Kiss of the Goblin Prince (30 page)

Rubble was strewn across an opening as if the goblins had hacked their way into the rock. Meryn glanced around and listened, but he heard nothing over his pulse. He put away the bow and arrow and moved toward the mouth of the cave. His hand rested lightly on the pommel of his sword. A bow was useless in close quarters—and he wasn’t expecting to get in without being challenged.

He drew in slow breaths. This was it. He would die or become goblin; either way he would be free of the screams that tore at the inside of his skull, scratching to get out. He hesitated at the entrance, but no one came out to question his presence. Could he go straight in?

“Sire?” His voice rolled over the rock smoothly, not the voice he was used to hearing when he gave orders.

He kept his hand on his sword ready for an attack. None came. Neither did the king. He drew his sword with a whisper of metal and took another step forward over the rubble.

“Sire, I beg for your help.” Again the strange voice fell from his lips.

He waited until the echo faded without response—then he went inside.

The cave was dim. His eyes didn’t adjust to the dark the way they should have. He blinked a few times to make sure, but his eyes were human, not goblin, and the shadows didn’t disperse.

He crept down the hallway, careful not to trip on the rocks that were scattered on the floor. Ahead a faint green glow illuminated a tunnel. Because he couldn’t see in the dark, he went toward the light. Where was the king? Was he in the Fixed Realm of men? Where was his troop? His queen?

He stopped when he reached the lit cavern. Candles burned without melting, casting a green glow on the polished wood table in the center. Around the table were the remains of chairs. They’d been smashed apart. He’d never seen furniture like that before, yet he knew what it was and he knew people would sit around and eat at a table. Meryn ran his hand over the edge and frowned.

Where was everyone?

Meryn took a taper out of a candelabrum and began exploring the castle, hoping he would find the king, or a sign of where he was or when he’d be back.

He walked down hallways that lead nowhere or that looped back on themselves. He found a room made of shiny white tiles, a room full of empty shelves, and bedrooms. Every room he found was empty except for shards of broken furniture.

One huge cavern glimmered with gold dust. But there was no gold, only shattered amber panels like the sun had fallen and been claimed by the darkness. Had the king taken his gold and gone somewhere else or had he left the Shadowlands forever?

“Where are you?” The rock swallowed his shout. “Why won’t you help me? I’m one of you!”

The accusation settled and revealed the truth he hadn’t wanted to see. The rubble, the broken furniture, the missing gold. The king hadn’t left. The goblins had invaded.

The king was dead.

He slumped down against the wall, taper in one hand, sword in the other. The hands that held them were now familiar as if he had used them in another life he couldn’t remember but flitted at the edges when he slept and dreamed of blood and tears.

“No!” Meryn shook his head unable to believe he was alone and human in a land full of goblins. There had to be someone. He couldn’t live as a human in the Shadowlands. Being human hurt; every heartbeat cut deeper into his chest. “Somebody help me!”

***

Dai woke up under a starless sky with cool dust beneath his feet. He didn’t need to turn to know where he was.

The
Shadowlands.

He frowned. He’d beaten the dream. Defeated the nightmare. His past had no power. The chill crept up his legs even though the scent of Amanda’s skin clung to him. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa after she’d left, while thinking of what he would’ve done with her if she’d stayed. He could only imagine…and dream. But this was not the dream he hoped for. So why was he here?

Dai searched the sky, but the twilight remained empty.

“Somebody help me.” The words in Decangli echoed over the flat landscape around him.

Dai reached for his sword but found none. It was a very long time since he’d been weaponless in the Shadowlands, not since that first night. But it was his dream and he could control it. At his thought, a throwing knife appeared in his hand. Bone-handled. Why these knives? He’d had many over the years, yet here, in this dream, it was these blades made from goblin bone.

No goblins appeared out of the gray, and Claudius didn’t reform out of the dust. This wasn’t his nightmare. Why was he here? He hadn’t been summoned. There was none of the compulsion that usually accompanied the transition between realms…he hadn’t thought to try traveling between realms. Could he? But then why would he want to come back to the Shadowlands?

Because someone had called him; and while he should wake up and leave, he was curious. Who would call him in his own language? He turned slowly and scanned his surroundings.

“Show yourself,” Dai called out in Decangli. His voiced dropped and sunk into the dust like it always had.

The dream was close enough to the real thing that he almost believed he was back in the Shadowlands. The cold bone handle in his hand was the only reminder he was asleep and in control of this dream—to a degree. It depended on who wanted the meeting.

In the rubble by the rock spire a figure moved, like a goblin, but something else. The almost-man he’d glimpsed before while fending off Claudius. He blinked hoping to see the weave of the Shadowlands, but nothing changed. He was powerless here, as he’d always been. His was a magic based in life, not death. But he wasn’t defenseless.

The bone-handle was like polished ice against his palm. The handles never got hot. They were always as cold as the Shadowlands and the goblins they were made from. Desperation makes men do desperate things. He’d needed weapons and had made them from whatever he could. These knives had always flown true whenever he used them, as if they carried a little of the death magic of the Shadowlands. Maybe that was why they came to him easily in the dream. Part of them existed in the realm of nightmares.

“You asked for help? Here I am. What do you want of me?” he called out.

From the rocks the man broke free. A goblin battle cry tore out of his very human throat. His bow was raised and arrow notched, aiming at Dai. Dai raised his hand ready to throw the knife and froze. His blood shattered in his veins. He knew that face.

The face of a warrior he’d never thought to see again after watching him fade to goblin the night the Decangli died.

Meryn.

Meryn changed his aim at the last moment and the arrow flew wild, hitting the man’s arm.
A man. Not a goblin. There were no humans here. Did I really call the man here? I wanted help, but what could a man do?
He needed the king.

