Denial (Goblin's Kiss Series Book One)

by Cyndi Goodgame

  His hand went distinctly to the place on his chest where I knew he had a certain mark that my gut told me was vitally important and was ready to be revealed. “What is the mark on your chest?”

  He chuckled low, “So you were checking me out?”

  I tried to hide my embarrassment, but I kind of wasn’t. “You know I have it too.”

  He searched my body again like before. Revelation hit me. “You didn’t know. I’m not telling you where it is."

  If his face could draw in that fast with one small secret that I could hold, what would he do when I make sure to keep another one? I felt powerful against the almighty Ames Cahn.

  He looked away from me making me as restless as him. “Do you want me to tell you?” I sure as heck should hold this over his head.

  Eyes brightening, he nodded and opened his mouth in anticipation. Ohhh! I loved this power. I lifted my arm and pointed. His shoulders kind of rose and fell again.

  “I knew it had to be near there.” His eyes did the dancing thing where his pupils dilated large and too odd to be human.

  “How?” That wasn’t nearly as exciting as the play out in my mind.

  “Because it was too good to true that you would show me your bare as—bum.”

  I think it’s funny he watches his language in front of me, but also wondered if he was changing in that way or simply just “watching it” for me for some other reason. I hoped the first was true.

  “Yes. Good assumption.”

  Hmm. I wondered if he was wondering why we both have them. “Why do you think we both have it?”

  “Not real sure. Never met anyone who did before. Kind of alarming really.” His eyes drew up in decision.

  “You’re acting like I’m the enemy now. Is it a big deal I have a different...birthmark thingy?”

  He shrugged and put both hands in his pockets. “Yes and no. It depends on what you decide next I guess, but no, they mean nothing that I am aware of. It is not in any record book that I have seen.”

  He was so allusive in his answers. I would just have to ask Katelyn if she knew anything about it.

  “Ames, what did Joshlin mean by the kiss? How did he know?”

  His turn to blush. “It simply means that I screwed up.”

  My horror wasn’t hidden.

  “No, not with you necessarily,” he reached for me placing back of his thumb on my cheek, “just that...well according to legend, the true heir will kiss his beloved signifying that she is his queen only if he is true of heart to only her and all that jazz.”

  All that jazz was some powerful mojo. And Joshlin lacked a sore amount of it. “But you were bound to me long before I even knew about the real you with just touching each other,” I protested.

  If it was possible, he blushed more. “I guess I knew deep down then that you were my queen.”

  Hmmm! “Nevertheless, it will all work out. You will not give up anything for me and I will be sure the realm hears what I have to say. I can’t go back to the life I had before.”

  “Nor I,” he said sure of himself, his green eyes dancing.

  “Then we are in this together,” I tried very hard to sound sure of myself. I craved more than just together, but I wasn’t ready for that.

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  AMES

  A few weeks went by and I tried tirelessly to make sure Emma’s life was as “normal” as I could make it. Between high school, after school classes to increase her powers with Wicker and Katelyn, and the nights with me, we were officially busy. I let my own school time go telling her I’d been out of school for three years and that a few days were only bearable because she was there.

  Emma made a huge deal of announcing to the realm a thank you to Wicker in honor or his father. She gave the ole “I wouldn’t be here today without him” and I thought Paul Wicker might kiss the ground she walked on before it was over, he was so moved by it. I harped on him for days for looking like he might shed tears in front of others. It wasn’t that I thought it made him a wuss, it’s just that he’d been this hardnosed, hard to crack mess like myself so I knew where he was coming from. It was me going through the same motions until I met a girl who changed and made me into a whole person instead of this half carried shell of a man who hated the world.

  Emma just doesn’t realize she has more than physical power inside her. She has the power to move mountains with her keen sense of people’s needs and ability to help them when they need it the most. She could have walked away that first day, denied it all and left me for the vultures. She was born to be the queen this realm needs but she still denies it. It’s this that makes her perfect for our people. A humbling leader is something they’ve never seen.

  My days were spent rebuilding the realm and making changes. Joshlin was securely locked up in a little house on the other side of the mountain with an entrance inside to be able to breathe. I didn’t want him to suffer...too much.

  Caydon was never far, watching and waiting. I’d slipped up and mentioned I wasn’t alone when I saw her in my younger years. Caydon changed after that. A day after finding her, his elder entrusted the queen’s journal in his care. Emma’s mother. Caydon wasn’t my friend anymore just like Wicker became my closest after that. To a ten-year-old boy, that was your whole world.

  Emma was the light in my darkness. It is a very centered cliché but I can testify that it describes exactly where I’ve been and where I am now. Her smile at the end of the day is indescribable.

  I finally told her that her mother was human like my own. She wasn’t surprised since I told her early on she was only half goblin and didn’t dwell on it much.

