men?”
“If the curse broke maybe, but how much of the man would be left after living so long in the Shadowlands?” Solomon studied her as if wondering at her sudden interest.
That first night Meryn had been more goblin than man. He’d admitted as much and proven that by stealing her mother’s cross. But now? He’d shown her his heart and still ached for a two-thousand-year-old loss. No goblin would feel such a wound.
But had he really given up being goblin? Could she trust him?
“If the goblins took her, you can’t bring her back.”
“I know.” But she didn’t share her mother’s fate with her father. Telling him would not do anything but open an old wound. “I guess I just want an end to her story. It was always incomplete.”
“That’s what she always said, and she spent a lot of time looking for variants, hoping to find out what happened.” He shook his head. “If those men survived, they have served many life sentences.”
Nadine looked at the floor. Her father had done twenty years. Meryn had done twenty centuries for daring to stand against the Romans and support his king, something that he should’ve been rewarded for, not punished for. The sheer amount of time made her head spin. Meryn had stepped out of ancient history. The army he’d served in had fought with swords against the Romans.
It was too much when all she wanted was a simple life. A boyfriend who hadn’t crawled out of her worst fears, one who hadn’t watched her mother die alone in the Shadowlands.
“Not every story has a happy ending. If your mother’s tale is true, the chances are better that those men gave in or went mad. You’re so like her, believing in the fairy tales.”
“They were all I had when I was growing up. I used to wish she’d walk through the door and take me home.”
“I used to wish she’d be found alive and well, even though I knew in my heart she was gone. I’d seen the goblins pass the cab. I knew she’d planned to watch. I never thought they’d take her.”
Nadine closed her eyes as the fragments reformed. “She put a coin on the windowsill to bring them close enough for me to see. She was hoping to see the Goblin King.”
Chapter 20
It was midnight when Meryn walked down the hill and into the city. His eyes kept a careful watch on the dark shadows lining the street. While nothing moved, the tension in his gut didn’t leave. He was completely unarmed. He’d left the knife he’d stolen at home, in an effort to prove he could fit in and that he was no longer a goblin or a soldier. Without a weapon, he was naked…and he had no armor. Nadine could cut out his heart with just a few words, and yet if she did, he knew he could survive the injury. He’d rather live and be happy, but he knew that he didn’t deserve a second chance with her, not after stealing her mother’s cross.
Tucked into his jacket pocket were a few sheets of paper. Even now he didn’t know if it was right or if it would work. He crossed the empty roads and passed closed shops. In front of the hospital, he paused. Last time he’d been here the police had brought him, more goblin than man, confused and scared. He touched the healed wound on his head. This time he wasn’t injured. Could he just walk in?
He had no backup plan. He didn’t know where Nadine lived, only that she worked here at night and ran through the park in the morning. If she wasn’t here, he would have to wait for her; although if it was him in her situation, he would find somewhere else to run.
What did he have to offer her?
Nothing. He was hardly a suitor of worth. He stared up at the hospital building. She hadn’t cared before…No, she hated that he’d been goblin. So did he, but he couldn’t change his past any more than she could change hers. All he had to offer was a future filled with love.
He drew in a breath of cold night air, rolled his shoulders, and walked through the glass doors marked emergency. A wave of heat, sharp white light, and bitter antiseptic rolled over him. He pushed through, even though he’d rather wait outside in the cool air. This time the waiting room was nearly empty.
Like the police had done when they brought him in, he walked to the counter. Nadine wasn’t there; her friend Gina was.
“Can I help you?” Gina’s gaze raked over him as if his presence offended her.
“I’d like to see Nadine.”
Gina raised her eyebrows and looked away. “This is emergency not a dating service. Do you have an emergency?”
Meryn stood his ground even though he wanted to leave. He didn’t have a medical emergency, but if he left now, he’d wonder the rest of his life about what might’ve been with the woman who knew half the story of the Goblin King and his men. “If I don’t get to see her and make amends, I will have lost her forever.”
The woman glanced up from her paperwork, but this time she really looked at him. Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “You hurt her.”
The nurse drew the first blood in the battle with her pointed comment. He’d truly wounded Nadine and she’d told her friend. He deserved this woman’s scorn, but he didn’t turn away from the heartache. He embraced it. Living meant feeling. He would rather hurt than be numbed to everything but gold.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Why would I let you see her?”
“Because…because I love her and need another chance to prove it.” He wished he’d had a chance to tell Nadine how he felt before everything had fallen apart.
Gina considered him for a moment before shaking her head. “Then you’d better double up like you have appendicitis.”
Appendicitis? Meryn frowned.
The nurse rolled her eyes. “Grip you stomach like you have sharp pains and I’ll get you through the door.”
He grimaced
and folded his arm across his gut like he was stopping it from falling out. The nurse ticked a few boxes on a form. “What’s your surname, Meryn?”
“Knight, as in shining armor.”
The nurse’s lips moved as she tried to hide a smile. “Let’s get you through so you can be seen.”
“Thank you,” he said through his teeth as if raked with pain.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
She indicated the door at the side and Meryn walked over, still holding his stomach. Was it for the benefit of the people waiting or the other nurses who’d watched them speak? For a moment, a stab of guilt leant its weight to his faked illness. He was taking up nurses’ time when there were people waiting. He glanced again at the few people in the waiting room. There were no children and no one was bleeding or unconscious. And while he was sure they wouldn’t agree, he had to see Nadine.
Gina took him into a small room. “I’ll let Nadine know you’re in here. If she won’t see you, you’ll have to leave. And if you make a scene, I’ll call security.”
“I understand.”
Gina hesitated. “I’ve never seen her so upset. You must have really gotten to her.” Then she closed the door after herself.
Meryn sat on the edge of the high, narrow bed. His nose wrinkled at the strong smell that seemed to be part of the hospital. Beyond the door he could hear talking, someone crying. But in the room it was quiet, still, and bland. Different shades of white and off-white blended together as if someone had created a sterilized version of the Shadowlands.
It was strangely calming. He let out a sigh and rolled his shoulders. The muscles in his back remained tight, as if he were bracing for a blow he couldn’t yet sense.
What if Nadine refused to see him?
Should he wait for her outside the hospital and hope to see her? The building was huge. If he waited on the wrong side he might never see her. Did he try again tomorrow? Or did he walk away, knowing she could find him when she was ready?
He flexed his fingers and forced his mind to be still. Chasing himself in circles wouldn’t make the waiting pass any faster. Better to be calm. Or at least try and be calm. He closed his eyes and breathed as if he had no worries. Those moments before a fight were always clearest. The plans were made; everything was ready. Nothing else to be done except fight. What was at risk and what was to gain hung in the balance.