I pressed my fingers to my temples and rubbed away the ache before continuing, forehead still in my hands. “And what I saw, what the stag tells me—it trumps everything, anyway. It doesn’t matter that the entire thing personally makes me feel like a million spiders are crawling all over my body. I don’t necessarily get a choice in this.”
“How do you know the stag is right, anyhow?” Landon spoke from his position at the door, lip curled in a sneer. “You can barely access its power after a year of training, but you still think you know enough to make the decision to work with an absolute madman? How do we know this isn’t your incompetence?”
My eyes blurred, but before I was able to do anything, Soren rose from his chair. There was already a dagger impaled in the wooden door right next to Landon’s head. The goblin took a hand to his ear and marveled at the blood coming from this small cut.
“Landon, right?” Soren growled. The other goblin nodded as Soren continued. “You were put on this group of advisors due to the many years you survived the previous Erlking’s court. It would be a mighty shame if your tenure ended so quickly under mine. I won’t tolerate that language to the stag.”
Eyes flickered to everyone else in the room as we tried to identify the thrower. All of them quickly latched onto Tanya, who had another thin blade in her hand and was using it to clean her nails.
She gave a half shrug. “I would suggest you not talk to your superiors like that, Landon, as my nephew calmly pointed out. The situation with the stag isn’t one we’ve ever seen before. Of course she doesn’t know immediately how to use it or train with it. Were you able to defeat strong enemies with a sword when you first picked it up? Are you some kind of god among goblinkind? No? With what we know—which is nothing, I might add—about the stag’s mantle of power transferring to Janneke, she’s done remarkably well trying to figure it out. I doubt you could do better. So, do us all a favor and keep your mouth shut.”
She said all of this without looking up from her handiwork. Her voice was calm and even—she would’ve been less scary somehow if she yelled.
I felt a flash of gratitude toward the she-goblin. We’d never been close, frankly sometimes she scared me more than Lydian, but I never doubted how much she cared for Soren. Never in a hundred years did I think she’d willingly stick up for me. Honestly, I was pretty certain she didn’t like me very much.
She finally looked up from her nail care and around the room. When her eyes met mine, she gave a small, almost undetectable nod before continuing her journey. “Does anyone else have anything to say or are we done with that?”
When nobody else spoke, she nodded. “Good. So, the plan is for Janneke, Soren, and Diaval to go into Hel, bargain with Hel, and free Lydian’s spirit, track down the liminal being most likely to signify Ragnarök’s arrival, then kill it.”
“Well, when you put it that way…” Soren’s words lingered in the air like smoke. But he was right. When you put it that way, it did sound fucking ridiculous, didn’t it? But then we had some crazy plans during the Hunt, and that worked out for the better, mostly, until now.
Besides, it didn’t matter how outlandish the plan sounded. We needed a plan. Because I could see it now, every time I closed my eyes. The serpent gnawing on the roots of the world tree. I could feel it as if it were sinking its fangs into my very flesh and tearing me apart bit by bit. Every time a little chunk disappeared from the trunk of the tree, the branches, the worlds, they all shook and rattled like they were loose rocks about to topple over. If no one stopped it, they would topple over. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about silly things like the stag or the Erlking, Lydian, or Satu’s new kid, because we’d all be very much dead.
“Rose and I are going too,” Seppo announced, undaunted by the tone of Soren’s voice. Rose grasped a hand over his partner’s and nodded in agreement.
Tanya rolled her eyes. I had a feeling she probably considered hand-holding a gross and inappropriate display of public affection. Personally, I thought it was adorable.
“It’ll be dangerous,” I warned. “I don’t want you to needlessly risk your lives.”
Seppo smiled. “Needlessly risking my life is my favorite hobby, right, Mom?”
Satu pinched the bridge of her nose. “I blame your father. You definitely didn’t get that trait from me.”
“If we fail, we die either way,” Rosamund said. “Whether that’s in Hel, in the liminal world, or down here on the ground, so to speak. No matter what happens, we die if we fail. So I don’t really consider it risking my life. More like not twiddling my thumbs as the apocalypse comes knocking. Besides…” He smirked. “Seppo has told me all about your adventures together during the Hunt. I’m kind of happy the world’s ending if that means I get to also go on a similar type of adventure.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Literally?”
“Literally.”
“Okay, I was making sure.” Whether I was making sure Rose was up to the task, or whether I was making sure Rose had a bizarre definition of “adventure” could be left up to interpretation.
“I’ll have the best chance of successfully opening a portal in two days,” Diaval said. “During the new moon. So, we have two days to gather what we need and prepare.”
“Two days, then,” Soren agreed. “Any objections?”
Landon’s face contorted like he’d eaten a rotting fish, and Ivar didn’t necessarily look happy with the idea, but neither of them said anything about it.
“All right,” Soren said, placing his hands on the tabletop and standing. “Meeting adjourned. Get ready.”
As people began to file out of the room, my stomach began to do twists and flips inside of me. Two days. Two days until I had to face him in something more than my dreams or a flash in the mirror, more than the occasional voice in my head. I wanted to say I was strong, that after the Hunt, he no longer held any sway over my emotions, that I no longer feared him. But that wasn’t the case. My stomach still turned. I still had phantom scars in my mind.
