Denial (Goblin's Kiss Series Book One)

by Cyndi Goodgame

  “Alyssa. Warren and Alyssa Loggin.” Emma sat simmering in the moment. “I have something else to show you.”

  Reluctant to not leave the painting behind, she rocked on her heels in indecision. Emma had just confirmed what all of us had been saying with a single artifact. A very important one at that. She is the lost princess. And one other artifact that I, for the first time, wanted to share with someone.

  “Wait here. I will bring it to you.”

  I left her there to revel in shock. She had another one coming.

  I brought in the second painting and leaned it beside the other.

  She had the same starry look in her eyes that said she was making serious connections that scared her to death.

  “It’s you with your parents.”

  “Yes. You knew because of the ceiling, right?”

  She nodded and smoothed her hand across for the left tip of the frame to the other side. “You have your father’s eyes and mouth.”

  “I was only five in this picture.”

  Emma smoothed her fingers over the boy in the painting.

  It’s the part she hadn’t noticed yet that made me anxious. “My father, King Ares, was the king when he died. My mother, Queen Layla was already dead when the warring king invaded. King Warren wanted our gold and to get it, he killed my father. I was young, so I didn’t know enough to protest and neither did Joshlin. My people surfaced and saw that my father hadn’t died. I looked back as his scream alerted me just to see him run through by King Warren right through his heart. Joshlin pulled me away as I screamed back at his dying face. I will never forget that day.”

  She covered her face. I hurried the next line so it would be over because as much as I knew she’d figured a lot of this out, it hadn’t been said aloud. “King Warren Loggin was your father.”

  Her body fell out from under her making dust fly everywhere as she landed square in the middle of the room. She sobbed and rubbed her face in her sleeve. “You must hate me for who I am.”

  “If it were that simple Emma, I’m sure I could. But you didn’t cause my parents death. You were a baby. I didn’t even know what happen to you after they took you away. I learned that you were not dead when I was ten and Wicker’s father saved you.” She didn’t react except with her emotions. “That the girl I saw young and checked on regularly was King Warren’s daughter. One of our elders, Elder Wicker, thought to hide you from even our own people before they could destroy you. And your people thought you were dead. I am more thankful to that person than any other deed ever done in our history. If he hadn’t, it wouldn’t have led me to you.” I lifted her tear-stained chin. “I may be out of line and you may still think me young and unwise, but I can’t live without you, Emma. I can’t explain it. I can’t deny it. That day you walked up to me in the hall of your human school, I was searching for an evil look-a-like twin to Joshlin. But what I found was a treasure better than any gold you see. You were nothing like him or the others who have kept watch over you.”

  She half laughed and focused on the historical moment of our meeting, not my goof up in telling her about Caydon and his destiny tied fascination that had nothing to do with love, “How did you know all that in a single moment?”

  “Because your energy has no malice. I can sense it like you can mine. Just like you sense Joshlin’s lack thereof. I watched you try to read him. He was not of my bloodline and therefore his magic is nothing like what we have. I never once wanted you when I knew what you could do, but when I saw what you wouldn’t do. You are a good, kind beautiful person.”

  She asked who the elder was and if he was alive. He isn’t, but I told her who his son was. Elder Wicker was a great man.

  “So is it safe to say that you won’t hold my history against me and you wish for me to see all this because I will feel guilty the rest of my life?”

  “Emma, you know I wouldn’t do that. I just don’t want to lie to you. You had to know. Throwing royalty into the mix doesn’t change what we are to each other.” Did she not believe me?

  “I know. It hurts nonetheless. I am not glad to know, but will get over it and move on. What about all this gold? What happens to it? Is there more?”

  “It is what we live on and yes, there is more down here than even you can imagine. I will tell more about it soon. You’ve already hit the TMI level and most likely need some time off.”

  EMMA

  He pulled me up to standing and held me against him, dirt and all. Blood rose to my cheeks the second his body leaned into mine, my nose landing solid against the shaven underside of his chin. “I want to share everything with you, Emma,” he whispered softly, his breath tickling my ear. “I don’t want to lose you.” His hand glided up my arm holding it there long enough for me to know it was intentional. I couldn’t see straight, my mind was dizzying up.

  I smiled to let him know I was better, though I wasn’t. His eyes lingered longer than they should have and I was the first to break the hold. Two feet...four...five feet away now, I was breathing on my own again. I needed air to think clearly.

  He winked with a dimple rising up.

  I’d had enough sharing. I kind of wanted to put the brakes on the heat in the room, as well as the overload in information but first I wanted to know why he kept the secret from his own.

  “And no one knows where this is because they wouldn’t know how to handle all this.”

  He nodded.

  “What is a trace?”

  Ames gestured all around him, “The gold all around you is forged into gold medallions and placed in the hands of those the king feels compelled to keep an eye on whether for safety, or weary of one’s intentions. And many other reasons. It is only seen by the eyes of the true king and queen and cannot be told lightly to others. I have told only one other.”

