The Goblin King (21 page)

Roan lifted his hand up. Cupped in her palm was a pile of black rocks, gems that burned with a fire that would never be released.

Dai spoke quietly to Roan and Roan’s reply was short. Two words. Dai shook his head and left with his dinner.

“What’s going on?”

“Dai thinks I should take you home. That you are my weakness and Elryion will use your hand to gut me.”

“You don’t agree.” Eliza turned her hand so the gems caught the light from the never-melting candles. They were beautiful and captivating. Their secrets were locked tight inside.

“With you I’m stronger. My grip on humanity is tighter. But I can’t claw back what I’ve lost.” He held her hands to prevent her from slipping away while he watched. His hands were cool and rough, grounding her in the moment.

“You won’t get rid of me that easily.” She tried a smile on, pretending the druid’s call wasn’t serious.

“I hope not. Choose one.” He lifted a gem.

“What are they?”

The one between his fingers sucked in the light so it burned from the inside.

“Black diamonds.”

“You want me to choose a diamond?” Regular white diamonds merely sparkled. These had been carved out of fallen stars. A universe caught in each gem. Every diamond in her palm was more than a carat. A couple were the size of a fingernail. Was it some kind of goblin test? If so, what was the right answer?

“Unless you want Elryion to call you to his side.”

To use as bait
remained unsaid. But they both knew it was the truth.

If the diamond was to keep her safe, there was no wrong answer. A midsized diamond burned with a fire as black as night, as dangerous as it was beautiful. She picked up the gem.

Roan gathered the others and placed them into a bag. He produced a small silvery bar. “Platinum. I’d give you gold, but we both know that wouldn’t work.”

He held her gaze for a fraction too long, and she glimpsed the ache he kept chained behind his fierce exterior.

“Platinum’s a nice change. Steve always gave me gold.”

Roan’s lips thinned. “Give me your hand.”

“What are you doing?” Eliza offered her left hand. Her white diamond and gold ring had been left behind along with her old life. Her heart fluttered in her chest like a butterfly in a net. She swallowed, not wanting to release it too soon.

He touched her fingers. “Replacing the ring you left behind. Other hand.”

“Engagement rings go on the left hand.” She kept her left hand out and studied Roan’s face for any sign that giving her a diamond ring meant something to him. Because she needed it to be more than a replacement of a ring she hated.

His eyes were as desolate as the desert. Nothing stirred. There was no emotion was brave enough to confront the glare of his golden heart.

“I’m not marrying you. I’m protecting my queen. Marking you as mine.” He lifted her right hand. The platinum melted, coiled, and slithered in his palm.

The trapped butterfly died. Roan wasn’t offering a future together. They had no future together. His future could be counted in days. She would end up back in the real world trying to resurrect a life she didn’t want. What she wanted was a hopeless dream.

The metal glided toward her like a snake. Wrapped around her finger, the liquid warmth circled and split into strands no thicker than a hair. The ever-moving metal held the diamond in place, embracing it as part of the ring. Watching the creation was fascinating. Roan was bending the elements to his will. A tremor of power tickled under her skin. No matter what she wanted to believe, Roan was more than a man.

Eliza licked her lip. “How do you do it?”

“A strong thought.” He shrugged. “Sometimes not even that. I use the magic but I don’t know how it works.”

The ring took shape. Details formed on the delicate strands, leaves and flowers no bigger than the head of a pin.

“And your soul?”

“There is enough of the Shadowlands in me that some magic is almost free.”

She nodded, feeling slightly safer. He wasn’t risking his life every time he used magic…just sometimes. She needed longer with him than the time they had.

“Can you alter time?”

Roan lifted an eyebrow. “No man controls time.”

“Last time I was here it seemed less than a day. But I’d been missing for three.” She’d fainted as if she hadn’t eaten for three days, but she couldn’t have slept for two whole days in his bed.

“Time is subjective. Boredom lasts forever. Some moments are over in an instant.”

“How long have I been here, Roan?”

He didn’t look at her, his gaze focused on the ring. “A minute, a week, a year, does it matter?”

“The police thought I’d been murdered the first time. I need to spend time in my world. This will—”

“End.” Roan watched the platinum. It solidified and the unused metal fell like silver tears into his palm. “Are you regretting your choice?”

“No.”

“Yet you want to leave already?” He looked her in the eye.

She wished he hadn’t. The sadness in his face was too much. He knew how this would end but wasn’t ready to face it. The crushing weight of fate was a burden she couldn’t ease no matter how long they had together.

“I don’t want to leave you—” Not when every second was more precious than the ring he’d given her for all the wrong reasons.

“You can’t, until I release you. You are my queen.”

“I will have to return to my world eventually.” Eliza blinked back the tears that stung her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry until he was gone. Until it was over. Until she had to face her reality alone.

“I’m sure the fiancé you don’t love will be waiting.”

Eliza shivered. An eternity trapped in the Shadowlands with a man who couldn’t love her but wanted to was preferable to an hour in the company of Steve. “I will never go back to him.”

“Can you learn to love me?” He lifted her newly made ring to his lips and revealed a glimmer of the man she was looking for—the man he could be if freed from the curse.

Her breath tightened, she glanced down not wanting him to read the truth in her eyes. She didn’t have to learn to love him. She had graduated. She was in love with him and, like everyone she loved, he would die too soon. Only Steve was safe because she didn’t love him, the young lawyer she had fallen for was long gone. She couldn’t tell Roan. She may not be handing out his death sentence, but she didn’t want to bring the end closer than it had to be.

“Everyone I love dies.”

“Then grant me that blessing.” Roan released her hand. A king would never beg, but every line on his face was asking for her permission to die.

