It made my skin crawl.
And I have to come back to spend a whole year here with the new rules in full steam…
However, we were almost at the end of the school year, so he couldn’t keep us there much longer, and on the last day of school while guys were lugging their bags of clothes down the stairs, slapping each other on the back, and getting in their chauffeured cars, we stuffed food in our backpacks, walked right out the gates and made our way around the mountaintop.
That was when I called Firian’s name.
He had stayed away since he was trapped as a fox. Alec’s familiar went to check on him just to make sure he was okay.
My poor Firian. I knew he must feel helpless, because I felt helpless. Sure, he used to turn into a fox just to curl up on my twin bed at night, but mostly I knew him as a man. Tall. Handsome. Funny. Golden eyes. Hands that were strong with long nimble fingers. Wrinkled clothes and often rumpled hair too. Confident in the way he touched and held me. My gaming partner and best friend.
He wants me to remember him that way and not start to think of him as a pet, I thought, a sick feeling descending on me when I considered it. But I would never forget that he wasn’t my pet.
“Firian—I just…miss your voice…please!”
He shimmered into existence on the path ahead.
“Firian!”
I started running toward him, and he ran too. He led me down the path and didn’t stop. Like he was a mirage. I don’t think he wanted to talk. But at least he was letting me see him.
Soon I was panting and struggling over the rocks while he leapt down them with unnatural strength. I half-climbed down, half-fell, and scraped my knee. Crap. It was actually bleeding.
Firian finally looked back at me and said, “For crying out loud, Char.”
I started sniffling.
“I just miss you, Firian. I miss you so much.”
“But I’m just a stupid fox now. A really stupid fox. I led the council to Master Blair’s familiar and I told that faery girl I’d kissed you. My own tricksy world tricked me instead.”
I flung my arms around his fur. “No way. None of this was your fault. It seems like the council was already looking for confirmation.”
“And I gave them proof.”
“Anyone could have made that mistake,” Harris said, climbing down the rocks behind us.
“Are you dating him now?” Firian asked.
“Uh…no. No. Stop it. He’s just here.” My cheeks flamed as Firian looked at my hands to count the rings. The creepy new dean still had failed to dampen my enthusiasm entirely.
“I’m glad you’re okay, man,” Alec said.
“We’ve missed you,” Montague said.
“Thank you,” Firian said, actually sounding slightly touched by the acknowledgment. I remembered how no one even talked to him in the beginning.
“We’re going back to the Wyrd tree, so…lead the way,” I said. “Stuart escaped out here when the council came, apparently.”
“I sure hope this isn’t a trick,” Harris said.
I blanched. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“You aren’t naturally suspicious, Char. That’s not a bad thing. Means you’ve never been ambushed by a vampire or anything,” Montague said.
“What a diplomatic way of saying she’s still a babe in the woods,” Harris said.
“Hey—” I pointed my wand at him. “Who has the special wand? Not you.”
“We don’t have much choice but to try,” Montague said. “Stuart told us about Wyrd in the first place, and Charlotte had a real connection to the tree.”
Once again, it took all day to reach the tree. My wand started to glow when we got close to it. The eerie meadow and the blue tree were still there just as before, and I was extremely relieved. A part of me expected all of this to be gone.
The only thing that was different this time was that Stuart was standing by the tree waiting for us, wearing one of his sport coats with the patches on the elbows. Kewl. This guy was the designated survivor?
“Hey, kids,” he said. “Glad you made it. That bad, was it? Couldn’t get here until the year was over?”
“Stuart, have you just been out here for weeks?” I asked. “In that sport coat?” I looked around. “Do you have a cabin up here?”
“Is this better?” He waved a hand across his body and transformed into a beautiful faery lord.
“Ohhhhhhh,” I said. “You’re the faery lord. Ohhhhmigod, that’s why everyone thought you were so cool.”
Montague snapped his fingers. “Damn. That was good.”
The faery lord Stuart nodded a little like, yes, I am good.
“But Stuart Jablonsky?” I asked. “That was the alter ego you went with? How does a faery lord even come up with that?”
“You didn’t suspect,” he said. “You could tell something was up with me but the disconnect between Stuart and a faery lord was just too far, wasn’t it? Well, it’s too far for the council too. At least, so far.”
“Man. You and Ignatius are the masters of disguise,” Alec said.
Stuart smiled enigmatically. “But sometimes even a master’s luck runs out. Hopefully…it holds on long enough. I want you all to go have a nice normal summer, but come back a little early and see me. I’ll give you a map to take a different route so you’re less likely to be seen. We have one last hope to fix this mess, and Charlotte, that hope is you.”
No pressure or anything. A nice normal summer?
But when I looked at Firian trapped in his fox form, and when I thought of Daisy being forced into marriage with that jerk, and Master Blair being led off in disgrace, and the essay I wrote for Stuart about why my grandmother and mom rebelled against the magical world and suffered for it…
“I’ll be there,” I said, as my stomach growled, throwing off the vibes of this reunion entirely.
