by Chloe Jacobs
Maybe. But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—kill it.
She got to her feet and tugged Siona back from the edge. “Let’s go,” she said.
Siona spared a last look down. Greta tensed, worried that she might have to forcibly make her point.
“Leave it,” she repeated. “This isn’t what we’re here to do.”
Finally her friend nodded, and they both stepped away from the precipice. The Lost creature howled, and Greta could hear the scratching of claws into rock as it fought to climb back up, but she did not turn around, and after a few minutes of walking and nothing chasing after them, she closed her eyes and let out a shattered sigh. She didn’t know if she was relieved that she wouldn’t have to kill it, or if the heavy feeling in her chest was guilt because it had probably fallen to its death all the same.
“I don’t understand what just happened back there,” Siona said. “You’ve never before hesitated to do what was necessary.”
Ah, but she had. She’d hesitated when it was Isaac.
“Nothing happened,” she snapped. “I just didn’t see the necessity in killing that goblin.”
“You know that he’s no longer goblin. He’s Lost. Putting him out of his misery would have been kinder than leaving him like that. Even if he made it off that cliff, his soul drowns in more torment every moment that he spends Lost.”
She spun around. “How do you know that? How do you know what they feel when they turn? If I’d believed there was no hope, Isaac would be dead now, but I brought him back.”
“That was different,” she whispered. “Your connection with him prevented him from being truly Lost.”
“Don’t you think they have a connection with someone, too? Loved ones who matter?”
She hadn’t given it much thought before it was Isaac in that situation. It had been easier not to. But Greta didn’t want to be responsible for the deaths of any more of the Lost, not now that she knew from first-hand experience that there was a chance—however slim—that they could be redeemed.
Siona frowned.
“Wait, just humor me. I’ve thought about this a lot, even before what happened to Isaac,” she urged. “What if there’s a transition period? A person’s entire personality isn’t just gone in the blink of an eye. It can’t be. Nobody wants to go Lost. I’ve witnessed it while it’s happening, and it’s always a fight. You know that, too. You’ve seen it. All of them hang on to the bitter end by the skin of their teeth.”
“Their fight is over, danem. There’s no return for them.”
“But you know that’s not true now. The fight can’t be over just like that. You have to admit there’s at least the possibility that they could be saved. What if those people are still fighting, all alone somewhere deep inside of their own bodies, and we simply can’t reach them? Not because there isn’t a way, but because we simply don’t know how? If we took the time to learn, we could help pull them out of the darkness. They could return to their families. It doesn’t have to be hopeless.”
“I want to believe in such a thing,” Siona admitted. “But even if it is possible, there’s no time left for such things. The devastation Agramon caused has already turned too many, danem. Almost all of Mylena is Lost. You can’t save everyone.”
“How do you know this? What have you seen?”
She shook her head. “It is more about what I have felt—or not felt. Since our return to Mylena, my mind hasn’t reconnected with the faerie hive. I can sense none of them.”
Greta put a hand on her arm, but she didn’t pretend that she wasn’t relieved. With Agramon in control of the faerie queen, he would have had a direct line to Siona through that hive. It was too scary to contemplate. “That could just mean that they’ve shut you out like they did before, or maybe when Agramon took over Queen Minetta, the link was severed and all the rest of the faeries are in the same boat as you.”
Her forehead creased. “If that’s the case, then I fear the number of the Lost is likely to be even greater. Most of them would have quickly turned without the constant support of faerie kind. That connection was initiated partly to keep our people from going Lost when our magick became too powerful for us to control on our own.”
“You didn’t go Lost without their support.”
She shrugged. “My power isn’t as strong as some.”
“That’s bullshit. You underestimate your own strength and courage.”
They’d walked halfway down the mountain, only to run into yet another mountain. She knew where they were. Eyna’s Falls.
“Great. That’s just great,” Greta said. “I thought we would have found Isaac by now. He couldn’t have ended up that far away from the two of us.” She threw up her hands and turned around in a full circle, frustrated, tired, and impatient. “And how did we get here, instead of landing in Agramon’s lap?”
“Are you saying you would have preferred that?”
“Of course not, but if you were going to send us somewhere else, why the top of this empty freaking mountain?”
“Once I regained control over the magick, I knew that I could manipulate the portal spell so that it would drop us out of the demon’s reach. I hoped to give you and the goblin king time to gather your forces before having to face him.”
“And you said you aren’t powerful,” Greta said with a snort. “Who else can say that they were able to seize control over someone else’s magick and twist it to their advantage?”
Siona’s voice wavered. “If only it were so easy as that. But it was too much for me. Something happened in the dark space between worlds, and I felt the goblin king pull away. I…I couldn’t hold on to him, and then I lost control over all of it. That’s how we landed on top of a mountain instead of near the goblin kingdom like I’d planned.”
“What do you mean something happened?” Greta’s voice rose with panic. “Why didn’t you say so before now? He’s here somewhere, right? He’s got to be.”
Siona bit her lip, her eyes wide and dark. “I do not know.”