  She asked about the eyes finally. I wondered when she would. I explained that it tended to only be in the dominant males of our realms who were true heirs, but I was the first to have eyes like my own. Since Joshlin and Caydon were sideshow acts, their eyes didn’t react the same. In fact, you’d never notice the difference if the two of us were not around. At the time, she and I are the only living heirs in our area. Until one of us had a son, another male wouldn’t have the same trait. We were still different from even the other realm leaders. A fire lit in the eyes of the true leader of a realm, but both Emma and my eyes were different than even them. Describing the difference is like showing the difference between a sixty-watt light bulb for the norm, a seventy-five watt for the goblin kings of the past, and a hundred high wattage incandescent bulb for the two of us. They just didn’t compare.

  Of course, mentioning children among our conversation was a tad uncomfortable in the first place.

  Her eyes...I didn’t know for sure. Once again, the females of our realms never had any amount of enhanced powers or visible traits that made them stand out but she was something new to her realm. The only heir that was a female.

  I decided to focus on the traits and have centered on whether they half came from her mother’s side. I would investigate that later. I didn’t want anyone very personally acquainted with Emma to ask about her eyes except for me. I hoped no one would ever be that close to her again.

  With only a few months to go before graduation now, Emma is planning to move out of the house with her stepparents and into my realm. With me.

  I haven’t found a way to make that easy on her yet except that she doesn’t fit in at the house she grew up in. She belongs with me.

  But I will wait for when she is ready. For now, Katelyn had her father completely redo the room Emma stayed in before stripping every pile of lace into a burn pile. Emma left school early one day last week for the “burning of the frilly” as she called it. She wanted band posters and a CD player as her only requests. I didn’t even know she liked music that much.

  I confirmed with Wicker’s snooping around that Caydon was indeed behind the attack at the coffee shop. He wants her for his own and rightfully deserves a chance. I just wasn’t ready to give him that chance yet. I wanted what I wanted even if it was selfish and short lasting.

  Once,
I told her the reasons I kept so many secrets from her. After explaining that first day I met her and how she was far from evil, I told her that my greatest fear was her thinking I only liked her for who and what she was. That some “destiny” was the only reason she would want me. But she knew none of that and still felt as strong as I did. She didn’t like me telling her how much I knew she wanted me in the beginning. She didn’t like that at all. But she did repeat several times how she could read me. Oh, the possibilities.

  EMMA

  Saying goodbye to Phillip and Gale would be hard since they did take care of me my whole life, but they were far from loving parents. They had always considered me the freaky adopted child who lived with them. It was easier to ignore me than face my individualized talents, as I like to call them. Once in junior year, I overheard them talking while Tonya and I were brushing our teeth from a long night of vampire movies and popcorn. It was after midnight and I’d assumed they were asleep long before, but through the vent in the bathroom I heard my stepfather distinctly say, “We need to check her into a hospital.”

  The other voice belonged to my stepmother who told him, “No, she only has a year and half of school. After that, we will send her to college. Let her leave on her own.”

  “But we have to pay for it.”

  “No, she is a ward of the state still. She can file for financial aid and be out of our hands.”

  How could they care so little about me? I didn’t choose to be the way I am. That night, I curled up and let Tonya pick all the movies. She knew something was wrong, but never said. I was so grateful to her as a friend even if sometimes I wasn’t the easiest to be friends with.

  And that’s where I am now. At school, with my best friend, getting every bit as excited as the rest of the senior class about being done with high school. Where my friends were headed off to the universities, I had no doubt what my future held.

  And it wasn’t at the part time job I was so ready to quit. Ames kept telling me money wasn’t an issue for me anymore. I was finally convinced. He didn’t understand that I wanted to keep myself from becoming too dependent and turning into some kind of vile rich kid like person who didn’t appreciate what I had. But then I realized something, I wouldn’t. I didn’t need things. I never have.

  The goblin realm was where I belonged with a gorgeous king named Ames. I wanted it more than I wanted anything in my life. I didn’t want to just go off and get married or anything, but get to know him better and work as a team to restore the realm as it truly should be. The influences of both our fathers continue to taint the surface tension of the crowd sometimes, but Ames is really great at diffusing the masses.

  I told him two weeks ago about my “plan” in life. He’d joined my friends and I after school for tacos letting me play hooky from Wicker’s lesson. Tonya was the master at getting me to go against the rules and it didn’t take much to convince Ames. He’d eat anything, anywhere. I invited Katelyn and she had the time of her life. She threatened Wicker with staying with me and going to high school, she had so much fun. My friends liked Katelyn too.

  I think Tonya knew she was somewhat different...like me. Not because of anything Katelyn did, but because she arrived with Ames. Since we spread around that Ames went off to another school and graduated early, he was only around when I was. Katelyn arriving was the final factor in the weirdness overdrive. Tonya convinced her she looked like an elf and asked if elves were real. We warded off the conversation, but Ames squirmed every bit as much as I did.

  Once, Tonya set up a whole party at her house and everyone in our class developed the stomach flu epidemic in one day flat and started spewing the bathrooms with puke. Several guys even made good on throwing up in the hallways. I fell into the trap and was surprised when I arrived at her house with close to a hundred bodies lining the walls. Her mother liked to have killed her.

  Like I said, she was capable of anything.

