by Chloe Jacobs
He came around the table again, and the room quieted in anticipation of his destination, but Greta already knew that he was coming for her.
She’d been in countless battles and faced all manner of creatures who’d wanted her dead. She had stayed alive only by learning how to keep her cool in any situation.
So why was her heart pounding so hard the whole room must hear it?
Keeping as still as possible, she stared into her cup to better hide her face. She bristled as he stopped in front of her table. He just stood there, looming over her.
She surveyed the room from beneath the protection of her scarf and hood. Everyone was watching. Tamsin was the least discreet about it, her mouth hanging so far open that her chin may as well have been dragging on the floor.
After a long moment, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to take the hint and leave, so finally, she looked up. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Her tone should have made it clear that she actually had no interest in helping him with anything, but he either didn’t care or he was that obtuse, because he pulled out a chair opposite her and sat down.
She groaned and started to get up. “Excuse me, but I was just leaving,” she said shortly.
He nodded in the direction of her untouched cup. “You haven’t finished your ale.” His voice rumbled. It was so deep, with a slight inflection that reminded her of how much she didn’t belong here, because she couldn’t have imitated that accent if her life depended on it.
“It’s okay. Why don’t you take it?” she offered.
“But I have my own.” He leaned across the space between their two tables and grabbed his cup. Greta’s mouth went dry as she watched his big body unfold, and something deep inside her woke up for the very first time, making her eyes widen with sudden understanding and awareness.
He straightened and smiled at her, and she had to stifle a shiver. “I thought that perhaps you would agree to share it with me.”
Her instinctual reaction was to make a break for it. She glanced at the door, but when she looked back at him, she hesitated. Behind the smiling confidence was something darker. Something she recognized, because she lived with it every day.
Loneliness.
He sat back, his jaw tight as if he had already resigned himself to her rejection.
“All right,” she said, feeling oddly shy and reckless at the same time. “I’ll have a drink with you.”
His smile returned, a genuine smile of pleasure that transformed his whole face. He went from being a little stern looking and defensive to…just a boy. A boy who wanted to sit with her. It took Greta’s breath away. Nobody had looked at her like that in so long—maybe ever—she was suddenly fighting a monstrous lump in the back of her throat.
She slowly sat back in her chair. “What brings you to this neck of the kingdom?” she asked, because she didn’t know how to do this small talk thing, but it seemed appropriate since she’d never seen him here before.
He laughed. Behind him, all the people who’d slowly gone back to their own conversations, suddenly swung back around to watch them again.
She cocked her head. “That was funny?”
His throaty chuckle faded softly. “I have lived in the goblin castle all of my life,” he answered.
She’d been there often, usually to visit the king’s treasurer with Luke to collect payment on a bounty. “I’m surprised I haven’t seen you before, then.”
He shrugged, but the gesture came off less casual than he seemed to want it to be. “I see very few people.”
“By choice?” The question came out before she realized what she was saying. His mouth tightened, and she rushed to apologize. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid, personal question. I don’t see many people, either, so when I do, I almost always put my foot in my mouth.”
He tipped his head, as if trying to make sense of her words. Mylena was a pretty literal place, and her human speech had gotten her curious looks more than once…another reason she kept to herself.
“Not by choice,” he answered. “But sometimes our…responsibilities dictate the direction our lives must take.”
She nodded. He was big, so he might have been fostered out younger than usual. If he lived at the castle, he might be a guard. She generally tried to avoid the castle guards, so it was conceivable that they would not have run across each other before. His being a guard would also explain why everyone in this place had afforded him such deference.
“I get that,” she said, offering him a small smile. It felt alien on her lips, but she held on to it nevertheless.
She was grateful to Luke for taking her in after she’d been stranded in Mylena, but he’d never once let her forget that she was human. It was there, like a wall between them.
It was good to talk to another person. This was the first time she’d let herself have a conversation for any reason other than to get information for a job. It was scary, but at the same time, there was something invigorating about taking such a chance.
She took a small sip of her ale. It was bitter and warm, but as the liquid went down, she felt a little more comfortable and relaxed. Maybe that was a bad, dangerous thing, but she wasn’t worrying about it now. “So, are you a castle guard or something?”
His mouth twitched, and he pointed to her sword. “You must be a bounty hunter.”
He hadn’t answered her question, but she nodded in answer to his.
“Do you enjoy such work?” he asked, his gaze turning skeptical.
“Why? Because I’m a girl?” Being a bounty hunter was the perfect job for her. It had given her a practical outlet for all of Luke’s training, and it kept people at a distance. Nobody wanted to get too close to the person who would have to hunt them down and kill them if they went Lost and started terrorizing villages.
“No, of course not. But it can be quite dangerous.”
“Danger is this world’s middle name,” she said with a snort.