  My face gave all kinds of “tell me” signs.

  “Wicker is my most loyal companion despite your opinion of him. I would do anything for him and he for me. You are the second. However careful we are, it makes it into the hands of others. I see the traces all over the human world. There are others like us. Others who use it unwisely.”

  “Other kings?” I asked.

  Ames nodded and chortled, “We are not the only mountain.”

  “What about Joshlin?”

  “Very clever girl. No, he isn’t the heir, so he can have a trace.”

  Ahhh! How he will find him. “And you are the only one who can find him?”

  “For now. You will be able to once I show you what to look for.”

  My sheepish look gave away what I think I’d just connected to my past. “I think I know. I wondered for years what I was doing to the funky “Chucky Cheese” coins my stepfather kept in his study. I would take them and show my friends. When they touched them, their hands stained with their color and so I hid them. I just never told anyone and I assumed I ‘magiced’ my friends with whatever the freaky power I was born with.”

  “I am surprised you never figured out more.”

  “If the hot prince in charge would have wandered in earlier in my life, maybe I would have.”

  His back arched with my compliment.

  “So following Joshlin is like a Hansel and Gretel bread crumb search? You just let him lead the way.”

  “He already has.”

  I wanted to know absolutely everything and now argued with myself at what I wanted to do next. It felt like I was opening my heart only to break it in pieces if it wasn’t the answers I wanted. Not embarrassed, I reached into my shirt, under my bra and retrieved the thinning scrap with the memorized lines on it. As he watched me carefully unfold and hold it out for him to see, I let my body numb over with what I didn’t want the words to mean.

  Barely audible I asked, “What does the last line mean?”

  I took the task in hope for a favor of the king. She would take me to a new world.

  I said it to myself as his eyes followed the words across. His face was a mixture of something I figured might be fear
and shock that I kept it or maybe even why I kept it.

  “Before I met you, the real you, I just wanted away from Joshlin and the realm. I wanted to escape somehow and stay in the human world hidden from their view. It was easier than being his lackey. I wanted my own self. You were the first picture of possibilities I’d ever come across.” He didn’t stop to breathe.

  “I knew if I could get you, the real heir, to take the crown and marry him, I would be released from any obligations to the realm or to him. I would be free to live my life as I wanted.”

  He looked down at his hands to avoid my persecution. The worst part was I knew exactly how he felt.

  “I would have done the same. I hated what I was all these years.”

  His gaze returned to mine.

  “Until now.”

  Nothing but a blink of his eyes gave a response to my coded responses.

  At least now I knew. I was opening the can called Ames Cahn and worried then if he’d close it back up and run. He said he wanted me here, but he didn’t always.

  “Sometimes I come down here and mine the gold just to get away from the realm and especially the human world. It’s relaxing.” He picked up an axe and held it up for me, likely showing off.

  He at one point wanted me to be afraid of him, fear his past and what Joshlin ordered him to do, but I wasn’t. Whatever he did before, it wasn’t him on the inside.

  My heart felt for him.

  And then something else ignited altogether into pure lust. I’ll admit I imagined all those same man chest muscles I’d been privy too on the back porch and wondered if that’s how he managed to keep so fit. Really fit.

  Seeing my illogical timing on ogling, he smirked appreciatively and let the axe fall in a kind of slow motion show of his man skills, “I’m all that” kind of way. And that he was!

  “Stop showing off, mister.”

  “But you were admiring me,” he smirked even wider.

  “And you would do well to eat five pies and stop by for some fast food,” I shrugged him off to look closer at the carvings in the stone columns. How many elements are down here?

  “But then you wouldn’t drool over my body like you are now.”

  “Ames, focus already. This is important.” I steadily ignored his silent chuckling. He was enjoying this.

  “Like you’re so focused on my body is not important.”

  Oh, it is way too important to me! “And you just continued to take care of Joshlin though he was always insufferably evil to you and your people. Why?”

  Realizing I was changing the subject, he obliged with the good at heart answer I would have expected of him. “He was still my brother for which is a trait that I would have overlooked if he hurt you.”

  “And you will not even let him go hungry now? Suffer?” I looked around my shoulder to see his face when he answered.

  “Hungry, no. Without comfort, yes. If he had hurt you...”

  “You would have killed him,” I answered for him. It wasn’t arrogance speaking, it was the same fear I saw in his face when Joshlin forced my neck to bleed. It was dried and crusty now, but small. “So this was all for me? The giving into what you should have been and letting me ridicule him in front of all your people?”

  “Our people. And yes. I would not have let him cause any harm to you. As for becoming the king, it isn’t my ideal calling, but if it means I keep you, then it is the only choice.”

  “Nothing you do should be based on me, Ames. You decide to run those people because it is the right thing to do. I will not pretend to understand why you let it go as long as you did as you cannot understand the way I went through life unable to comprehend why I could move things and such. But do not say that you will do this because of me. I am not nearly as important.”

