The Goblin King (2 page)

Lucretius Dagon hesitated. His doubt hiccupped through the room, almost a tangible thing. At last, he bowed low, his massive horns scraping the floor as was customary. “At once, your majesty.”

He rose again, and his form began to ripple. A moment later, it vanished, pulled back into the Goblin Kingdom by an ancient spring-rope kind of magic that kept all of the Goblin Kingdom’s inhabitants returning. They were trapped there.

Damon sheathed his sword, took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth, and tried to regain some semblance of peace with himself. It had been a long night. The kingdom had become restless. They could sense something changing, like a moving of summer into fall. Trouble was coming.

Animals could tell when danger was on the way, and no animal reflected trouble like a goblin.

Damon made his way to the woman’s bed, looked down at her sleeping form, and waved a hand over it. The magic that Dagon had placed her under was instantly lifted.

A second later, Damon himself transported away.

Once he was back in his private chambers in his lone castle in his
perpetually stormy exiled kingdom, the Goblin King removed his weapons, shrugged off his leather jacket, and sank into his sofa to stare into the crackling fire.

The flames and their warmth helped balance the tumult of the storm that consistently played outside the castle’s massive windows. It
almost never stopped raining in the goblin kingdom. Fortunately for Damon, his powers kept him immune to the damp, to the mud, and to the mess that would drive a normal, sun-loving human mad. Instead, the Goblin King took a certain amount of comfort in the powerful echo of thunder, and a certain amount of pleasure in the flash of electricity that was lightning. It was a part of him – so much so that, apparently, it had never stormed in the goblin kingdom before he’d taken over as its sovereign.

Damon
even smelled like rain. Freshly fallen.

Now he sighed.
As he stared into the fire, a face formed there, small and pixie-like with eyes that were smoke rings embedded in the fire, ears like candle flames, and a mouth filled with what looked like tiny burning charcoal squares. The face smiled a friendly smile. “Good evening your majesty!” he exclaimed, his voice a high-pitched crackling sort of thing that naturally felt warm.

Damon tried not to smile. It didn’t do to encourage fire elementals. “Evening, Pi.”

Pi squinted a bit as if considering him. “Long night then?”

Damon made an affirmative sound, leaning
back to stretch out his long legs and cross them at his booted ankles. He thought of the meeting of the 13, the battle with the doubles, and the uncertain future of the entire supernatural universe. “You could say that.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” asked Pi curiously, almost timidly.

Damon frowned. He thought he’d hidden it well enough. “Why would you ask that, Pi?”

“The Fire Elders are even talking about it. There’s a force rising, they say. One that threatens the entire magical world.” Pi hesitated, crackling away in silent, flaming thought. “Even us.”

Damon placed his fingers to his lips thoughtfully. He listened to a raven caw menacingly outside. And then he sat up and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. “The 13 Kings are working together to protect our worlds, Pi. You can take that news to your elders and tell them to rest easy.” The last thing they needed was a bunch of nervous elementals causing environmental catastrophes in the mortal realm.

Pi jumped around a bit, perhaps from happiness-inducing relief, perhaps from agitated excitement at the thought of having good news for his elders. But whatever it was, it was short-lived before he settled down again and Damon could perceive him actually nodding. “Will do, chief. Oh – and
a word of warning. The Duqar are playing with bad ideas again. They’re heading into the mortal realm tonight.”

Pi vanished. It was a sort of
poof
, a cloud of smoke, and a popping sound, and the fire in the hearth was suddenly a lot less animated.

Damon frowned. He’d been hoping to take the rest of the night off. But apparently the Duqar had other plans for him. They were nothing more than a racist and ruthless band of goblins that hated humans and loved wreaking havoc on the mortal world. Damon was growing very weary of them.

Most likely they’d hatched their latest insidious plan around a blazing fire bin, and hence Pi had come about the knowledge with ease. The king had informants like Pi everywhere. When you ruled over something as entropic and primally wild as goblins, extra measures of governance were not only a good idea, they were necessary.

The Goblin King sighed. He ran a hand through his thick dark hair and closed his eyes. They hurt. They literally burned with fire at times, the power inside of him was so strong, and when this happened, they naturally grew hot. They got sore.

Damon Chroi was too strong for his own good.

A very long time ago, so long ago that it predated human history, Damon had been banished here to this realm by the Fae Court. It had been a coup of grand proportions. Every last royal blooded fae in existence had gathered together, joined forces, and exiled him. Why?

Because they feared him.

Damon Chroi had been born with enormous power. This power, this magic that pulsed through him, stifling and unsettling, scared those around him. Some pretended to befriend Damon, choosing to side themselves with the thing they feared. Others outwardly distrusted him, shunned him, and gathered behind his back, scheming and planning.

Damon was well aware of it all. He knew what they thought of him, what they felt toward him. He’d never lifted a finger against any of them and had never given them any physical proof of a reason to believe that he would betray his leaders or his kind. But it didn’t matter. No one was willing to take any chances where he was concerned.

And so they murdered the former king of the goblins, and Damon was sent to the Goblin Kingdom to rule over a race so powerful, the Fae Court assumed Damon would be too busy trying to maintain control over it to return and rise against those who’d banished him.

They were right.

What they hadn’t counted on however, was that there would be another uprising altogether, one from within their own ranks.

A thousand years after Damon’s exile, twin brothers were born to the fae kingdom. They bore no royal blood between them, but grew into young men of such charisma and power, they earned the nickname “the princes.” Despite their very different appearances and preferences, they were nearly inseparable.

