Kiss of the Goblin Prince (24 page)

“You can’t change the past.” Amanda touched his hand again, her fingers lacing with his. “Only move forward.”

The breeze stirred the feathers of the wings at his back. All he had to do was let go, forgive, and be free. And he couldn’t do it. He knew if he ran into Claudius on the street in another body, living another life, he would be hard pressed not to run him through with a blunt, rusted blade. A stupid thing to do. Then he would spend another life tied to the bastard. He didn’t want to end up like Fane, fighting without knowing why.

Dai stood up. He’d never told the truth to anyone, and he wasn’t about to spoil the day by starting now. But if he stayed and let her pluck at the strings holding him together it would be Pandora’s Box all over again. Once seen, the horror could never be put back.

“Brigit, would you like some water for your castle?”

“Yes, please.” She held up both buckets.

Dai took them and walked down to the sea. The water was sharp and cold, reminding him that it was winter and that summer was an illusion. He took some deep breaths and longer than required to fill the buckets. Being happy wouldn’t last. Nothing good came for free, and he was damn sure he couldn’t pay the penalty for falling for Amanda. He turned around. Mother and daughter were excavating a moat for the water. He blinked slowly. When he opened his eyes, Amanda was a shining sun in the weave of the world. Next to her, Brigit wanted to shine, but her light was hemorrhaging out the tears in the fabric of her being.

Dai made himself walk up the beach. He placed the buckets down next to Amanda.

She stood, sand clinging to her jeans. “I didn’t mean to open old scars.” She touched his hand, her fingers finding his, and this time he returned her grip. “I know what it’s like to think they are healed only to find them still raw.”

“Maybe they never heal. We just learn to live with them.” If she could see the blood that was on his hands, she wouldn’t reach for him so readily.

Amanda kept her gaze on him. “You’re going, aren’t you?”

“I should.” He lifted her hand and pressed her knuckles to his lips, for longer than a gentleman would. “Thank you for inviting me.”

She smiled, as pink flushed her skin, and glanced down at her daughter.

He released her hand and squatted down. “That’s a great castle, Brigit.”

She smiled as if she knew all his secrets. “It’s a goblin castle.”

Yes it was. A miniature version of the rock spire Roan had ripped out of the Shadowlands to protect them from the goblins that roamed the dust. He nodded and stood back up, sure the thread between him and Brigit was growing stronger.

“Mmm, and that’s the last time I let Eliza make up a bedtime story,” Amanda said in a voice low enough only Dai could hear.

He couldn’t keep the smile from creeping over his lips. Eliza was slipping Amanda tiny bits of truth wrapped in a bedtime story suitable for a child. “You believe in magic but not in goblins?”

Amanda laughed, then stopped when she saw he was serious. “Goblins aren’t real.”

“Most tales have some basis in fact once upon a time.” He wanted to be able to tell her everything, but the way she was studying him, he knew that would be impossible.

“Next you’ll be telling me dragons and fairies are also real.”

Dai shrugged. “Every culture has dragon lore.”

She opened her mouth as if to argue, and he was tempted to lean in and kiss her so he wouldn’t have to listen to her deny his existence. But Brigit was watching so he did nothing, and then he hated himself for still second-guessing everything he did.

She shook her head, her hair golden in the sunlight. “True. But goblins still don’t make appropriate bedtime stories.”

“Agreed.” While he was sure Eliza gave Brigit a highly sanitized version, goblins were quite literally the stuff nightmares were made of. “So, you’ll be back home tonight?”

“I think so. I want to be. I’ll see you around?” Amanda asked.

“Yeah.” He hesitated, then leaned in and kissed her cheek. For a second he felt the warm brush of her lips against his skin as she returned the kiss. “I’d like that.”

They looked at each other a moment longer, then he turned and walked away before the moment became too much more awkward.

He walked until he was steady enough to stop and step through the fabric into his home. His heart pounded as if he’d run the whole way. He pushed up his sleeve. Where Amanda’s hand had overlaid the words ribbons of pale gold went into his skin and slid into his body. He wanted to see her light run through his veins. To see if it felt better than the bitter blood that had fueled him for so long. He wanted his heart to be in her hands, not the grip of the eagle. He sank to his knees and held his head in his hands. Her words chased his thought. He had to free himself or Claudius would always control him. The whisper in his soul echoed in his skull.

Let
it
go. Just let it go.

Dai reached over his shoulder. He knew the wings were there and that the talons lodged in his chest were preventing him from healing. His fingers closed around air, but he tried again. In his mind, he held the glimpse of what he’d seen. His fingers touched a silken feather with no more substance than a sigh. He pulled and it came free.

So he used both hands to rip out more, tearing at the ghost that wouldn’t let him sleep. The more feathers he ripped out the more substantial they became. Blood welled. His blood since they fed off him. He didn’t stop until the floor was coated in crimson blood and black plumage. It wasn’t enough. His hands closed over the bones of the skeletal wings that still hung from his back, their roots in his heart. He tightened his grip ready to pull them free. The muscle of his heart gave a twinge. A stab of pain. Every tug would do him damage.

Ripping them out would kill him.

Claudius and Rome would win. And he’d have to repeat the lesson in his next life. Once was too much.

He released the bone. How did he forgive the man who took first blood? Tears formed but never fell. His vision wavered and the feathers vanished, invisible to the average human eye. His breathing rasped in his throat, pain burned in his chest as he fought with himself.

He couldn’t let go.

But he could make amends. He had to fix Mave and let Brigit breathe, and in doing so he would free himself from his past. And he would give Amanda respite from worry.