His brow furrowed as their eyes met. The man wrapped a hand around his arm, cursed in a language Meryn hadn’t heard for a long time, then vanished.

He was there, and then he was gone without a fight. Meryn walked around the spot where the man had stood. Not even his footprints remained. Meryn shook his head. A trick of his mind and nothing more. A nightmare from a past he didn’t want to remember. He retrieved his arrow but color caught his gaze.

Blood.

Red blood stained the point. He sniffed it and ran his tongue over it, tasting the coppery sweetness. Human blood. Meryn wiped the arrow clean on his trousers.

The man’s face lingered in his mind like a memory of another life. He couldn’t dislodge the scraping inside his skull that he should know the man who left no trace.

Dai fell off the sofa, crouched and ready for battle, but with no weapon in his hand. His palms were cold like they remembered the bone-handle. He glanced around his apartment, but he was alone. His heart returned to a slow and steady beat.

The dream was so vivid, as if he was actually there. The cold, the peculiar echo. He hadn’t been. He was sure of that. He’d been traveling between realms for long enough to know what that felt like. A new nightmare then. One he could never fix. Meryn had faded and they’d all watched helpless to the unfolding horror.

In the quiet of his lounge room water dripped. He looked down. Not water, blood. His blood splashed onto the floor. It dripped from the soaked sleeve of his ripped shirt. Cautiously he examined the tear in the black material and the flesh beneath.

He was rewarded with a sharp rasp of pain escaping his lips. Damn it. He hadn’t been shot in decades. He glanced at the floor, and then the wound. He’d been shot in a dream.

He’d been shot by Meryn.

Meryn was human.

His blood plopped and burst into tiny suns on the floor as his world collapsed and got sucked into the endless gray of the Shadowlands.

Roan and he had never thought of what would happen to Meryn when the curse broke. Dai pulled his hand away; brilliant scarlet blood stained his fingers. Now he knew.

Meryn was alive and human and trapped.

Dai picked up his cell phone and found Roan’s number. His thumb hovered over the green call button. It was four o’clock in the morning. His brother had a wife. Dai released his phone. He couldn’t ask his brother to leave everything he’d ever wished for to chase after Meryn in the Shadowlands.

He was going to have to get Meryn on his own.

The room spun. Dai tried to focus. Blood on his hand, blood on the floor. He had to stop the bleeding. He dripped his way to the kitchen and wrapped a hand towel around his upper arm. Red soaked through the white. It would be too awkward to stitch himself as it was too high on his right bicep. He pulled the tea towel away and twisted for another look. If he was left-handed, he would’ve given it a go.

He leaned against the pantry door. He couldn’t go to the hospital. They’d want to know how and why—so did he. How had Meryn pulled him into the Shadowlands and why had Meryn shot him? Dai blinked and examined the threads linking him to Meryn. The gray fiber was there. Thin and sticky, but without enough substance to follow to the Shadowlands. But maybe that bond was enough for Meryn to reach him in his sleep and give the dream enough life for it to have repercussions. He gritted his teeth against the long forgotten burn of injury.

The other option was worse, that when he slept he did return to the Shadowlands where his nightmares could kill him. He shook his head. He’d always survived his dreams, and he’d never once felt the spiraling sense of dislocation that came with crossing realms.

Dai peeled away the tea towel. With the sight he could see the ragged fibers of the wound that let the flood of life out. His body cut as if it were multilayered cloth, now weakened from the severed threads. He had to do something or he was going to lose too much blood. He studied the deep slash in his arm. He couldn’t stitch it with a needle, but maybe he could sew it up with magic. It would be like darning clothes. If he could just pull the edges together and keep them together, the wound should hold. He concentrated on a handful of threads, pulling them toward their counterparts. Then he knotted them, tying each thread off. Not as good as new, but close enough that the bleeding stopped. He tossed the towel in the sink and stripped off his shirt to inspect his handiwork. His first magically healed wound.

Who needed books when he could experiment on himself?

The wound was closed. But it didn’t look like any healing injury he’d ever seen. Bridges of skin joined the sides; between them the wound was raw. He’d closed the wound as if he’d been sewing, probably not the best way to approach magical surgery, yet he couldn’t help but grin. He’d healed himself.

And while he was a long way off from the delicate work that would be required to help Brigit, it was a start. He could learn. He glanced around his living room half expecting someone from Birch to appear and re-open the wound. No one came. But his celebration was short-lived. He still had to go back to the Shadowlands and retrieve Meryn before the goblins ate him. His soul gave a shudder of fear. He had no idea how to get to the Shadowlands, and once there he had no idea how to get back. He could get stuck.

And he’d just discovered someone worth living for. Amanda.

Chapter 18

Sleep didn’t return when Dai tried forcing it. Meditating on the Shadowlands had provided plenty of wide open nothing, but no connection back to the Shadowlands. No object he owned was connected to the Shadowlands with a thread strong enough for him to follow. All the things he owned, even those he’d brought from the Shadowlands, had been made in the Fixed Realm. He raked his fingers through his hair and paced his living room floor. Who’d have thought he’d ever need to go back?

He was running out of ways to get to the Shadowlands, really get to the Shadowlands—not the reflection he experienced in his nightmares. Crossing realms wasn’t as easy as crossing the globe. He couldn’t just will himself there. He needed something that was made of the Shadowlands.

The nightmare provided the answer. He needed one of his goblin bone knives. His palm chilled as if the skin still felt their cold touch and death magic. Did they even exist anymore? How would he even find one?

His steps faltered as he remembered the confusion and terror of those first years, before they settled into the monotony of hunger and fighting. Gods, just existing, had taken everything they had.