Chapter Sixteen
It had gotten too dark to do anything but look for a place to lie low until morning. If Mylena was in as bad shape as they suspected, the woods would be teeming with the Lost, and the dark of night wasn’t an optimal time to run into them.
But that wasn’t the real reason that Greta agreed to hunker down in the abandoned cabin that they came across on their way down the mountain.
When Siona leaned up against the broken window and offered to take the first watch, Greta didn’t object. Even stuck here in the middle of nowhere for the night, she knew how she could find Isaac, so she laid out on the musty little bed on the opposite side of the room, crossed her arms like a corpse in a funeral casket and closed her eyes.
But sleep refused to come. The memory of Agramon’s eyes—burned deep into the wasted face of Queen Minetta—taunted her with promises of her failure. She needed to relax and slow her breathing, but she couldn’t let go of that image.
“Damn it.” She sat up cross-legged and buried her face in her hands with a groan.
“Do you truly believe that he made it through the portal?”
She jerked her head up. Siona had stalked across the room and loomed over her, worry shining bright in her eyes.
“Don’t you?”
“I want to, but I don’t have your unwavering faith and optimism. You always believe in him, no matter how much evidence is stacked against you.”
“I don’t know if unwavering is the word for it, but I have to believe in something, and Isaac is worth it. He’s the real deal.” She shrugged. “Besides, not that I’ve got any experience whatsoever in this sort of thing, but I think that’s kind of how love works. You believe in each other, and you trust each other no matter what.”
“So you love him?”
She realized she hadn’t ever said the words out loud to anyone but Isaac, and even then—did he really know how much he meant to her? God, she hoped so.
A flush heated her cheeks. “Ye
ah, I do. And doubting the strength of those feelings once before almost destroyed us both. There isn’t any special trick or power involved in bringing back those who are Lost, Siona. I’m positive that all it would take is being able to break through that wild, survival instinct and help them remember how deeply they are loved, give them a reason to return, a lifeline to guide them back.”
“But how?” she asked.
Greta plucked at the coarse pill of the bed’s ratty old blanket and frowned. “I don’t know. I only know how I was able to reach Isaac. Who knows if I could get into anyone else’s head like I did with him, but there has to be a way.”
Siona uncrossed her arms and gave her a lopsided smile. “Forgive me for what I’m about to do, but you need to find the goblin king, and we don’t have any more time to waste.”
“What are you talking—”
The goblin hunter drew back her right fist, and all Greta heard was the crack before her eyes rolled up in her head and she was enveloped by darkness.
It’s so dark.
She took gasping deep breaths, one after the other. She was always going to hate the dark because of that nothing place between worlds. The dark represented her failure. It was the place where Agramon lived inside her, where he had not only chased her but caught her and violated her in the most horrible way imaginable, by tearing into her soul and claiming it as his own, then using her to hurt others, to hurt her friends.
This is not that place.
She rubbed her jaw where Siona had hit her. It didn’t hurt here, but she was going to feel it when she awoke. She was going to have to talk to her friend about making unilateral decisions that involved clocking her in the face.
She sucked in more air, but it made her cough and choke on the gritty smoke burning its way into her lungs. Her eyes watered as she squinted to see through it.
Get up and find Isaac. If this was a dream, then he had to be here somewhere, right?
She stood up and brushed off her legs, then turned around only to realize that she recognized her surroundings. Or she thought she did.
She was standing at the top of the wall surrounding the goblin castle…what was left of it. Someone had razed it practically to the blood-stained snow, and the grounds both inside and out of the crumbling walls were deserted. She gazed out as far as she could see, but black smoke darkened the sky, and the blaze from the fires consumed the entire goblin forest.
Fire. Smoke. All the things she’d prayed not to find upon coming back to Mylena.
Somehow, she’d been holding out hope that the situation wasn’t going to be this bad.
Is it real, though?
Whose dream was she in? It didn’t feel like hers, but if it was Isaac’s…the stab of pain in her heart almost dropped her back onto her knees. Was this where he was in the waking world right now? Is this what he had seen, or only what was in his nightmares? Was he showing it to her because he’d finally realized that she was to blame for it all?
“Did you not just tell Siona that love was about trust and believing in one another?” a deep voice murmured in her ear, and a large, heavy hand curled around her waist.
Her pulse spiked with anticipation and relief, and she turned in his arms to look up into his face. She’d known he would be here. Somehow she had felt that he was fine, even though it helped to see him in the flesh…well, kind of, since this was a dream and his body wasn’t actually with her. It was still weird to think about the logistics of their connection.
“Are you okay?” She ran her hands up and down his arms. “Is this really you, or are you lying in some ditch broken and bleeding right now?”
“I’m fine,” he said, but his voice was tight.
He didn’t pretend to try and hide his pain and anger from her. It was in the deep lines etched across his forehead and the tension pulling the corners of his mouth down, but his eyes sparkled with warmth as he gazed down at her.
“How do you know what Siona and I were talking about?” she asked.
