Chapter 21
“Oh, it’s you,” I said, wrinkling my nose as the king’s little bitch boy stumbled through the long grass on the edge of the forest. Actually, that was unfair to bitches. And little boys.
Allenon looked worse for wear, his dark grey clothes ragged and dirty, his silver hair longer than I last saw him and nowhere near as neatly groomed. He still wore his perpetual sneer, but he seemed a little… broken.
Huh, look at me, feeling sympathy for our enemies. What a remarkable feat of personal growth.
“That’s close enough,” Kier warned when the king’s adviser came within six feet.
The driver had jumped down the minute he spotted Allenon, his hand already held up in warning, rings glowing a light azure.
I decided I liked the guy, even if he’d said no more than three words to be on the entire trip to the mausoleum.
(Yes, your highness, in case you were curious.
I’d been asking if we could stop for a pee break.)
“What are you doing here?” Kier asked Allenon. Muscles bunched in his biceps, hands flexing at his sides, shoulders tight, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. Declarations of attack should Allenon make one single misstep.
“I—” Allenon’s mouth parted on a strangled word and then he burst into tears. Heaving, broken sobs.
Kier and I exchanged a glance. What the fuck?
Go hug him or something, I silently told Kier.
His eyebrows lowered. Why should I hug him?
The man’s crying his eyes out.
Kier shrugged.
With a sigh, and a beleaguered glower at my husband, I tentatively crossed the long grass. It occurred to me that this could be a trap, but I was armed, and I sensed Valour ready to shred the adviser should he even twitch at me. Kier must have had the same thought because he kept near.
“There, there,” I said when I reached Allenon, only getting close enough to pat his shoulder.
“He—h-he’s—” Great, shattered breaths made it hard for him to talk.
I blamed my troupe and my husband for the way my heart softened. Fully blamed Jakoda and Zaugustus’s brand of kindness and comfort for the unignorable urge to hug Allenon. I settled my arms tentatively around his shoulders, and the man collapsed into me.
I shot Kier a panicked look. Something is very, very wrong.
“He’s gone,” Allenon sobbed, his breathing a sharp, jagged battle. I found myself stroking his back, because apparently I was soft now. “I can’t—I c-can’t do this—”
“Do what?” I asked, far gentler than I would have spoken to the little dick if he wasn’t sobbing his heart out.
“Live,” he cried, loud enough that his voice shook birds from the treetops. “Exist. I can’t—I don’t know how—”
“What happened?” Kier asked in the gentle voice usually reserved for his friends. A strange, bitter sadness spread across my heart like a layer of frost, and I looked at Kier in surprise. Why—?
“Greenheart,” Allenon rasped, not trying to extricate himself, fully slumped against me like all his strength had drained. “Humans, working for their queen. We were—unprepared,” he struggled to speak, breathless and fragile in a way I didn’t expect.
This man had been nothing but a sneering, demeaning dickhead to me, but now he was a shell of his former self. And it must have been bad if he allowed me, the human pretender to the goblin royal family, to hug him.
“Greenheart took the capital,” Kier guessed in a flat voice.
I whipped my head around to stare at him, his thorny, complicated pain piercing my chest until my heart hurt, too.
I held out my hand, refusing to drop it until his fingers entwined with mine, then I held on tight.
“A human army, controlled by Cleodora.” He spat her voice, his hatred of her as thick as my own.
“They must have had people inside the capital.”
Allenon nodded, tears spilling down his pale cheeks, his eyes lined with red. He’d turned from a snooty, I’m-better-than-you asshole into someone real and raw and breakable. I realised, all at once, what had happened.
“Kier,” I breathed, squeezing his hand.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed once, twice, then hardened himself. “Jryrard helped her take the castle, didn’t he?”
Allenon nodded miserably. “It happened without warning. Too quickly for us to get out. Jyrard let me run because he—he wanted to chase me. Hunt me before he sent me to—to—”
“Alright,” I murmured, stroking his back again, sweeping my other thumb over the back of Kier’s hand. “You’ll be safe now. You can come to Lazankh with us. Unless you want to threaten me again.”
“I’m not going to apologise,” he said in a voice full of tears.
“Colour me surprised,” I drawled. The last time I had the pleasure of meeting him, he said I’d be slaughtered as an excuse for war with the humans, then implied I was insignificant, just a sweet little wife made for needlepoint and raising babies.
I’d never used a needle, but it would be quite fun to kill with one.
“Will Jyrard come for Lazankh?” I asked Kier.
“Undoubtedly,” he replied, but viciously, like he was looking forward to the fight. I raised an eyebrow, feeling the hunger for blood he harboured. “He stabbed my wife, unless you forgot, Zaba. I owe him a wealth of suffering.”
“He’ll just kill you, too,” Allenon said, some of his sneer returning, though undercut due to the tear tracks on his face and lack of colour in his skin. He pulled away from me, rubbing both hands over his face.
“He won’t,” Kier said firmly.
“He has the Greenheart queen backing him,” Allenon sighed heavily. “And between them they have three armies—Greenheart, the humans, and whatever remains of Bluescale.”
Kier pulled me into his side, every muscle in his body tensed. “That won’t stop me killing him.”
“She ate his heart!” Allenon exploded, the words so forceful they echoed, power blasting from him to shake the trees, utterly out of control. Whatever strength allowed him to yell drained all at once. He sagged, his face contorted in pain, tears again flowing. “She ate his heart, Kier.”
Shit.
Eating a goblin’s heart meant they couldn’t enter the afterlife, and would be condemned to eternal suffering and disquiet. It was cruel and quite ironically heartless. I turned and wrapped my arms around Kier’s waist, squeezing tight. His father was dead. The Bluescale king was dead.
“What does this mean now?” I whispered as Allenon sobbed. “Is the Bluescale Court under Cleodora’s command?”
Kier shook his head, everything about his expression, about the way he held himself fragile, one move away from breaking. I knew he didn’t even like the man, but the king was still Kier’s father, and the loss was like a bat striking a window full of cracks. So easy to shatter. So simple to break.
“It’s worse than that, your highness,” said the driver, who I’d completely forgotten existed, making us all jump.
I glanced over at him, my eyes stinging, Kier’s pain a mess in our bond. I squeezed my mate closer, kissed his jaw.
The driver took off his jaunty hat and ran his hand through long, dark blue hair. He seemed hesitant to say the words, but Kier was silent, fighting his emotion, and Allenon was sobbing too hard to speak. “Jyrard is now king.”