He raised a brow. “This world?”
She cleared her throat and quickly put her cup back on the table. That had been a dumb mistake, a slip that wouldn’t have happened if she’d been drinking linberry tea or sitting here alone, or better yet, if she hadn’t been here at all.
“I think I should be going,” she said quickly.
But she didn’t really want to.
“Must you?” he asked.
Maybe it was the alcohol affecting her good sense, or maybe it was that he looked like he would understand her loneliness, but she wanted to stay more than she wanted to protect her secrets. Some risks were worth taking, right?
“If I stay, you have to tell me something about yourself,” she said.
“What would you like to know?” He appeared suddenly wary. Why? Did he have secrets of his own? And what if he does? He certainly wouldn’t be the only one between the two of them with something to hide.
She decided to keep it simple. “What do you do for fun?” Fun. The word barely existed in Mylena. There was little time for fun when the environment made simply living so very difficult.
“I enjoy creating things with my hands, but I was not permitted to be fostered out to a blacksmith or a carpenter, so I suppose it is something I do for fun.”
His voice had lowered, and Greta leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What kinds of things?”
He came closer, too. “I’ve always wanted to find ways to help my people live and work better. I want to create tools that will make farming the harsh land easier.”
That was ambitious, more ambitious than she’d ever heard of in Mylena. Like fun, there wasn’t much room for aspirations and dreams. Harvesting a single field of grain from ground that was perpetually frozen solid was consuming enough.
“Do you have any ideas?”
He grinned. “Hundreds.”
She found herself grinning, too, her heart pounding fast. “Like what?”
“When my mother was still alive, she would get so upset because the clouts we us
ed to hammer into the wall to hang the tapis would slide back out of the stone. So one day I made her a clout with spikes fixed to the shank, hoping it would grip the stone better and thereby keep from pulling out of the wall.”
“And it worked?”
He chuckled. “Not the first time…nor the second, but I continued to improve the design until I had one that did work, and now these special clouts are being made throughout the goblin kingdom.”
“Wow, that’s a big deal. What else?” She wanted to hear more.
“Well, it occurred to me that perhaps we could attempt to grow crops indoors where it would be easier to keep the soil soft and warm. But the plants would still require sunlight and irrigation, so I have been working on developing a structure built of glass.” His face was animated and bright as he spoke.
He wanted to build greenhouses in Mylena.
It was actually a great idea, and she marveled that no one had thought of it before. Then again, glass was an expensive commodity.
“It would have to be sturdy,” he continued. “But glass magnifies light passing through it, and if the heat within the enclosure was not allowed to escape, would it not continue to build and form moisture that could in turn fall back into the soil to feed the crops? A structure like this might even sustain itself.”
She’d almost forgotten where they were, that they were surrounded by a room full of strangers. Their table in the corner had become an insulated little bubble. It felt intimate and protected, as if nothing could interfere, and it could be just the two of them there for as long as they wanted.
“That’s impressive. Surely, since you showed such promise in ironworking and agriculture, your parents might have considered fostering you out to a blacksmith or a farmer, instead of the castle guard,” she said, still assuming that he was a guard.
He didn’t answer that one, so she said, “Do you like your work at the castle at least?”
He paused. “I sometimes wish that I had the freedom to choose another path,” he said finally. “But destiny and the Great Mother decided long before I was born how my life must play out.”
“Why would you just swallow that crap without a fight? We always have a choice. It may not be the popular choice and it might not make you any friends, but if you know there’s a better path for you, shouldn’t you fight for your right to travel it?”
His gaze narrowed. “I don’t know any other person in all of the goblin kingdom who believes such a thing. The people accept the will of the Great Mother as their own.”
She gulped. He was right, of course. “You obviously don’t accept the will of the Great Mother, not if you’re talking about having dreams above and beyond what your fostering decrees,” she countered. “I bet everyone else feels exactly the same way, but they’re all too afraid to talk about it.”
He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair with an indulgent smile, as if he was having fun arguing with her. “Why do you think they would be afraid to speak their minds?”
“You say that the people accept the will of the Great Mother, but the Great Mother hasn’t shown her face in a long time. She doesn’t care whether Tamsin over there should be a barmaid or a seamstress, and she doesn’t care whether I’m a bounty hunter, or you’re a castle guard. People make those decisions. They either make them for themselves, or they’re told to by other people who think they’re better and more important than we are.”
“Oh, and who would these better, more important people be?” he asked.
She bit her lip, remembering too late that she was talking to one of the king’s guards. “Nobody,” she croaked.
“Perhaps you meant the goblin king.”
She shrugged. What was he going to do if she voiced her opinion? Call her out for treason and haul her off to the dungeon?
Um, yes of course. That.
“You can tell me your thoughts,” he said. “Do you think I would condemn you for them?”
