Chapter 18
Idrift for a while, lulled by the Shadow’s rhythmic strides.
I don’t care that troll blood spatters us both, that green globs dry crusty in my hair.
I don’t have the energy to care about anything except the Shadow’s embrace.
And the way his smell washes over me, comforting and somehow different than Amriel’s.
Without his armor, the notes of leather and metal have receded, making way for… what is that?
I sniff at him discreetly. The castle, I realize. He smells like the castle. Like magic and wildness and things that grow. Things that glow.
I snuggle deeper, gratified by the way he keeps me plastered against one side of his chest while his other hand curls around the dagger.
Up close, his skin glitters like mica, his pulse flickering steadily beneath the angle of his jaw, and my lips tingle as I imagine pressing a kiss there.
A soft, silent thank-you for saving my life. Again.
He must feel the thought pooling in my mind, because his arm coils tighter around me.
“If you do that,” he says, his voice hoarse with strain, “it won’t stop there. I won’t stop there. It will be almost as bad as if you’ve run from me.”
Images pour into my head, along with snippets of sensation—the ground digging into my back as his weight pins me down, the careful glide of claws as he shreds off these delectable leather pants. The stretch of my muscles as he—
I unpeel my cheek from his shoulder. “Delectable? Why don’t you just stop right there. These pants are ridiculous.”
A faint violet flush dances across his cheeks, the glowing patterns there darkening. “They’re not ridiculous. At all. And I can’t help what I think about. It’s just… Well. I’ve told you before. Goblins are simple creatures.”
I weigh that. He isn’t simple, not really. A whole universe swirls within him, a complex ballet of wants and wishes, devotion and desire, a need so essential it makes my bones hurt. But it all drives toward a single purpose, which maybe counts as the same thing.
“So those were your thoughts I saw, just now?” I say, my arms looping tighter around his neck. “Not bits of a possible future?”
He treats me to a sidelong glance. “Bits of a possible future? Why would you see that?”
“Well, that’s what Amriel said. That sometimes, when we touch, I’ll see pieces of a future that could be.”
A soft snort fills his nose. “Did he.”
I frown at his tone, at its implications. “He did. In the solarium. Before I went into the Wildwood.”
Which seems like ages ago, now, because so much has changed since then. I’ve changed, and had so many brushes with death that, at this point, I’ve lost count.
“Those were definitely my thoughts,” the Shadow says, an undercurrent in his tone. “Though, if you really want to know, those are always my thoughts.”
Heat creeps into my cheeks. “Oh. Really? But then how…” My voice trails off to nothing, my flush deepening.
“What?”
“I just don’t understand. How you resist.” I sound flustered, even to myself, and scramble to recover. “I mean, I’ve seen how badly you want…um…”
One moonlit eyebrow lifts. “You?”
I swallow the sudden thickness in my throat. He said it, not me. “Yes.”
A laugh vibrates his chest. “Trust me, if I were any other goblin, I wouldn’t be able to. But I’ve been stuck in this form a long time. Two hundred and twenty-six years. I’ve learned to control myself. I’ve had to. Even then, there’ve been so many times, with you, that I’ve almost…”
My pulse becomes a heavy thump. “Chased me?”
He swallows a groan. “Yes. I’d never hurt you, but this form is made to take you. To possess you. Sometimes, it takes everything I have not to.”
Something about that coils around my ribs and squeezes, and I lay my cheek against his shoulder again, at a loss for words.
But despite what he says, I trust him. Enough that I don’t need to peer into the surrounding shadows or scan the forest for threats.
The dread that has haunted me all day finally drains away, and it’s like setting down a thousand-pound weight.
Like warming myself by a fire after a long, cold-bitten day in the elements.
We pass through the darkness in silence, twigs cracking beneath the Shadow’s feet, our hearts beating in tandem, even our inhales and exhales aligned.
Wherever we are, this place doesn’t glow like the rest of the Wildwood.
It looks like Aethrolia—a normal, night-cloaked wood, nothing special, nothing different.
Until the Shadow stops.
I lift my head to find a door before us, recessed into the trunk of a massive yew. Green light glows around its square frame, which is large enough to accommodate both of us without the Shadow having to put me down.
He turns the knob, his dagger clinking against the metal. The door swings open onto darkness. A cloud of sweet rot drifts across the threshold.
I recoil, practically climbing the Shadow’s chest. “Oh, goddess. Not there. Anywhere but there.”