“It’s all you’ve been able to think about since I found you in this dream.” He smiled, but it looked forced as he glanced back over her shoulder to the destruction spread out far and wide across his lands. “Not that this is much of a dream.”
“So it’s true? The forest is burning? The castle has fallen?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, as if the words were too heavy. Instead, he only nodded. The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.
She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest to hide her tears. “I’m so sorry, Isaac. We’ll rebuild all of it. You’ll be able to put all of your innovative ideas to good use, and we’ll make it better. I promise.”
He tipped her chin up. “No blame,” he warned, reading her guilt too well. “I need a fearless warrior at my side now.”
She nodded and squared her shoulders. “What happened to you in the portal?”
He gave her a twisted grin. “Apparently, the human boy decided at the last minute that he wouldn’t be left out of the fun.”
Wyatt? “You seriously still won’t even say his name?” She shook her head.
He shrugged. “He grabbed my arm, and I lost my grip on Siona. Everything went dark. I thought we would be stuck in the abyss together for all eternity.” The disgusted look on his face said exactly what he thought about that possibility, and she punched him in the arm. “But when I opened my eyes, we were in Mylena…although I couldn’t find you.”
“So he’s here? Is he okay? Is he with you?”
“Your human is fine.”
“He’s not my human,” she snapped. “You know that you don’t actually doubt my feelings for you, so there’s no need for this macho jealousy crap.”
He chuckled and tugged at her earlobe. “I love when smoke comes out of your ears like that.”
She punched him again, but her lips twitched with a smile…until she glanced back at the raging fires and her stomach bottomed out again.
Oh, the trees. She ached for what Mylena had lost. The Goblin Forest was where Greta had felt the safest, and the most at home. She’d always thought it was because of the trees. Like her, they’d stubbornly continued to dig their roots into the harsh ground and refused to give up, even though it seemed they were not wanted. Sure, they were spindly and ugly for the most part, but they’d hung in there, hoping that things would get better one day.
Seriously? Was she comparing herself to foliage now? Maybe she really was becoming a native of Mylena.
“We need to come up with a plan,” she said. “Siona and I are in Eyna’s Falls. Barring delay by the Lost or a freak blizzard, we could probably make it to you in two days. How many of your people do you have with you?”
Isaac turned to look out over the land. “Not many. I found a group gathered in the Brimstone Caves.” His gaze turned stark and sad. “But most of the goblin kingdom is Lost.”
She gasped, pressing her fist to her mouth.
“Apparently word of my demise in the wake of Agramon’s return and his claim over the faerie race spread quickly. The gnome king wasted no time attacking my lands.” His expression hardened. “Many escaped into the Goblin Forest, so Leander set fires to root them out.”
“There might still be survivors,” she said optimistically.
“When the portal opened and Siona’s magick rushed back to her, I, too, felt the return of my curse, and it was overwhelming.” He looked down at her, and the pain in his eyes was so immense she felt it. It came through their bond and settled over her heart. “I felt the souls of my people slamming into me as all of them begged for salvation. But I wasn’t there to answer them, and the fear, feelings of abandonment, and hopelessness drove them Lost. I can still feel each and every one of them, their unanswered wishes tugging on my soul.”
“It doesn’t mean we can’t win.”
“We need an army, and too many are Lost,” he reminded her dully, but there was a fire in his eyes that matched the fires burning b
eyond the wall and promised her he wasn’t giving up yet.
Her vision started to waver, and there was an insistent tapping behind her eyes, almost like someone knocking and her head was the door. “I think that’s my cue that I have to wake up.” She kissed him quickly. She wanted to tell him that she had an idea how they could build an army, but it needed thinking through first. “I’ll find you.”
“Stay safe,” he ordered, pulling her back for a longer, deeper kiss that left her reeling. When he let her go, his smile was sad. “And welcome back to Mylena.”
Consciousness brought with it an immediate and pointed ache in her jaw. “That hurt,” she muttered, slowly sitting up. “And I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t necessary.”
Siona was sitting in a rickety twig-made chair she’d pulled over to the window at some point and glanced over at Greta with a wince. “Efficiency won out over patience. But you have quite a dark bruise developing there already.”
She snorted. “It’s your turn to sleep now, isn’t it? Let’s see how fast I can put you under.” As a warning it lacked heat, because her friend knew she was bluffing. She swung her legs over the side of the tiny, uncomfortable cot and stretched.
Siona got out of the chair and watched her. Impatience came off her in waves.
Greta couldn’t keep her hanging in suspense. “Isaac made it through the portal to Mylena,” she said.
Siona let out a sigh. “Thank the Great Mother.”
“There’s more,” she said hesitantly.
“Is he in danger?” she asked, biting her lip.
“Not directly, but Leander attacked the goblin kingdom and most of the goblin people are dead or Lost. The place has been razed to the ground.” There was no point sugarcoating the situation. They both needed to be prepared.
Siona’s expression tightened, but she only nodded. “The goblin king needs us. Let’s be going.” She grabbed her dagger from where it rested on the narrow windowsill and headed for the door.
