Chapter 18 #2
The Shadow must read my thoughts, because a baritone laugh rattles his body.
“Tempt me? She didn’t tempt me, Princess.
I’m a goblin. No woman can tempt me but you.
But Alanna was beautiful, which is important because it was the sort of beauty that made her trouble.
I knew it from the moment she showed up. ”
“Oh,” I say, my posture easing.
“Especially because…” His voice tightens, the tendons in his shoulder tensing.
“She took one look at Amriel, at me, and got this look in her eye. She’d decided she wanted me, and I could tell she was the sort of woman who was used to getting her way, and that things would probably end badly if she didn’t. ”
Despite the cloying stench and the sinister shadows teeming around us, I hang onto his words. “And? What happened?”
He sighs, so deeply it seems to start in his toes. “She proposed a marriage of alliance. One that would unify the races, the kingdoms. But it was mostly so she could have Amriel, I think. Me. Which I realize must sound arrogant.”
“Not really.” Heat creeps up the back of my neck. “I mean, I’ve seen him. You. I get it.”
He chuckles, deep and resonant. “You did call me beautiful, once.”
My neck burns hotter. “I did.”
His laugh tapers off. “Alanna must have thought so, too, because she kept harping on the idea of marriage, how strategic it would be. And Amriel didn’t discourage her right away.
He said he’d think about it, that she and her advisors could stay in Velindra for a while, learn about the fae.
And I do blame Amriel for that part, because this all happened in his form.
He wouldn’t shift around her, wouldn’t let her meet his goblin side.
Because he knew what I’d say, if he did.
He knew he couldn’t lie to her in this body. That he’d only end up insulting her.”
A frown bends my mouth. “So he led her on? Using his fae form?”
“Not exactly.” Another creature slinks from the dark, and the Shadow pivots to roar. It scrambles back, dead leaves spraying as it retreats. I don’t catch more than a shadowy swirl, the glint of too many eyes, but I shiver.
The Shadow clutches me tight. “You have to understand that Amriel can mislead himself in ways that I can’t. As long as he stayed in his fae form, he could consider Alanna’s proposal. Or he could tell himself he was. But really, deep down, he was waiting for you. He’s always been waiting for you.”
The sentiment wedges its way through a crack in my heart, making a home for itself there.
“But,” the Shadow continues, “he couldn’t lie to himself entirely. He kept delaying Alanna when she asked for an answer. Until the day she holed up in the castle library and happened to read about the Elixir of Life.”
I blink. “The what?”
“The Elixir of Life. It’s a way for humans to gain immortality, through the fae. But it’s something we can only grant in our goblin forms, not our fae ones.”
Shock steals my voice, and I have to wait a few breaths before finding it again. “You…you can make a human live forever?”
“Yes.” A beat of silence. “If you ever wanted to stay in Velindra, Princess…you would live as long as I do.”
The enormity of that stuns me into silence. Even the many-eyed monsters fade from my awareness. “But how? You’d just hand me this Elixir? And I’d drink it?”
A strange sound emanates from him, a choking sort of laugh. “It’s not something I can hand to you. It doesn’t come in a bottle.”
“Then where does it come from?”
He doesn’t respond. Not in the next moment, or the next, or the next. I lift my head, perching my hands on his chest as I peer down into his face.
His yellow eyes gleam. “There’s only one way I can give it to you. But you’ve already made it abundantly clear that you don’t want that from me.”
His words are like a hairpin wedged between the teeth of smoothly spinning gears. My mind grinds and crunches as I strain to understand.
Surely he can’t mean what it sounds like.
“You’re not talking about…” Heat sizzles in my throat, incinerating the rest.
He searches my face. “I am. If you ever let me chase you, if you ever let me catch you, you wouldn’t age, afterward. Not for a month or so. The effect doesn’t last forever, but as long as I could have you every few weeks, you’d never get any older than you are right now.”
I try to cram that into my head and fail. That… That…
What?
“I…had no idea,” I manage.
A thin smile flits across his mouth. “No, because Alanna kept that knowledge for herself. Which is probably for the best.”
My thoughts spin as I try to reorient myself. “And Amriel can’t give me this Elixir? Only you?”
“Yes,” he says. “Only my goblin form. But I am Amriel. It’d still be him, granting you life. Us. Me.”