He raised his eyes to his empty bookshelves. He had to speak to Birch Trustees. He needed to at least view his books and work out the intricacies of healing.

***

“What do you mean my books are in a sealed collection?” Dai paced his living room.

“Well, it’s a matter of content.” The voice on the other end of the line tried to soothe.

While ringing was easier than locating the office, getting a straight answer was proving difficult. He’d been shunted around and was now being stonewalled.

“What’s wrong with the content? All of those books originated in the Fixed Realm. I collected them and I should have the right to view them as required for my research.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. King; that’s all I have in front of me on your case.”

Dai gritted his teeth as the speaker’s lie rubbed over his skin like wet canvas. The man didn’t believe what he was saying.

“I need to view my books.” One specifically. Healing Brigit was his responsibility. She had suffered the curse along with her brothers, without knowing why for too many lives.

“Ancient knowledge can’t always be reintroduced into the modern world.”

“I’m not introducing it. They’re for private use.”

“Just a moment, sir.” Before he could argue further, hold music filtered down the line.

Dai stared at his empty bookcases. Well, they were almost empty. One book sat alone on the top shelf; the others were still out of sight. He touched the spine of the book Amanda bought for him. A gift given without the expectation of anything in return.

“Are you there, sir?”

“Yes.” He turned his back on the gift. Amanda did want something. She wanted him. How could he give her that when he couldn’t tell her the truth?

“Mr. Vexion is willing to discuss your books with you,
if
you can come to the Birch Trustee office.” The speaker’s smirk traveled cleanly to the cell phone.

Birch was well guarded with magic and wards that turned humans away. They only catered to clients with special needs. Banking was a real problem if one was immortal, or cursed, or couldn’t go out and mingle with the human public. There were enough beings that weren’t human to keep Birch Trustees busy.

“When?” Not that it mattered; he hadn’t been able to find the office. He knew there were offices in all major cities, but he also knew it wouldn’t matter where he went. He would have the same problem.

“Tomorrow at four.”

Dai scribbled down the time. “Are you going to give me an address?”

“No.” The line went dead.

Chapter 14

Meryn used the skull bowl to scoop water from the dark, slick river. In the surface rippled the face of a man. He stared, and the man in the river stared back with his dark eyebrows that were drawn together beneath shaggy dark hair.

His fingers traced the shape of his face, his nose, and his beard-coated jaw. The reflection copied. He wasn’t just the wrong color, he was the wrong shape. His ears were too small and round, and his nose was too short, and his eyes were too flat. He looked like a man.

A man he should recognize.

The screams from his nightmares filled his ears. He couldn’t be that man. He had vanished long ago with good reason. But the reaching hands of his memories clawed at the inside of his head, wanting to be remembered. He gritted his teeth and raised his eyes to where the horizon blurred between land and sky. He was goblin, not human. Whatever thoughts broke the surface of his mind were nightmares planted by the Shadowlands. One he was gray again he would be healed.

Meryn drank without looking at his face or the color of the water. It tasted worse than it looked and left a residue on his tongue like he’d licked the digestive tract of a half-rotted deer. His stomach clenched but held onto the liquid. Hunger and thirst were human traits that had no place in the Shadowlands. He had no place here. He shouldn’t be so thirsty he was forced to drink from the slippery river. He fondled the gold in the pouch on his belt. It was cold and heavy and reassuring. Gold he knew, even if he didn’t want its comfort or find satisfaction in its shine.

He spat the taste of the water out of his mouth and wiped his lips on his sleeve.

He had to gain an audience with the king of all goblin kings. The spire castle of the Goblin King rose up out of the ground as a jagged warning. Smart goblins avoided it. Those who went near it were never seen again. Did the Goblin King kill them and eat them? Did he let them join him? No one knew, and it added to the mystery of the most powerful goblin to ever walk the dust of the Shadowlands.

And he was almost there.

And when he got there?

How would he convince the king to remove this pink humanity and give him back his gray skin before he was killed and eaten?

Maybe it would be better if he was killed and eaten. His nose wrinkled at the thought. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to stop the unnatural pain that had invaded his body when he’d turned human. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to find the emptiness that had filled him.

Being goblin was easy. Gold and battle, was there anything grander?

There should be. But he didn’t know what, and the memories that held the answer were too raw to explore. He didn’t want to know what had caused the wound, only that it had something to do with the endless screaming.

He had to stop the screaming.

***

Dai’s apartment was suffocating him. He needed sleep and for that he needed daylight. Crossing the globe would test how far he could travel, but he knew exactly where he wanted to go. In a step he was on his way to the Andes. Nestled into the side of an east-facing cliff was a ruined temple. No one had been here for centuries, except him. It was his place when he needed to think in fresh air without interruption. He wrapped the blanket around himself and sat in a corner out of the wind. The sun shone on his face but offered no heat. He didn’t care; he just wanted the light. He was so tired. Tired of running. Tired of fighting.

He couldn’t win, but he refused to be defeated and he wouldn’t surrender.

His eyes closed. What other options were there?

***

Claudius’s cape billowed out and stained the gray sky like a crimson dawn. Again they faced each other in the Shadowlands. Would there ever be a night free of his dream?

Fight. Kill him. End it
. Dai swung his sword, ready to fight. But Claudius was dead. He was fighting a nightmare kept alive by the Shadowlands. At the edges of his vision a goblin crept through the blackened, skeletal trees. He risked a glance. Like last time, the goblin wasn’t right. It was…it was more like a man, but he was too swathed in clothing and dust for Dai to be sure.