Just then, I heard his voice and hid behind the retaining wall that separated the room from the garden terrace. He was yelling at someone to hurry up his shirt and polish his shoes. Same old Joshlin. His voice trailed off as if following his berated tailor.
Seth, the guard a foot from me and posted just beside where Joshlin had just stood listening to the same orders I’d heard, bent towards me and said, “If you are successful, we are all with you.”
That was an underlying way of saying we go nowhere if you fail. I understood. Their families depended on them. I just didn’t have one. If Emma...
I shook my thoughts away to focus.
“Understood. I would expect nothing less.”
We all three hid in the small closet just beside the sitting areas for Joshlin’s nightly visitors. I wanted to puke thinking about him laying a finger on her. It wouldn’t leave my mind. It kept returning like a repeating punch to the gut.
“We move in fifteen. I don’t want anything to be anticipated. He will not be back to his rooms and will be irritable as a cat in heat because of what he’s about to do. When they pass, we will wait till they are in the doors and advance on the guards in tow. If they are really with us, this will go well. He will do as expected with retaliation demanding the guards take us. Emma will play a big part if she takes my unsaid advice with attacking Joshlin. I don’t think she’ll hesitate. Everyone clear?”
“What is plan B?”
I thought a second on the outcome of Joshlin taking her and running, for which I highly doubted him to be that stupid, but would entertain the idea.
“Then we take her and just run.”
“If he lives, it isn’t over.”
“I know, but I don’t think I can kill my brother and save her too.”
The flicker of remorse flashed in the glow of Wicker’s eyes before it left. I didn’t want to think about what it meant.
Trigger silently motioned for Wicker and I to go left and he would go right. We trailed around the corners and headed behind the pack of guards. I had to assume Emma was already in the room standing in a dress that was likely far from her liking and dressed up like a porcelain statue. Oh, she would be breathtaking to see, but not chosen for me or by me. If I convinced her to be mine, she could wear a potato sack and I wouldn’t care.
The doors clicked shut with Jones and another guard at the post of “not letting anything in”. I would have to make it look like I blasted through them with a fight so as to not get them hung at the gallows.
At the count of five, all three of us readied our daggers and prepared our magic. The doors didn’t boom open like my mind imagined, but eased aside noiseless and unnoticed. In the room stood almost every family and every guard I have known my entire life. Along the walls gathered children with their mothers and fathers behind them.
In the center trailed a slide of white lace that trailed a silky carpet all the way up to Emma, who was facing away from me with her face aimed up to the ceiling. I looked up to see if I knew what she was thinking and saw nothing. Lost in a moment of my own I caught the curve of her hips in the tight material that fit to her waist as she began to twist around my direction. The extremely low cut front showing more than any man should see of another man’s female led me up to her face. Frightened and happy when she looked my way, I felt her sigh from across the room.
More important, she looked unharmed. She felt unharmed. Nothing in her energy as I sought it seemed altered other than the fear and anger she was sending out in heat waves to all. Did he really think everyone would accept her as happy with this?
Something prodded my shoulder about the time that various onlookers let out an audible gasp in our direction. All heads turned including the two main guests of honor. Joshlin’s shock gave me an edge as Emma’s tear stained face covered in a ridiculous amount of make-up that hid her pretty eyes and face. She screamed out and Joshlin reached toward her.
With that, all I could see was red. No, I saw black. If he hurt her, I will have no qualms with killing him.
EMMA
He was here. He was really here. My body wanted to burst out of these clothes and run to him. I couldn’t breathe, my corset contraption was so tight. Katelyn and Ellen had to half carry me under one shoulder to get me up the four steps to where I stood so moving now wasn’t going to be easy. Then again, who cared if I ripped the dreaded gown to shreds? I certainly didn’t.
Ames was staring at me, looking me over. This was not time to play the lust game, but his face made me have hope. Then again, I don’t think that’s how he was looking at me. He was checking for damage control. I really didn’t once wonder if Joshlin would hurt me, but Ames’ look scared me into further protest of the situation.
I glanced at king boy beside me and saw that he was in total surprise that Ames was in here. Taking advantage of it, I peeled back the first layer of lace and reached in for the first fold where I had three tiny daggers snugly fitted into the dress. I had made secret entrances to the smallest ones without any major movement. In my hand now was the first one that I flashed Ames. His eyes barely moved, but he saw it. I started for the rest.
His shoulders reared back making my confidence rise a little but only seconds left before Joshlin acted.
Tear. Rip.
“Get him. Hold him down.” Joshlin barked out his orders. I thought I understood his magic was stronger than a manhandling crew of guards. Why would Joshlin need their strength?
A hand went to my throat and another around my waist. My hands were bound to my sides all in the same seconds I told myself to be ready for anything. This was the anything and I was tied up to him now.
“You will watch her die if you so much as move yourself or any object near my person.” Joshlin’s menacing purr didn’t sound the least bit sexy like I thought when I’d first met him. He wasn’t even compassionate like he tried to sound sometimes. I even wondered then if he would actually kill me to save himself.