I swallow hard. He and Amriel are one—I understand that now.
When I look at this Shadow, I see a wish given life, one a white-haired fae boy once made on a shooting star.
This is just another side of Amriel, carrying me through the dark.
His beating heart, stripped of all the logic and lies and defense mechanisms.
But…living forever? Letting him grant me immortality? The concept of eternal life has always frightened me, and even more so since Ravenna told me about the Cloisters, about the fae who’ve endured a loss that will never heal.
And yet the option, the fact that I could stay in Velindra without Amriel having to watch me die, the idea that I could have all the time in the world to dig past his walls, that at any point, I could walk away and continue to age…
Just thinking about it plants something bright and breathless in my chest, something I have no name for.
The Shadow watches my face, no doubt listening as the thoughts roll through my mind. I can’t hide them, so I tuck my face against his shoulder, claiming as much privacy as I can.
How did we get on this topic, anyhow?
Oh. Alanna. That’s right.
“So Alanna found out you could make her live forever,” I say, steering the conversation back onto its rightful course. “And…what? She wanted that?”
The Shadow sighs, as if reluctant to return to his story.
“Yes. She came to my room that same night. To Amriel’s.
Wearing hardly anything at all. She said that if he was going to marry her, he might as well start giving her the Elixir.
Between her beauty and what she’d learned of the fae, I don’t think it occurred to her that he might say no. ”
Every muscle in my body tightens around a core that has suddenly gone cold. “But he didn’t touch her, right? Please tell me he didn’t.” Not my own great-great-great-grandmother.
“No,” he says hurriedly, as if sensing my distress.
“He hated how presumptuous it was, how high-handed. That moment decided him, and he told her to leave. Not only his room, but the castle. Because what Alanna failed to understand was that while the fae are promiscuous, goblins only couple with their mates. And only goblins can give humans the Elixir. In asking him to take her with this body, Alanna had crossed a line.”
I blink against his shoulder, my mind winging through one logical conclusion after the next. “So…wait. You mean you’ve never…” I trail off, fighting for breath.
“What? Been with a woman?”
Blood rushes into my face. “Yes. Not at all?”
“Not in this body. This skin. I’ve been waiting for you, Princess. All these centuries, I’ve been waiting.”
I can’t help it. I look up and find him gazing down at me. A heated promise lights his eyes, one that burrows into me, nestling between my heartbeats, slotting itself between one breath and the next.
My lips part, and his focus shifts there as if drawn.
“Has it been hard for you?” I whisper. “Waiting?”
A soft chuff slides from him. “Of course. But this is the way of things. No goblin lies with anyone but their mate. Among the fae, it’s unthinkable. Not just taboo, but physically undoable. It would be like me trying to cut off my own arm.”
A flutter races up my spine. That shouldn’t please me, but…
“Our fae forms are different,” he continues.
“Those are for pleasure, and sharing. And I do remember what I’ve done in that body, back when Amriel and I were one.
Which means I know what to do. How to please you.
But these hands, these lips, this body, this form, these were only ever made for you. They belong to you and no one else.”
A heated breath snakes into my lungs. “So what you’re saying is that you’re a virgin, too?”
He laughs. “If you want to get technical, yes. But Princess…” His eyelids lower. “I wouldn’t fuck you like one.”
Ishanna’s blood. It’s such an Amriel thing to say, and it has the same effect as if he’d dunked me into a vat of boiling water.
I hide in his shoulder again, suddenly aware of every point of contact—the steely arm bearing me up, the press of my breasts against his chest, the breadth of firm, hot muscle beneath my cheek.
All mine. All for me, and I can’t stop my mind from swirling down the same rabbit hole the Shadow dragged me into earlier. Only this time, the fault is mine. The thoughts are mine.
I could let him lay me out on the forest floor. Not here, but through some friendlier door, where the forest glows and the sky glitters overhead. I could let him claim me under the stars, show me what my body is capable of, like Ravenna said I should.
What if I did it? Just once, before going home? I could still take my vows, still become a priestess. I’d just do it having experienced life.
The Shadow hears me thinking. I know he does, because a groan rips from the deepest part of him. “I’ll find a door right now,” he says, the words feral and half-formed. “Take you through it and get you under me, or let you run first, or anything. Whatever you want.”