Chapter 3 #2
“All right.” He leans in, violating my personal space without hesitation.
His scent wafts into my nose—cold metal and oiled leather and something else, something I have no name for.
“If you really care to know, Princess, deep down, in this shriveled, blackened heart of mine, I do want you to run. Because I want so badly to chase you. To terrify you. I want to follow that delicious smell of yours until I catch you, and then I want to pin you down and eat you up. I want to make you scream.”
A shudder rips through me, forceful enough to hurt. I can’t tell if he just threatened me with violence or…something else.
“What’s more,” he continues, his focus falling to my mouth, “if we were in the Wildwood, I would’ve done it.
I would’ve snuck up on you without any warning and let you run.
And when I caught you, I would’ve done what I liked.
But lucky for you, we’re not in the Wildwood right now.
We’re in Aethrolia, where me hunting you down would cause… problems.”
I stand frozen, barely able to formulate a thought, much less a coherent question. Somehow, after half a lifetime, my lips remember how to move. “Do you threaten to hunt down every human you meet?”
That earns me a dark, scorched chuckle. “No. Just you. Shadows take me, do you know how long I’ve waited to find a scent like yours? Years. Lifetimes. Centuries.”
Fear wraps cold fingers around my airway and squeezes.
Is this the fae king, then? The violet patterns swirling across his skin make it hard to tell, but the longer I look, the more I recognize the shine of his eyes, the brutal slash of his mouth.
And if this is Amriel who’s singled me out, if he’s caught my scent here the same way he did in the receiving hall, and something about it speaks to him…
Oh, goddess.
I shake my head, trying to banish the possibility.
Surely this isn’t the fae king, but merely his Shadow, the one our cook spoke of all those times.
I rake my gaze over him, searching for confirmation, but the covetousness in his expression—the way his nostrils flare as if dragging every last particle of my scent into his lungs—has me longing for a place to hide.
I need him to shift, to show me some unfamiliar face that doesn’t hold the power to steal me away from my home. “Show me your other form,” I whisper. “Your human one.”
Another burnt chuckle. “I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Why not?”
The goblin flashes a tight smile. The display of razored teeth sends me stumbling backward, and he closes the gap in a blink, the smile dropping from his face, his fists clenching at his sides as if he can barely refrain from sinking those claw-tipped fingers into my flesh.
“Don’t run,” he grinds out. “I told you not to run.”
A squeak bursts from my throat. “Yes, right before you told me you secretly wanted me to.”
“I do,” he says through gritted teeth, “but not here. It’ll ruin everything if you do it here. Because I will come after you. I can’t help it.”
My lungs spasm, my breaths coming so quickly each one blurs into the next. My body shouts at me to spin on my heel and go, but I clamp down on my willpower and hold myself in place. “Okay,” I force out. “I’m not running, then. I’m just…standing here. Standing in front of you.”
The goblin’s enormous chest heaves, his pulse flickering wildly in the hollow of his throat.
For a moment, I’m certain he’ll cross the remaining inches.
A threat burns in those yellow eyes—something hot and dark and ancient—and I can feel us hurtling toward the inevitable.
Toward the moment when those claws will close around me, those fangs break tender flesh—
But in the next moment, he pulls back, locking himself into stillness with visible effort.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he says, when he’s mastered himself.
“Come with me right now. We’ll skip the formalities, the Claiming, all of it.
I don’t care about the treaty if you’ll just let me possess you.
Let me wreck myself with that smell of yours.
Let me wreck you, over and over. Just come to the castle now, and I’ll belong to you, and you’ll belong to me.
And that way, I can keep you from the Wildwood. ”
For long moments, I simply stare, caught between terror and outrage, between the shriek trapped in my chest and the words scrabbling for purchase on my tongue.
“Belong to you?” I finally spit. “No. I don’t belong to anyone but Ishanna.”
“It’ll be so much easier this way,” he continues, as if I haven’t even spoken. “Once you go through with the Claiming, you’ll have to run the Wildwood. You’ll have to break the curse. Or…try, at least.”