“I can’t.” She shook her head, her hair skimming her shoulders.

***

Roan didn’t blink as he regarded her. He was damned anyway, but it would have been nice to have been loved by someone, especially the woman who was slowing the fade with one hand while drawing it closer with the other.

“Well, we’re well matched. Unable or unwilling. There is little difference.” He took a step closer, tempted by her presence.

Eliza smelled like flowers and gold. The metallic taste lay over her skin, attracting the goblin, repelling the man. Beneath that she smelled like sex, like him. The way a woman should, although his memory could be wrong after so many years.

“Tell me, Eliza, when you lie with your fiancé do you think of him? Do you call out his name?”

She glanced away, but he caught her chin and turned her head. Her hazel eyes refused to meet his. Her full lips pressed together so no reply slipped past. It should be enough, she’d chosen him, embraced him, taken his ring. But he was driven to press harder, to force what he wanted to hear from her lips.

“You called my name. But I wonder whose face you see when you close your eyes.”

“Yours.” The word was forced, like admitting it would wound them both.

His lips brushed her cheek. Her skin was soft like a warm, ripe peach. Her hand slid up his arm, and her body moved closer.

“Is it easier to sleep with a monster than love to one?” His tongue traced the shell-like contour of her ear.

“I don’t see a monster. I see a man.” Her breathy words cut like white-hot knives.

Roan dropped the embrace. “Then you are blind and careless with your affections.”

How could she ignore what he was? See only what she wanted? She summoned the Goblin King to reach the man, forgetting they were one and the same.

Without touching the magic that ran beneath their feet he changed and become the goblin Eliza refused to see. The part of him she wouldn’t accept. In the Shadowlands he chose to be a man, but it was easy, maybe easier to be a goblin. At least then he could give up the pretense of being human.

“That isn’t you. It’s a mask you hide behind.” Her face contorted. But she didn’t scream or look away. She didn’t reach for him either.

Had he really expected her to? The thought of her mating with this monstrous body made him sick. He knew no good would come out of kidnapping her, yet he’d done it anyway and was now reaping his reward. A longing for something he could never feel. A hunger for something he’d never tasted. Even when confronted with the twisted truth she refused to believe. Until she believed in goblins, she wouldn’t believe in love. Love he was more than willing to return if he’d a heart made of flesh.

He laughed. The high pitch rang off the walls like an off-key bell, a sound that would sour milk still in the udder.

“If it were a mask, I would have discarded it many centuries ago.” Roan pulled up the shadows and slid into the Fixed Realm, away from his queen who wanted to believe he was nothing but a man.

Away from the woman who made him believe there was still hope, when all he saw was death.

Chapter 12

The rocks sang with twisted laughter that made her blood ice. Eliza reached her hand out but grasped only air where the Goblin King had stood only a heartbeat before. She sucked in a heavy breath.

“Damn you. Come back!” Like a child cheated of candy, she stamped her foot.

No swirl and tangle of beads answered her call.

“Roan, please.” How could she be with him when he kept forcing her to see the goblin that he didn’t want to be?

“Fine.” Eliza crossed her arms and tilted her hip. She could wait. She had all the time in the world. Roan didn’t.

The candles stood unmelting, a surreal silent vigil that marked no time. She could wait a lifetime and there would be no change to anything here. The earth would spin, another day would roll past, and she would be standing here waiting for her lover to return. He would return. Roan wouldn’t leave her stranded in the Shadowlands. The Goblin King she wasn’t sure about.

Eliza sighed and dropped into a chair. She could wait just as well sitting. The diamond in her ring flashed like a burning sun in the candlelight. It was an inhumanly exquisite piece of work. The flowers were tiny, glistening roses, some in full bloom, others tightly wrapped buds. The tendrils coiled around her finger and clasped the diamond to its center with a whisper of leaves. But almost hidden by the beauty were tiny thorns. She tugged the ring to remove it and have a closer look. It remained put. She twisted and her skin turned with the ring. Her blood cooled and drained away.

The ring was one with her flesh.

Created for her alone. Born of magic, but lacking the one thing she’d wanted from her next diamond ring.

Love.

By protecting her, he was shielding himself from the curse. Roan had told her he craved only gold. There was no room for anything else in his solid, metal heart. She hadn’t believed him.

Icy fingers tickled her spine and coaxed the hairs on the back of her neck to attention. Eliza turned in her seat. Dai stood in the doorway. All trace of friendliness was scrubbed away by the curl of his lip and the dullness of his eyes. Would he fade while she watched?

“How long has he been gone?” Dai dropped his empty plates on the table. The rest of the food remained on the plates, cold and uneaten.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” He sat opposite her. Around his neck swung a pendant. Black diamond and platinum.

“Did Roan make that?”

“Yes.” Dai filled a golden goblet with wine. “The diamonds protect the wearer from corruption by the Shadowlands.”

She rubbed her fingers over her ring. Roan didn’t wear one. There was no hidden jewelry on his body. Dai watched her as he drank. Sitting here with him wasn’t the best idea, but leaving would be rude, so she leaned back in her seat. If they were going to chat, he could fill in some blanks while they waited for the king to return.

“Why doesn’t Roan wear a diamond?”

Dai ran one finger around the rim of his goblet as he considered her request. “He can’t use magic while possessing a black diamond. If we don’t have magic, Elryion would kill us.”

“Goblins can only be killed in battle.” Both Roan and her book had mentioned that, so she’d taken it as fact.

Dai hooked his thumbs in his Kevlar vest. “This isn’t for decoration. Battle weapons, not necessarily a battle.”