But I wouldn’t let my scars control me. I couldn’t.
Soren and Tanya lingered behind after everyone had left. He clasped his hands together in the front, one thumb rubbed the top of the other hand. “Tanya,” he said. “Did you … did you know? About me? About my mother?”
Tanya smiled softly at her nephew. “If it was something your mother knew about herself, she never disclosed it to me. I met her later on in life when our mothers happened to be in the same place at the same time.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “No one could’ve known, Soren. Even then, I still say you were the right choice for the Permafrost. You were chosen for a reason. This isn’t your fault. No one could have known.”
Soren nodded, though his eyes grew dark. The link between our minds buzzed as his thoughts spilled over into mine. No one except Lydian.
PART TWO
THE WOMAN
9
THE VOW
WE SPENT THE next two days together, Soren and I. Never leaving each other’s sides unless we needed to eat or relieve ourselves. Whenever we slept, we would stare at each other as minutes and hours blended together like spilled paint. My gaze would be half-lidded as he brushed his finger and thumb over the sore spots on my neck and shoulders, and I pressed my head against his chest and listened as his heartbeat—so much slower than a human’s—thumped a lazy rhythm between his ribs. No matter what we did or how close we got, we never could get our fill of each other, I thought, as he pressed his pale blue lips against mine for what was likely the hundredth time. Not that I was complaining. If I had my choice, I’d stay curled in the furs and into his warm body forever. In a world where so often we were unsure of ourselves, the clarity of us together, in peace, shone a bright light into the darkness, and I could feel every inch of me saying that everything would turn out fine.
During this time, there was blessed silence in my head. Lydian had stopped speaking with his snark and taunts and nagging commentary, and I relished my head belongin
g to me again. Even if it meant that I would have to soon meet him in the flesh. It wasn’t a problem—he couldn’t hurt me and he couldn’t scare me.
Besides, having my mind as my sanctuary once more was sorely missed. It was worth it for that alone.
Despite the peace we found in each other, I could sense through the bond, through his tighter-than-normal muscles, and the frown he was struggling to keep from his face even during bliss, that Soren was grappling with the knowledge we’d all been given, and I could feel him take it and hold it to his heart like glass shards. I kissed him right over the heart and hoped that my feelings of calm and healing could be absorbed by his skin. He grumbled a little—a type of growl he sometimes made when he was content that resonated in his chest.
When he fell asleep before me, I lay there gazing at him, rubbing the lines of his frown on his forehead with my finger until his face relaxed and he sank into deeper, undisrupted sleep. He changed when he was asleep; the worry and stress of being the Erlking melted off him like two large chunks of ice he was forced to carry. As if the weight of the Permafrost weren’t on his shoulders, as if he didn’t need to worry about anything, much less bringing psychotic uncles back from the dead, as if we were back in the Higher North in his own manor and he was sleeping soundly in the room he slept in all his life.
It struck me as odd, how many goblins fought to become the next Erlking without thinking about the responsibility behind the job. Only the power and prestige at being the best hunter, the most powerful predator, out of the group. How many other goblins were unprepared for what actually lay ahead of them once they started their rule?
And what of me? I took the stag’s mantle, knowing it was the correct choice, the one needed to save what I loved—or at least I thought so at the time—but in the end, I was still a human in the Permafrost trying to control magic that was beyond the scope of my very reasoning. It was like trying to move a limb that you couldn’t see or feel, but you knew it was there.
Had it been different, had Lydian and Soren’s confrontation not caused the Erlking to die and thus not trigger the Hunt, where would we be now? Not together, that was for sure.
I wished I could take the burdens off Soren and carry them myself, to take the pain from his shoulders and merge it with my own. Let him understand that there was no reason for him to feel guilt, to blame himself. I’d been through a crisis of identity before and I could do it again. But Soren was always so sure of everything. Until now, when his very existence was revealed to cause calamity.
I stroked his hair, brushing the feathery white strands out of his face, and kissed his forehead softly. He moved a little but remained asleep as I pressed myself against him once more, hoping to get lost in the warmth his body created.
* * *
WHEN NIGHT CAME on the second day, both of us somberly got ready for our mission. I put on my hunting leathers—worn and broken in until they molded to my body—and pulled on boots with the similar comfortable feeling of being made solely for me. Underneath the dyed-black leather were warm cotton underlayers that acted as a shield against any bit of cold that might slip through. On my forearms were leather bracers: my shooting arm had two thin rods of metal attached across the bracer by straps and it covered the top of my hand until it met my archery glove; while on the other arm, the bracer was more traditionally covered with steel boning so it was flexible, but could also be used to stop an attack from a sword.
Two axes hung from my hip—courtesy of Rosamund—and my quiver was attached to my belt, my bow slung across my back.
From beside me, I caught glimpses of flashing metal as Soren tucked away knives and daggers in hidden spots in his own leathers. Two in each bracer, one on a sheath on his leg, another hung subtly from his hip, before he reached for the scabbards that held the two swords he carried on his back. From his hip hung his own quiver and his longbow rested on one shoulder.