“Curse?” A creeping silence invades my mind. “What curse?”
“The curse,” he says, as if it’s obvious.
I blink once, twice, but his words fail to summon any understanding. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The curse.” His brow tightens. “The one your ancestor laid on him, back when all this started. Don’t you know your history?”
I search my memory for some clue to his meaning, but I don’t recall covering any ancestral curses in school. Even if I had, it wouldn’t matter right now. “No, I don’t. And forget that part. When you say ‘him,’ who do you mean? Your king? Please say you mean your king.”
The goblin’s stare intensifies. “Yes, our king. Who else?”
A wave of relief crashes over me, so intense my knees almost buckle. This isn’t Amriel, then, but his guard. And under the terms of the treaty, the king’s Shadow holds no sway here.
“But you don’t want him to Claim you,” the goblin continues. “Better to come with me now. If you don’t, he’ll make you run the Wildwood. And then I’ll end up…” Something tortured passes across his expression.
“What?” I prompt, when he fails to finish. “You’ll end up what?”
He doesn’t answer. His stare turns possessive, tinged with manic light, and I swear that with his next breath, he’ll throw me over his shoulder and abscond with me, regardless of my refusal.
Goddess, how did I get myself into this mess? I should have bolted the moment every bird in this garden went silent.
I angle away, opening space as calculation flashes through my mind. Maybe, if I run toward him—past him—I’ll catch him off-guard, enough that I can—
“There you are,” someone says behind me.
The goblin jerks away from me, his trancelike focus broken.
I chance a sidelong glance and find a fae delegate approaching—a man with dark brown skin, waist-length black locs, and eyes as pink as the clouds strewn across the sky.
Filigreed beads glint in his hair, but unlike his brethren, he wears no armor.
A wine-red velvet doublet strains across his chest, its cut extravagant, its sleeves alight with metallic embroidery.
I scan him up and down, sourness gathering on my tongue. He looks rich and entitled and vain. He looks like he’s never repented for his immodesty, has never even considered it.
Thankfully, the newcomer ignores me. “What’re you doing out here?” He glowers at the goblin. “The sun’s set, and everyone’s waiting. Amriel’s waiting.”
The goblin eases between me and the delegate, his teeth bared, as if he intends to shield me. “Amriel’s free to start at any time.”
I lean around the goblin’s shoulder and find the newcomer countering that with a frozen smile. In his human form, his teeth look no different than mine, but that doesn’t stop menace from pouring off him in waves.
A shiver rolls through me. Ishanna’s blood, are all the fae this threatening?
“You’re the king’s Shadow,” the delegate says coldly. “We can’t start without you. So come on.”
“No,” the goblin snaps. “I’m not finished here.”
“Finished?” The newcomer snorts, then shoots me a glance, his inspection so cursory that I wonder if he has any concept of my identity. “With what? Terrifying the locals?”
“No. With making the princess an offer.”
“The princess? Her?” The delegate’s attention returns to me, only this time, it lingers. “Shadows below, is this is the fourth one? Why hasn’t she cut off her hair, like all the others?”
The goblin responds with a snarl so vicious that every blood cell in my body goes scrambling for cover. “Who cares? Stop looking at her like that. She isn’t for you.”
The delegate cocks an eyebrow, then picks some lint from his doublet and flicks it into the breeze, as if the goblin’s aggression doesn’t concern him.
As if he does this every day. “I’ll look at whoever I like.
Now come on. Both of you. You’re late, and I don’t want to spend a moment longer here than necessary.
This place is so…sterile. It’s unsettling.
” He glances around the orderly garden and shudders, then looks expectantly at me.
As if I have any say in what happens next.
The goblin raises a clawed purple hand to his belt. A sheathed dagger hangs there, a wicked-looking thing. “What did I just tell you? Stop. Looking at her. Or I’ll carve those pretty eyes right out of your face.”