“I really don’t know anything about you,” she admitted. Something that seemed to slip her mind whenever their gazes locked. “You could be here on his behalf as a spy, to root out dissent within the goblin kingdom.”
“That would be quite the challenging commission for one such as I,” he answered with a mocking chuckle.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because every patron in this place,” he tipped his head to her, “already knows my identity.”
He was right. Instead of getting busier as the night wore on, as would have been usual, the tavern had cleared out considerably since they’d started talking. Those who remained had shifted farther away from their table.
He was pretty observant for such a young guy…and he was young, despite the ancient weight that she sensed sitting on his shoulders. She wondered if he was even old enough to have gone through his first Turn.
When Mylena’s moons were eclipsed, the entire place became a mad zone, but children were immune from the effect until they reached maturity, usually around eighteen years old. He could be close to eighteen.
“I haven’t figured out what brought you out here then. If this is where you come to get a drink, I would have seen you before tonight,” she said.
He cocked his head and seemed to be considering his answer. “I admit, I had heard the tale of a female bounty hunter fostered to Dolem Lucius the wood sprite from the castle treasurer, and was curious.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, tasting the bitter tang of fear. “About me? Curious? That’s why you’re here? Why?” Her hand slipped under the table to the hilt of her sword, and her body tensed.
He was giving her a careful once-over. “Because Dolem Lucius is an outlier of the goblin kingdom with no immediate family, and he failed to approach the goblin king for permission to foster a child from another Province.”
That was an actual rule? “So? What does it matter to you? Let the king summon Dolem Lucius if he wants to. Why do you even care?”
“Should I not care what happens in my own kingdom?”
“Your kingdom? Your kingdom?” What was he saying? She glared across the table.
He had the decency to look shamefaced. “I suppose I should not let you continue under such a falsity of assumption,” he said.
Mylena was more formal than her own world, but nobody was that formal. God, she’d been so wrong about him.
“And what false assumption have I been under?” she asked, just barely holding herself in check as she waited for his confession.
“I am not one of the castle guards.”
She’d been expecting the admission by that point, but the words still punched her in the gut. She held her breath and waited for more. He paused and sat up straight. His gaze sharpened, and he seemed to fill up and out with a single deep breath.
“I am heir to the goblin kingdom.”
“Heir?” Her mind raced to decode the word, but there wasn’t much to it, now was there? It was pretty damn self-explanatory. “Heir” meant that he was someone important. “Like, a prince?” Her voice cracked. Of course. “You’re the prince? The freaking goblin prince?”
He simply nodded.
She jumped up from the table, ignoring the startled gasps that echoed all around the room. “It’s been lovely, your highness,” she said in a low, tight voice, “but I’m out of here.”
He grabbed her hand as she started to slip around him. Shock and alarm froze her in place, and she looked down at his fingers curled around hers and wondered why she didn’t immediately jerk her arm free.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I am asking you to stay.” His eyes were almost level with hers, even though she was standing and he was still seated. They practically glowed, the reflection from the flames in the hearth dancing in depths of amethyst. God, he had beautiful eyes. “I admit that I came here at the behest of my father,” he said. “But the girl that I found is not who I expected.”
“What do you want from me?” She gazed pointedly at his hand on hers.
“Why?”
His smile was so disarmingly boyish, her breath hitched. “Because I’m the goblin prince, and you have no choice but to obey?”
She started moving again with a snort, but he held up his hand to stop her—at least without touching her this time.
Color stained his cheeks. “Wait! I was only…”
“Teasing?” Could it be true? Was she really being teased by a boy?
He nodded. “My apologies, danem.” A shyness flashed across his face, but he didn’t look away. “But not for wanting to continue our discussion.”
“Then why?” She gave him her hardest glare. “The real reason this time.”
He shrugged. “Because I’ve never talked this way with anyone else before.”
She waved her hand up and down, encompassing the height and breadth of him. “You’re telling me that you look like this and you’re a prince, but you want to sit in a bar talking with a stranger because you can’t get a date.” She snorted again. “Forgive me if I find that difficult to believe.”
The stunned expression on his face threw her. Either nobody had ever complimented him before, or nobody had dared talk to him that way.
Heated embarrassment crept into her face. “I didn’t mean…I was just saying…”
“Stay with me for a while longer,” he murmured. “Let us continue as we were, without the spectre of position or responsibility encroaching upon us.”
She hesitated, tempted. Despite being complete opposites from different worlds, it seemed they both craved the same thing. One night to be just a regular guy, a regular girl. Not a prince of the realm, and not a hated human.
“All right, I’ll stay. But you’re buying the next round.” Greta sat back down in her chair. “So what do I call you, anyway?”
His enthusiastic grin was both charming and captivating, and she found herself smiling, too.
“Just call me Isaac.”