  The column shifted around me as he backed me into it, raised my arms above my head, and made the heat of his breathe tickle against my ear. I couldn’t see his face. “You are the most important part of any of this. If I hadn’t found you, none of this would have happened and we would both still be miserable in the life we had. Don’t tell me you’re not just as enamored as I am with the possibilities. This whole damn thing is about you. It is because of you that we even made it this far. And I know what your body is telling me right now. I know what you’re feeling. I know what your energy is saying at this very second,” he paused to push a light, feathery kiss on my neck. “And it’s not anything different than what I’m feeling.”

  When the cold air hit my face, it was like ice forming around me. He pushed off and walked away from me. His hands ran through his hair a few times and then came back to face me. He didn’t give me time to recompose, so my open mouthed look of awe and scared feelings that he knew me way more than he should was still plastered on my face.

  I did the stupidest thing ever. “I guess you know me well then. No point in saying it.” I folded my arms and started for the stairs afraid to look back. This guy, man, was breaking down barriers I didn’t want broken.

  “Don’t run from me.” I didn’t mistake the edge in his voice. Ames was really afraid to lose me.

  “I’m not. I just need air.”

  AMES

  Her hair covered in dust, myself included, we both headed out back to brush off. Neither of us made a sound or faced each other. The silence was killing me. Did I mess up saying what needed to be said? Wasn’t I just telling the truth? Why is it a girl can say far from what she really means just to frustrate a guy and yet when we try to tell the truth, we get treated like we screwed up?

  I just finished brushing my pants when I noticed she’d stopped and was facing away like before, but aimed at something. She was staring at the chair I sat in the night before all hell broke loose.

  “I wish I could go back,” she said very low.

  “To what?” Did she wish she’d never met me?

  “To the night we were both here, together. Before it all changed.”

  “Here, on the porch?”

  She slowly turned and we both stood staring, lost in our own thoughts. “You were going to kiss me even though I’m strange and cowardly and now you say my family destroyed yours. You didn’t because you knew what it might mean for me. You wanted me to have a choice. I know that now.”

  I tried to take her hand, but I let her keep it when she inched away from me. “All of that was there the night I wanted to more than just kiss you. I have known it most of my life. Anything my family or yours did negates how I feel about you now. And that night. I worried telling you would make me lose you and now that I did, you’re running. I’m not any different than I was a week ago or two, so why would the past make you decide everything in one moment.”

  I had to make her see reason. It wasn’t a good enough reason to leave me now just because of the past. And sadly, I wasn’t above begging when it came to this girl. She was a drug I couldn’t get enough of.

  And to prove I was out of my mind, I shouted out before rational thought caught up to my brain, “I can give it up and come to the human world. I don’t need to be—

  Her body was quick. She attacked my whole self making me fall back into the chair that kept me twisted in knots watching her in those shorts the other night. And heck if she wasn’t kissing me.

  EMMA

  I can’t believe I just assaulted a guy. I kissed him harder and he didn’t seem to mind. When his hands dropped around my waist inching just inside the hem of my shirt and pulled me up level where I lay across him on the chair, reason came back to me. I stopped the kiss and sat up beside him to put distance back between us knowing both of us had the same strong unhealthy attraction to each other.

  “Emma.” His jaw tightened, the muscles contracting to tell me things I couldn’t hear, but see. That one word could break me down. His power over me was greater than any magic combined.

  “You are right. I won’t let the past rule us, but I think it should be made amends to for your people. I can’t imagine your realm accepting knowing what my father, wh
om I don’t know, destroyed your world and then let a man like Joshlin govern it. I’d hate me too.”

  Beseechingly he said, “Unnecessary, but if it’s a deal breaker, then we can come up with something. Perhaps even go before them and tell your story. Most didn’t know you existed until a few years ago and only then did it come from Joshlin.”

  Something struck me wrong. “How did Joshlin know about me?”

  A long sigh came from him and his hand shot to his hair, both signs of Ames in either discomfort or indecision. His eyes searched my body for something, but not with the same desirous look he usually held. “The elders never said a word. Once, when I locked myself under the mountain for more than a week, I came across the paintings buried under rock and dirt. That was before the cabin was here. I took it to the only man who I thought would know the subjects in them. Brooks’ father was the oldest one of the elders to the old king that I knew. He told me who you were and where. We went to see you out of curiosity, but I was not much older than you. We didn’t know Joshlin had me followed for years and knew within hours who you were and even what it could mean for him one day. He watched and waited seeing that you had powers, but even I didn’t know how much till that day in writing class.”

  “You said we. Who were you with?”

  His face blanched. He hadn’t meant for it to be said. I ignored it for his sake.

  If hearing all the first deeds of the past come to light, these were much worse. Joshlin really only wanted to marry me for my title and possibly even my power to do his evil deeds. He needed some consequences other than lose of status. He needed his knees broken...or castration would be good.

  I knew I was imperfect, far from this leader type they might expect me to be. But I once heard that if you don’t recognize your shortcomings, you never truly become great at anything. You sit stale and without wisdom or purpose.