I recoil. That seems like…overkill.
But the delegate remains unfazed. He surveys the goblin’s weapon, then chews on his cheek for a moment before tossing his hands up and pivoting away. “Fine. I’m not looking at her. So now will you come?”
“In a minute.” The goblin releases his weapon and turns, his gaze cutting back to mine. “Last chance, then, Princess. Will you come with me? Or take your chances with the Claiming?”
I open my mouth, prepared to answer the easiest question anyone has ever asked of me. But something about the goblin’s look makes the words stall in my throat.
I stare upward, caught in his thrall. A dozen details edge into my awareness—the slant of his lips, the slope of his nose, the way his eyes plead with mine as if begging for my agreement. As if he’d do anything to steal me away.
Ishanna help me, he’s somehow…beautiful in his desperation. Horribly, painfully so. At the realization, a thrill cuts across my nerves, a hum rising to fill my blood. A sense of…recognition, almost, like a song I once heard and only just now remembered.
I know this fae, I swear it. Which made sense earlier, when I thought I caught traces of Amriel in his face, but…if that’s not the case, what’s this familiarity tugging at my insides?
“Please.” His gaze dips to my mouth again. “Just come. Just let me have you.”
Have me. Have me? The words have the same effect as a bucket of ice water upended over my head. My glare goes cold, refusal rolling off me in chilly waves.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. I won’t belong to him, or any other man. Only to my goddess.
The goblin’s jaw tightens. A cloud passes behind his eyes, dimming their glow. “You will, though. It’s just that this way, you’ll regret that it’s not with me.”
I hesitate, but his warning amounts to nothing more than a scare tactic. He can’t possibly know what Amriel will do. “The only thing I’ll regret is standing here for so long, listening to you talk.”
A guffaw erupts to my left. I glance over to find the delegate studying me with interest now, as if he appreciates me challenging his friend. Or his…enemy. Or whatever these two are to each other.
“Come on.” He inclines his head in the direction of the throne room. “Sunset was fifteen minutes ago, and I’d really like to make it home tonight.”
I open my mouth, but before I can respond, he turns and glides away.
Blowing out a breath, I move to follow, but the goblin yanks me back with a growl. “Don’t do that. Don’t turn your back on me, even for a second.”
My chest constricts, sucking at air that feels much too thin to sustain a breath. “Or what?”
“You know what.”
Silence coils between us. His clawed hand tightens, his grip so vast it swallows my upper arm in its entirety.
Ishanna’s blood, I want to run from him so badly. The soles of my feet ache with the need. But I won’t. No, I’ll follow this goblin into the Claiming and prove Evelyn’s visions wrong. And tomorrow, I’ll pledge myself to the temple. My life will be decided. Cast in stone.
“If I let you go,” the goblin snarls, “will you be good?”
I scoff. “For a fae? Never. But go ahead and go first, if that’s what you want.” Shaking off his grip, I sweep out an arm to indicate the way.
The goblin studies me with narrowed eyes, then spins on his heel and stalks away. And goddess help me, he moves like something not of this world. Like he expects the shadows to part before him, and for a moment, I swear they actually do.
I’m imagining things, clearly. With a shake of my head, I square my shoulders and trail after him.
Mere minutes from now, this will be over. Amriel will refuse me and my sisters, and when he departs, he’ll take this goblin with him. I’ll never see these awful fae again, not until they return for the next Claiming.
At which point I’ll be fifty-three years old, and a priestess. Most likely, I’ll have gotten in the habit of telling stories like our cook, about how I once saw a goblin in a garden and have never forgotten it.
But by then, the goblin will have forgotten me. Regardless of what I smell like.
I thread between the flowerbeds, my hand rising to the moon pendant at my throat. When I squeeze, the metal warms against my skin, and the response relaxes something inside me. Soon, I’ll belong to Ishanna. Not to the fae king or his Shadow.
I just have to get through the Claiming, first. I have to stand face-to-face with the fae king, then let him make his choice.