“In the meantime,” Stuart said. “Let me feed you dinner. I see you forgot to take enough rations once again.”
Thank you reading! I so appreciate the support for this series! Please join my Facebook group and come hang out! And sign up for my mailing list to get a free copy of the Witch Among Warlocks prequel novella, The Wild-Eyed Boys! If you’re curious about Charlotte’s grandmother Sally and her werewolf mates…you can learn more way before Charlotte does.
Book three, A Fine Necromance, is available for preorder now and the next couple months are gonna be nuts for me so I better get straight to work. I’ve been getting a lot of new readers, and if you’re one of them, read on for a preview of Beauty and the Goblin King, the bestselling first book in my steamy fairy tale series. Until next time!
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“Beauty and the Goblin King” preview
I was a girl when the goblin king first sent out his messages. Any young, unmarried woman willing to come to his castle would receive one gold piece for every night she spent there.
Everyone whispered about him. What did he want with them? Why was he asking for human girls?
The goblin king was a young man, who used to come to town sometimes, flashy with gold, riding a black horse, accompanied by his friends. They were ugly, noisy tricksters, everyone said. Dangerous.
But there was the matter of the gold.
After his message, he never came to town again. Neither did any of his subjects. They didn’t even trade for the most necessary items, like salt. It was as if all the goblins had vanished.
He was there, though. Desperate women traveled to him from every town and village within several days’ journey, and they got their gold pieces. Sometimes one, sometimes a week’s worth. A single gold coin was a substantial sum, about the cost of a horse, or a wardrobe suitable for attracting a wealthy husband—enough to change a peasant’s stars.
Not that I knew anyone who had been to see him, personally, but the stories went around. The girls who went to see him never said much about the experience, except that he wanted exactly what you might expect him to want, but they didn’t co
mplain either. It was one of the great mysteries of the region. Why had the young goblin king become a recluse, willing to rut any unmarried girl who comes to his doorstep, even if she isn’t much of a catch herself?
To me, there was an air of intrigue about the king. By the time I was a young woman myself, his situation had not changed. People used to speak about the goblins as if they had died out in the region. Many years ago, they said, you could see their bonfires from the road at night, hear their songs. The goblin maidens used to ride into town astride, they said, as naughty as the menfolk.
Maybe I liked the idea of them because I was always given to fancy, always lost in books.
Just around the corner from the large stone house where I lived with my father and three older sisters was the town’s subscription library, and I spent so much time there that I was frequently teased about it.
I was seventeen years old when I was browsing—Local Legends, the book was called. I came across an etching of the goblin king. He had a grinning mouth full of fangs, a mane of untamed dark hair, and two little horns on the top of his head.
Goblins live in small “kingdoms” which are more like what we would call clans, but they are usually very prosperous, due to their skill at sensing out gold and gems within the earth. In the later years of King Stephen’s rein, the goblin king of the Green Hollows disappeared into his cavernous realm, and as of this writing has not been seen since. The only visitors he accepts are young, unmarried human women. It is suspected that he is under a curse, and he and his subjects are barred from leaving the cavern, but perhaps we shall never know what the curse is. Men have made attempts to approach his cavern, but the entrance has vanished. Only a woman traveling alone can find it, and when she returns, her memory always seems a bit hazy.
I stared at the picture of the king for a long time.
It gave me a strange feeling somewhere in my stomach, a sort of twist that was not unpleasant. I was supposed to think he was ugly, but there was something about that grinning, fanged mouth that made me wish I could see him, just once.
“What are you doing?”
My oldest sister Clara snuck up on me that day, and grabbed the book from my hand. “Is that the goblin king? Respectable girls should keep their noses out of that naughty business.”
I grabbed the book back, shut it, and shelved it. “And you shouldn’t be looking over people’s shoulders when they're reading,” I said, but my cheeks were flushed. My fair cheeks had a way of betraying me at inconvenient times.
Ever since my mother died when were young, Clara had become the boss, but she was ten times bossier than Mother ever was. She looked at me like she had caught me getting fucked by our stableboy. “All this reading isn’t good for you,” she declared. “You’re starting to get ideas.”
“It was just a book, Clara. You’re ridiculous.”
“You ought to be out and about, finding yourself a husband, not locked up in here with books.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed my cloak off the back of a nearby chair, resigned to coming home.
Clara led the way, her back as straight as a post, her hood always pointed straight ahead. Clara was never curious about anything.
I’d never tell anyone, but way deep down in my soul, sometimes I wondered what would happen if I took the long walk over the green hills to the door of his cave and knocked.
That is, until my father lost all his money, and my wonderings came true.
At first it just seemed like a bad year. When you’re a merchant, bad years come and go. Some of the grain in the storehouse spoiled. A ship was lost at sea. My father had to borrow from one of the lenders down on Crow Alley, which he hated to do because they charged higher interest. But this had happened a couple of times before when I was a wee thing.