“A bow too?” I asked, surprised.
Soren snorted. “Just in case. You and I both know that you’re way better than me with a bow. I use one to keep up pretenses, but it’s not like my eyesight has gotten any better.” He waved two fingers across his eyes. “It’ll be more cumbersome to carry something I can’t use as accurately as I need to be. But we don’t know what we’re up against, so I’d rather not take the extra risk of someone finding out their Erlking is a bad shot.”
“If it helps, I think your eyes are pretty.”
His lips twitched into the hint of a smile. “Pretty, not practical. That’s what I miss most about home. The sun wasn’t nearly out as much for most of the year except for that one week in the midsummer.” His eyes had a faraway look to them.
“During that one week, you couldn’t even go outside because it was so bright out, and you couldn’t see and would burn so badly,” I remembered. “You were so grumpy.”
“Then the dark would come again and the days would be muted, and I wouldn’t have to worry about wearing a cloak that covered every inch of skin,” he continued with the memory. “I really miss it. Here is fine. It’s not completely in the south, so it’s not as extreme as, say, where Seppo grew up, but it’s still a bit too bright for me.”
I nodded, looking around at the stone and marble walls of the palace, the artwork etched into the very stones themselves, the archways and high ceilings. I thought about the millions of secret passageways and how random hallways could lead off into a sharp fall into a pit and the multitude of traps set up that kept travelers and visitors on their toes. So elegant in its own lethal way, yet I also found myself longing for the solitude of the small manor up in the High North where Soren originally lived. It was far less grand, colder, made of quarried stone and wood, and so austere compared to the Erlking’s palace, but it was also a place I called home for a hundred years.
“I miss it too,” I said softly.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise as he fit another small dagger into a hidden sheath in his boot. “Really? I would’ve thought the memories…” He trailed off.
“The worst memories I have aren’t from your home,” I said. “And even afterward, after all I’d been through, nothing overtly traumatic happened to me under your protection.”
“Yeah,” Soren said, a glint in his eye. “You were a thrall for a hundred years before I finally had the stones to tell you the truth of everything.”
It took me a moment before I realized he was actually being sarcastic. Soren’s sarcasm came in fits and starts; he had a rather shaky grasp of the matter, but then there were times like this when he really hit the nail on the head.
“Well, yeah,” I acknowledged, “you did kind of mess up there. But we’re both past it now. Everything about us, our relationship, it’s different.”
He nodded before slipping one more small knife into his other boot. Adding the axe that hung from his hip, he had nine blades in total on him. Normally, I’d say that was overkill, even for a goblin, but he was right. We didn’t exactly know what to expect, and it was better to be prepared.
“Still, sometimes I look at my past and get so embarrassed, I want to stay in a hot spring until my skin melts to cleanse myself of the shame.” His voice was dead serious.
“I’m no perfect princess either. Even with my life outside the Permafrost combined, I’d want to join you,” I said.
“Our only saving grace is there’s no hot springs here, not like farther north.” A wistful look passed over his face.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “Once I expressed a similar sentiment to Diaval, and she politely informed me that she can mimic the pain you feel during certain deaths without it actually killing you. I think she was trying to be helpful.”
“Diaval terrifies me,” Soren said, no hint of a joke in his voice.
“Diaval terrifies everyone who isn’t Diaval,” I responded.
“You look tense. Need some help with that before we go?” he offered. I sighed. I didn’t really want to get up. Soren had the same reluctant look on his fac
e.
“What?” I said. “I’m not—”
Soren’s fingers curled into my neck and upward toward my head with the force of his thumbs. Pain blazed down from my neck to my spine. Ready to yell at him for whatever he did, instead, I found the blood flow increasing in my head and releasing the headache I had had for days.
He did the same thing with my shoulders. Pressing on knots of muscle, not too gently, causing me to cuss a few times when he did so, but the knot disappeared, with only smooth muscles left behind.
There was a type of painful pleasure to it. Painful because of his fingers digging into the ultra-tight parts of my body, but also pleasure when he released his grip, endorphins rushing in as the oxygen-starved muscle finally was let loose.
I let myself relax muscles I hadn’t even known I’d been clenching. The smooth rhythm of his fingers across my scalp sent a shiver through me. Intimate. My eyes became half-lidded as I tried not to fall asleep while Soren worked on me.
He only stopped when his hands started to burn.
Erlking and the stag we might’ve been, but the ancient rules of power still applied. Goblins risked burning themselves if they did deeds that were in no way related to hunting or battle; which was a shame because whatever Soren did to my neck and shoulders made them feel like melted butter.
He must’ve picked up on that. “Don’t worry about the burns, Janneke. It’s worth it to see you relax. You carry so much tension. And I promise I’ll stop if I hit first-degree wounds.”
I gave him a withering look as he rubbed his hands, already red from what he’d done so far. “I’m not going to lie. I really liked that. But don’t injure yourself for my sake.”
“It hurts you more than it hurts me.” Soren shrugged as his hands turned back to a normal—or normal-for-him—color.
Goblin King Page 9