“It’s all right. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
“But there’re monsters in there. Shadowy things, with too many eyes. And they make this howling sound, like—”
“I know.” A buried laugh fills his voice. “I’ve killed them before, Princess. During the day. Torn more than a few to shreds. Trust me, they don’t like me any more than you like them.”
I process that with a frown. “You’ve killed them?”
“Yes,” the Shadow says. “And this is the quickest way through the labyrinth. The shadow place, it’s always the quickest way.”
I swallow a bitter laugh. Of course it is. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“If you’re with me? Yes.” The words land heavy and solemn, like a promise. “Always.”
Warmth coats the walls of my heart. “Well…all right. If you’re certain.”
“I am.”
I curl into him, quaking a little. But I believe him.
We pass through. The door swings shut, then disappears, and I squeeze my eyes closed, blocking out the towering, unfriendly trees, the anemic starlight, the dead leaves that cage us in.
But no amount of closed eyes can drive away the suffocating stench.
I bury my nose in the Shadow’s shoulder, hunting for his warmth, for the incomparable scent that makes him… him.
I find it. It steadies me as surely as a gust of wind filling the sails of a ship. But a howl rises in the distance, and others answer nearby. Echoes bounce off the trees, wrapping around me like a hand clamped around my throat.
I cling tighter, which doesn’t seem to bother the Shadow in the slightest. Gratification flows from him through the bond, along with the assurance that he’ll dismember anything that tries to hurt me.
Still, it doesn’t take long for the monsters to start circling. I peek past the Shadow’s shoulder to find eyes—a nauseating number of eyes, slitted and hungry—surrounding us, peering through the dark.
A whimper erupts from me before I can stop it.
“It’s all right,” the Shadow says. “I’ve got you.”
And he does. He burns so brightly that a pool of violet light haloes us, illuminating the shriveled leaves, accompanying us through the dark. The eye-creatures seem hesitant to touch it. Shadowy forms swarm at the perimeter, but never stray into the light.
Except for one. Something dark and misshapen lunges at us, and the Shadow lashes out with the dagger. A shrill scream erupts as a steaming hunk of…something…thuds to the ground. A limb, maybe.
The thing goes skittering and squealing away. The Shadow continues on as if nothing happened.
I shrink. Goddess. I don’t know how much of this I can take.
“Talk to me,” I gasp. “Please. Distract me.”
“Hmm.” The low thunder of his voice grounds me, vibrating from his chest into mine. “About what?”
My panicked mind flies through possibilities. Not religion. That didn’t help much, with Amriel. Something else. “You said you’ve killed these things, during the day. Which means…you can see what you’re doing, even when the sun is up? You can remember it?”
He hesitates. “Sometimes. It’s not logical. I can’t control anything. Sometimes, it’s like I’m trapped in the back of my own mind. Caged there. No matter how hard I try, I don’t have any say over my own actions, my rage. But I’m still watching, in a way.”
“Oh. That sounds awful.”
“It is.”
My chest squeezes. “But the curse doesn’t hurt you, right? You’re not in pain, like Amriel is?”
“No.”
“How come? If you’re separated from him the same way he is from you?”
The Shadow reseats me in the crook of his arm. “I don’t know. Maybe because if you cut a man’s heart out, it’s not the heart that hurts. It’s the man.”
The words land in my gut and sit there. Despite my fury with Amriel, I don’t relish the thought of him in anguish any more than I relish the idea of passing through this forest.
But I suppose I don’t have much say over either.
“And things have always been like this?” I say. “Since Alanna first cursed you?”
“Alanna.” Her name sounds sour in his mouth, like he’s trying to pronounce it without letting it touch his tongue. “Yes. Things have always been like this. She was very intentional about what she did.”
I absorb that. “Would you tell me about it? Her? What happened?”
He goes quiet for a moment, the silence measured by steady footfalls and crackling leaves. Something chitters at the edge of our violet bubble, but the Shadow issues a warning growl, and the shine of its eyes recedes.
“She just showed up one day,” he says. “From the Wildwood. She had a retinue with her. Advisors, diplomats. She said she’d come to make peace between humans and the fae, that the two kingdoms shouldn’t ignore each other when they shared a border.
That we shouldn’t continue to be a mystery to one another. ”
I nod. At least that much is true. At least the history books didn’t mislead me entirely. “What was she like?”
He hesitates. “She was…beautiful.”
I stiffen. I shouldn’t, but something hot and sharp bristles inside me at the thought of another woman tempting him. And not just any woman. My own many-times-great-grandmother.