They were also apparently much better at hiding the immense amount of inherent power they possessed, because unlike Damon, they were not exiled. More than a thousand years after their birth, “the princes” overthrew the Fae Court, killing every single member among their tainted bureaucratic ranks.

The princes became the Sidhe Kings.

Their real names were never spoken and rarely known, as names held great power in the fae kingdom. Damon’s name was not real either. These were closely guarded secrets for their kind.

One of the fae kings went by the name Avery now, and his brother was called Caliban. Avery ruled the Seelie court, and Caliban the Unseelie. They’d reigned over the fae kingdom from these separate thrones for thousands upon thousands of years.

Damon had no desire to return and attempt to retake his place in the Court. He’d been betrayed once, and once was all it took for him to understand the way of his kind. However, if he
had
wanted to return, he was actually uncertain whether he would be able to defeat either king on his own, much less combined. Together, their power would be insurmountable.

And it mattered not anyway.

Damon, Avery and Caliban now occupied three seats at the table of the 13 Kings. It was important for them to band together, now perhaps more than ever. The crimes of fae past had no place in the ticking clock of present day.

The goblins needed a sovereign to keep them in line. The two facets of the fae realm needed their kings. Things had come to be as they were most likely meant to be.

Damon opened his eyes.
No woman will want to live out eternity in this wet hell
, he thought to himself. It was nearly impossible for him to imagine a queen who would be willing to give herself over to him and to the responsibility he bore. She would have to bear it too.

Lalura Chantelle may have foreseen 13 queens on that chessboard, but Damon was dubious at best.

He rose from the couch and slipped back on his jacket and sword sheath. Then he made his way down one of his labyrinthine hallways to the weapons room. There was enough trouble in the world at the moment without having to babysit rogue goblins. It was time to deal with the Duqar once and for all.

He waved the room open, not even bothering with the enormous latch that governed the massive wood and metal reinforced double doors. They creaked apart, revealing the long chamber beyond.

It was lined with weapons of all kinds. Damon’s boots echoed on the cold, hard stone as he entered and perused the incredible, deadly collection. A shield he passed reflected a tall man, broad and very handsome with thick nearly black hair and green eyes tinged with both gold and orange as if they would burst into flame at any given moment. A strong chin defined his regal profile, darkened slightly by an oncoming need for a shave. A scar ran through his upper lip, hardening his expression, turning it slightly cruel.

Damon stopped, his gaze narrowing on the scar. It had been given to him by a goblin on his first night as king.

Goblins were a very hard breed to kill. They had always frightened the Fae Court, not because of their size or their sharp claws or sharp teeth or immense, incredible strength but because the magic flowing through their veins made them very nearly immortal.

It lent power to their attack, power to their defenses, healed their wounds, made them immune to the elements, strengthened their resistance to dark magic such as mind control and weakness, and worst of all, it protected them from every kind of death but one. For a goblin to die, its head must leave its body.

The problem was it was almost impossible to take a goblin’s head.

Damon turned away from the shield and strode to an ornately carved, highly polished long sword that hung more or less alone on hooks against the far wall. It glinted as he approached, looking wickedly sharp. He could almost hear it
ping
.

With a wry smile, the Goblin King grasped the weapon by its hilt and pulled it from the wall. He didn’t have to go through so much trouble to use the sword. It would answer his mental call at any time, in any place, appearing in his hand like Thor’s hammer. But it was a sword worthy of the ceremony, and Damon had time.

It was weighted perfectly and felt light in his grasp. He lifted the sword over his head and turned it in the moonlight shafting through a window high on the wall. It gleamed, reflecting something that wasn’t there, not in this realm.

There was only one way to take a goblin’s head. Damon had learned that lesson the hard way and had the scars to prove it. You needed a special sword to do it. A vorpal sword, in fact: the Atrox Ferrum.

Damon smiled grimly, sheathed the Atrox, and left the weapons room, his long stride fast with purpose.

Chapter Two

Diana Piper peeked surreptitiously through the glass doors and windows of the front of her office. When it was clear no one was around, she flipped the sign from “Open” to “Closed,” and made her way back down the hall to the kennel in the rear.

“I guess you’r
e staying with me for the night Gus,” she said as she entered the back room.

A large yellow Labrador R
etriever looked back at her with big, dark eyes. He sat on a padded table, breathing quietly. He tilted his head to one side and whined softly.

“Well, I gave them an extra fifteen minutes
,” she said sympathetically. But a noise from the front of her office drew her up short.

Gus
barked, just once.

She looked back at him and then turned to the hall that led to the front of the office. “Stay here,” she said as she moved down the hall.

Gus hopped down from the table and began following her.

She stopped and turned to him. “What
?” she asked reprimandingly. “I know you know what ‘stay here’ means.”

But the dog simply gave her a long look and remained beside her.

Diana sighed and turned back to the front office. The door was still closed, but the Open/Closed sign was swinging ever so slightly as if the door had been recently used. Which was strange, since the bell attached to the door hadn’t sounded.

Diana
frowned, her brow furrowing. She moved to the desk and perused the sign-in sheet, pen, open files, and pamphlets. The front office was relatively small, consisting only of a tall desk for receiving patients and a dozen chairs for “parents” who were coming to pick up their animal companions. The front of the office was lined with windows that had been shaded to keep out the heat of the sun. There were blinds as well. She’d forgotten to draw them.