“You harm one hair on her head and I’ll kill you a thousand times and make sure you’re still alive to see me do it over and over again.”
Joshlin laughed like a madman. “We will see about that, dear brother. By the looks of it, I think you will do anything I say right now.”
A shot of pain wringed my neck and blood ran down the front of my dress making a path to the first beads over the bodice. It didn’t hurt as much as it tingled like a numbing bee sting. Joshlin tried to turn me and in doing so I saw his lips pucker a little. Was the dude trying to kiss me?
“I will take her with me before I let you have her.”
He WAS trying to kiss me!
“Why?” Ames asked at the oddest moment.
“Because I can feel how much you want her,” he seethed through his teeth beside my earlobe. “And that only means you’ve kissed her already. You always have to win, don't you, dear brother.”
Can Joshlin feel his brother’s desire? I darted my eyes to Ames attempting the same. I couldn’t feel anything but anger and a very dangerous panic button shooting off him as well as every single body in the room. They were more practiced at the art though. I chose to ignore the kiss part, blushing rather wildly but then let it get the better of me.
“Do I get a choice in this matter? Why are you still trying to put your nasty lips on mine?” I sounded like a frog choking on water. I needed to stall for time. I needed to get my knife in his back.
Joshlin’s grip didn’t loosen. “Ah, he left that part out. The kiss of the goblin king makes you bound to him forever, my little Jem.”
But I thought we were already bound. I looked at Ames in confusion. “But I thought...”
“I’m sorry,” Ames mouthed out to me. What does that mean?
A man out of my peripheral took a few steps to my left. Joshlin didn’t let go of me, but told the man to get the space cleared so that I couldn’t get my footing on anything to help myself. The man paled but did as told. Joshlin's body turned into me and made the hem of my dress tighten me i
nto a human sized tourniquet from the floor up. His foot must have landed on the lace, because the second he leaned in more to check behind us for objects for my own usage, his leg buckled and he tripped into me. I didn’t think, I just acted. I plunged the knife into his side and yanked then stabbed into his thigh where it stuck from the reach. My other hand’s weapon swooped up and slashed a nasty scratch into his cheek defiling the pretty boy face he owned. I hope it scarred.
I searched for another knife blindly as his hands dropped and I ran from him ripping lace and dress from every section I could seize under my trembling hands.
Ames was closing in with Trigger and Wicker right behind. I measured the distance. I wasn’t going to make it.
Flipping around with just my “pantaloons” and feeling to see if the top of my dress was intact, I had all four of my other knives ready and aimed.
Joshin broke off his run abruptly. “You wouldn’t kill your king you cursed witch.”
Not one guard or anyone was helping me. Or Joshlin.
“Maybe not intentionally, but who knows. I’ve only been taught recently how to harness this extreme power you seek, so it’s hard to say what might happen when I unleash it.”
“She might not, but I would.”
AMES
Emma was strong and confident, but without any amount of self-preservation for her own safety when it was a heated moment. I was seriously worried with the idea that she might destroy herself with her own power, but I couldn’t stop wondering what she might do next.
The knives in her hand left her and moved on their own accord in an upward spiral all seeking one destination. As they billowed through an unmarked pattern and all turned to point at our beloved king’s head, the crowd around us made the second collective gasp to make the scene cinematic and anticipatory.
She wouldn’t do it intentionally and I in no way would let her. She could never live with herself.
However surprised she might have been at her own abilities, she then opened her mouth like she does.
“Now, you wouldn’t want to make me angrier right now, dear King Joshlin. All these good subjects wouldn’t want to see their mighty and generous king stabbed to the point of death, or worse, defaced and gruesomely ugly for all his female friends.”
She wasn’t joking, I think.
Bedraggled and confused, Joshlin looked to me for help. Like hell! “I am afraid Ames, dear brother, that if you ask the witch to stand down, she may do worse to you then she already has. You can’t win her over either. You haven’t kissed her yet, have you? Perhaps letting her go would save your sorry ass.”
Not that I would take long to forget his sick self. And how the heck did he know about the curse?
Joshlin was trying to destroy the knives by waving at them, but he rarely came to practice and was weak. And he didn't care about me no matter how he spun it. He realized the peanut sized magic he was putting out did nothing to her amount of wielding that many objects at one time. Neither of us could.
“I won’t back down. She is mine to manage and will remain so,” he barked at me. The angled glint of iron suspended in air blinked and wiggled a foot closer to the target making him back into the corner of the room where everyone standing there had moved far away.
Emma’s face was drawn up tight with the energy she held back. She wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer. I knew what had to be done.
“Forget plan A guys, plan C is now in effect.”
I heard Trigger ask Wicker what that plan was and Wicker telling him to shut up.
My hand slipped into hers. Even then did I feel the anxiety leave her body with one touch. “You don’t want to do this. He isn’t worth becoming a murderer.”
“But he would have hurt me, just to hurt you,” she pleaded.
“You’re stronger than this. He can’t hurt me or you now. I’ve got you and I don’t plan to let go until you tell me to.”