  Tonya was leaving to go to college. I’d heard that Rick was already gone to spend the summer working so he could party all first semester of college. I would miss the idea of going to college. Maybe I could take a few classes at a time. I’d broach that subject with Ames at a later date.

  We all vowed to spend every Friday at the taco shop and then head over to get coffee. Weird combination, but it works.

  Katelyn was hooked on frappes and after taking one to Wicker on the second Friday, he vowed to not be left out of anything she was in so he came with us on the third occasion. Our group was growing and so was my relationship with Ames. I still tingled when his arm went around my shoulders to push into the booth at the restaurant, but it was calming and reassuring that someone cared deeply about me for reasons other than my abilities to move the Earth.

  The Friday’s would end though. And I was ready. I wanted to move on, start my life that I’d missed out on for so long. With Ames. Before Ames and after Ames is a distinguishable marking point on my timeline. I was never whole until I met him. Maybe it was magic alone, but my heart felt it nonetheless.

  We’d discussed the “magic” of it all. With the kiss, the magic touch every time he even slightly feathers my skin. He told me once that he was overcome and intrigued the first time he saw me in the hall. He even described it telling me how he dropped his notebook and fumbled around nervously. I couldn’t help but see past the magic. I was as taken with him in that second as he says he was with me. It was several minutes later when I clumsily fell across him grabbing his arm (arm hairs he said he lost that day) and tried to balance with him as my crutch, that we physically touched for the first time. I just wanted to see past it all and accept that the two of us were unnatural and happy with it.

  At the same time, I shuddered in a bad way thinking what could have happened if Ames had not changed his mind. I could be a prisoner in Joshlin’s pathetic display of a poorly ran realm. And worse was what I might of had to do...with him. Could destiny be a real thing and Ames was never really in control?

  One night, Ames took me on a movie date and dinner. Ordinary and human. He’d been trying too hard lately and I kind of wanted it to be said that I was over it now.

  I leaned over to him in the car sitting in my driveway. He normally walked me in and said goodnight with my parents watching. Way too old fashioned if you ask me.

  “Ames, can I tell you something.”

  His fingers drumming the steering wheel suddenly stopped and his faced steeled in my direction.

  “I don’t want normal. I thought I did, but I realize now that there is a balance to be had. I want this,” I waved my hand around, “but I want you too. And this,” I waved again, “is not you.”

  A smile played on his lips as he grazed his thumb over my cheek. “I can’t tell you how much I—

  His words cut off and he made his face straighten to a fierce lack of expression. He’d been about to say...

  AMES

  She wasn’t ready for that yet. I was getting ahead of myself. I shut off the stupid poetic junk professing my every want and need that was about to spew and got my head on straight. I could never really have her. I was keeping her hidden, to myself. But soon, that would all change.

  Besides, I was distracted enough with what I saw at her house to meet her parents and leave them at the same time. She didn’t have any idea what trace was there and her house was covered up in it...except for her. She’d mentioned showing her friends, but it didn’t click that what she showed her friends had to be brought in to be there.

  An heir wouldn’t carry a trace. Only the two of us were immune. Every member of her family had had their hands in it. When I asked her about seeing any goblin’s gold, she was kind of in shock and even said she couldn’t recall meeting any of my kind before where she took gold from them like candy from strangers. But she obviously remembered her dad having the box of gold. She didn’t know where he’d received it from. When I showed her a chunk of it made into an unstamped gold coin, she flinched enough to tell me she’d seen one before and that�
�s what was in that box. I reserved to ask her later because something else bothered me more. Where they came from and who else of my people got that close to her.

  And she still didn’t know about her own realm and how they were truly trying to get her back. This may not be for very long and I selfishly kept that to myself. I was determined to see her happy for awhile. Once Caydon made the promise that I could keep her close to train her before coming to meet him, I lost track of time. Before long, he’d coming knocking.

  “...I can’t wait to show you all that you’ve missed. I can take you to the hidden caves of Carlsbad and the Grand Canyon. We have hundreds. Our realm manages the Smoky Mountain range, but your family was over the Alps. Since I’ve been old enough to know this, I’ve been keeping tabs on both of them.”

  I stopped to look at her anticipating her smile but was met with a huge look of surprise. “What’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t know all that much less that I really was holding you back,” her sweet face was hurt as she said it. “Ames.” Her voice was a whisper.

  The way she said my name. It did things to me. And it wasn’t holding me back in anyway, just the opposite.

  “I didn’t mean that I was unhappy. That’s not it at all. I told you, I could give it all up. I just thought you meant that you would like to join me in what I want to do,” I told her.

  “I don’t want you to have to give anything up,” she mumbled.

  I yanked on the wheel and pulled into an empty gas station parking lot to see her face and not miss what she might really mean.

  “That’s not it either. Oh, Ames I don’t mean anything. I just want to get past all this waiting in the dark part. I feel like I can’t move on until I get out of this house and in the realm with you. It’s where I belong. I don’t mean stop going to the movies or stopping my human side. And I don’t mean stopping the other. I want both. If that means mountain vacations with you, I’d love too. If it means leaving here, I’ll go too.”