The trouble was, my mother had been alive back then, and all my older sisters were wee things too. Now, they were young women. The twins were looking for husbands. Clara was settling in to be a proud old maid, intending to take care of Father and probably to inherit the house. They were horrified at the idea of looking poor and losing their prospects. They kept spending as if nothing had happened. Appearances must be maintained. Father hardly protested.
Then, came the fire. It started in the night, and swept through all the storehouses on the west side of the river. By morning, all was ashes. All of the goods waiting to be shipped south were lost.
Those months were a whirlwind of denial. My sisters couldn’t believe that we wouldn’t make it out of this. Father had insurance, didn’t he? The insurance company collapsed, unable to make all the payments. The lenders were at our door and soon they were sending very aggressive men to pound on our windows in the middle of the night.
We had to start pawning our things. All of the silver was sold off. The better sets of bedclothes. A few items of furniture. A few pieces of Mother’s jewelry that was not so much in style now—but that was especially painful, because it was associated with memories.
Servants were let go, and we had to start keeping the house tidy ourselves. One might expect Clara to like housework, since she was such a stickler for everything, but she didn’t. Not one bit. She was always trying to get the rest of us to do it for her. I believe I was the only one who actually liked washing and scrubbing. It was a good chance to daydream.
But we were still in trouble, dodging lenders in the street in some embarrassing instances. Marta and Trixie were obsessed with snagging husbands, and terrified that word would get out about just how poor we were.
Soon, we were down to the essentials, and there was no hiding it anymore. We had sold the horse and carriage. The only servant left was the cook, and that was mostly because she had been with us so long that she refused to leave, and would work for nothing but food and board. We were no longer invited to social functions, because everyone knew we were on the brink of losing all respectability, and we didn’t have the money to keep up.
We were about to lose the house.
It was time for a serious discussion.
“The dowries!” cried Trixie. “Our good name! Why couldn’t this have happened once we were safely married? I thought I had Danny Martin on the brink of proposal.”
“Someone would probably marry Sabela, even if she had no money.” Marta looked at me. I was the beauty of the family, so much so that Father called me “Beauty” most of the time. It had never sat comfortably with me; I didn’t especially want attention. Most of all, I didn’t like male attention. I could imagine nothing more stifling than to be a married woman in Fairhaven. Likely, my husband would be a merchant like Father, who would travel around, while I was home with the servants and babies.
“But Sabela never pays any attention to men.”
“Not real men. Just the men in books,” Clara said. “Books and tales. Like the goblin king.”
I flushed.
“One gold coin,” she said. “That would pay for this house.”
“But no one ever stays more than a few nights,” Trixie said. “He must get bored of them.” She was the closest to my age.
“Trixie, pay attention. One gold coin would shut up the lenders for a little while. Two gold coins, and we could buy some new clothes. People would think we were doing better again.”
“Maybe he won’t get bored of Sabela,” Clara said. “She’s too pretty. And even a few gold coins would buy us another month to think.”
I thought Father would snap at her that he would never, ever do such a thing to me. He would never send away his youngest daughter to sleep with the goblin king.
“We can’t…ask that of Sabela.” He looked very tired, and heaved a sigh. His hand moved to reach for his pipe, and then withdrew when he realized there had not been money for tobacco.
“But what else do we do? Lose the house?” Clara said. “Lose the house where we grew up, where we were born, where Mother died?”
His eyes met mine.
I looked at the floor, flushing again. It was a funny thing about the goblin
king. No, you didn’t go to him unless you needed money, so it wasn’t a thing respectable women were likely to do.
But if you were desperate—
It wasn’t viewed the same way as prostitution. He was a magical creature who never left his caverns. I would never see him again. He would never gossip about me. And then, there was the fact that the women never quite remembered what had happened.
“The goblin king only accepts young women who go willingly,” Father said.
“Last year, I caught Sabela looking at a picture of the goblin king in a book, and she turned just as red as she is now,” Clara said. “I think she might do it.”
“Clara!” I had never liked Clara much. But this was the first time I hated her.
“My beauty, is it true, that you would be amenable?” Father asked, tentative, but even in his eyes, I saw something like hope. Like he just wanted someone to solve his problems. He was getting old, his hair thinning, his eyes growing too weak to read, but I still felt a pang when I realized he would let me go.
“I…” My voice died as I saw them all looking at me, my selfish sisters. Why me? I thought. Why shouldn’t one of my older sisters go instead?
But then I realized that if one of them were to volunteer, a different sort of emotion would pass through me, and it would not quite be pleasant. I don’t really know why I wasn’t entirely terrified of the goblin king, why something called me to go to his door now and indeed, ever since I started to become aware of myself as a woman, but it did. I couldn’t deny that. I didn’t exactly want to go, but if someone must, it would be me. Not my sisters.
“I will go,” I said, forcing my voice to be brave.
“Dear god,” Papa whispered. “What am I saying? Sending you to him?”
I stood up, my resolve building. “I will go willingly, as soon as the sun rises.”
I could hear my sisters letting out breaths of relief.
Boys Over Powers Page 25