“So plan C is letting me decide?” she smiled.
I gave in to her mind control over me. She was my very soul. Whether I wholly like that yet or not, I didn’t know.
“I like that plan,” she told me as she turned back to the evil tyrant I called a brother. Emma knew what he was capable of now, that much was clear.
I readied my knife for the quick and effortless. I hated that it would be so easy to take his life, but I would.not.lose.her.
“I will keep these aimed at your head as you bow down and give up your crown to the entire room watching,” she silenced his face turning purple with the knives wiggling like before. “I will not marry you. You will not make this realm continue to be at your beck and call. And I will not acknowledge that I am what you say unless Ames is back where he belongs.” She turned to me, then to the ceiling. Did she know the two people painted above her head were my parents? If she didn’t know for sure, she was an unusually great guesser!
Down her eyes came back to mine.
“In the room he stashed me that day we both came, the vent system holds a very distinct echo that allows the “waiting one” to hear every syllable of what’s going on. I heard every word from the conversation and know who you are. I didn’t tell you only because I wanted you to tell me on your own. Since that is all said and done now, there’s no need to deny who and what you are. If I can accept my fate, then it’s time you did.” Her eyes lifted to my parents again.
Swallowing the air that seemed to disappear around me, I stared at the beautiful woman before me. She was persistent if not demanding. If she wouldn’t deny her calling, I wouldn’t either. “I will, if you will.”
Her lips curled up, her thin eyebrow followed. Slowly Emma said to me, “I will.”
Forgetting others around us, I crushed her to me. She relaxed into my chest and her breath mingled with mine.
Screams split open the air as Emma left my arms and pivoted a step away. Her scream for him to stop didn’t work so she unleashed. A blast blew through the ceiling as Joshlin raised his hands in the air intending some retaliation, but didn’t expect Emma’s fast unpracticed action of dropping the knives that were even with his waist and hitting the ground. The part that made everyone scream was the earth rattling below us and breaking the steps apart at his feet. He tripped, stumbled, and ran as fast as the falling ceiling parts could follow behind him. She was going to bury us all if she kept it up.
I yelled her name. She didn’t stop.
I tried again but grabbed her from behind and pulled her against me. The rumbling began to cease as I stroked her hair and arms practically yelling in her ear canal, “You can control this, Emma.”
“But he’s getting away,” she pleaded her own warning. The floor still rocked, but it was slowing.
“Let him. He’s not worth it. The guards can chase him with the trace.”
“He will come back. What trace?” She was frantic and the walls rattled.
“He won’t. I know where he is going? Our people have traces on him.” I looked around. It wasn’t for all ears to hear.
Her voice screeched, verging on hysteria and a heavy loss of control, “How?”
My turn for a knowing smile. “He is my brother. And I will tell you the rest in private.”
“Not by blood.”
She at least gave up on the trace part, but she did know other things. She was full of revealing secrets.
“My, my. Someone knows even more than I thought.” I stroked her bare shoulders where the horrid "wedding" dress was falling apart. The floor stilled.
Wicker laughed behind us. “I knew I liked this girl.”
“I had some help. What I didn’t know, I asked.” She blushed, her energy depleting and coming into reign. I was beating the wrath she could deal out by calming her. The fact that I could do that was just amazing enough I wanted to test it out over and over, but that would mean making her agitated and angry. Enough things already angered her. I wouldn’t have to wait long before Joshlin did something else.
“Well, we have lots of time to...talk
now.” I was allowed to enjoy her pink cheeks without looking away now.
EMMA
The way he looks at me is just...well, no one has ever looked at me that way. His eyes tell me he wants to say something. The solitary gaze he holds on me is focused, but beyond comprehending other than the high energy and amount of feelings being shot out from both of us.
I can hardly keep my arms from wrapping around him so tightly that I know I won’t be separated from him again. I don’t know how to explain it or why the feeling has become such a detrimental aspect of my existence. I find myself watching him shift his weight to hold me closer and neither of us wanting to let go.
Even stranger to notice, I find that he is tracking the way I move, like before, but fitting himself to me as I do. This moment is a turning point for us. It defines who the two of us will be together with no more guesses or wonderings about where we stand with each other. My chest tightened and pressed out to ease the pain of pulling apart because we can’t stand like this forever.
And I want him to tell me all is right with the world though I know it’s not. Somehow, in so short a time, I have come to rely on this man like he is a lifejacket pulling me back to shore. I want to tell him thank you for all he has done to save me, not giving me to his brother, and letting me have him as a precious gift for only me. I also know how brave he will have to be to take on the role of king. It will not be easy.
“Will you be okay?” he asked me quietly pressing a light kiss to the top of my head while taking off his jacket.
I looked over my shoulder towards the blast in the door where Joshlin fled.
“He cannot get to you again?” I felt his jacket fit around me. His hands flitted across the top of my chest making me jump, but looking down I saw he was covering where Joshlin had me on display like a hooker. I looked once more to be sure Joshlin wasn’t running in with a cannon.
Denial (Goblin's Kiss Series Book One) Page 23