The Goblin King (24 page)

Avery waved his palm toward the alley’s opening. An illusory wall wavered and set itself in place, making the alley appear empty to anyone who passed it by. Meanwhile, Caliban focused on the metal doors that led from back rooms, store rooms, and kitchens to the alley. With a thought, he locked and warded them all from the outside to prevent any further intrusion.

T
he sidhe kings turned to the back wall. Together, they spoke ancient words that filled the alley with the fog and dust mote-like sparkles of primordial magic. The air became heavy with their power. Something was happening, indescribable but equal parts terrifying and exciting.

The kings finished the spell and fell silent to wait with held breath as the magic they’d unleashed took over.

Every realm had its doors.

Some had stood for so long, they were unrecognizable. Humans mulled around them, brows furrowed, fingers on chins, and pondered.
Perhaps the stones are sacred ritual sites
, they suggested. The mounds were supposedly burial sites. The burrows were ancient cities covered in eons’ worth of blowing sands.

But what they really were was doors.

Most were no longer used. It was as if they were
actual
doors in a closed off corridor of some crumbling mansion, locked long ago with a skeleton key then lost. They were passages forgotten and rotting and all but disappeared. Should the unwary traveler one day accidentally happen upon one, covered in ivy and moss and a thousand years’ worth of nature, may the fates protect them from knowing what it was they’d found.

Others were different…. They were composed of more powerful material, timeless and functional, and were sealed only by the magic of those in charge of the borders between worlds.

It was one such door that the sidhe kings opened now.

As they watch
ed, the bricks of the alley’s end began to change. The mortar outlines shifted, moving right or left to form the outline of a door some nine or ten feet tall and three feet wide.

The red of the brick faded to the pockmarked gray of weathered stone. Carvings drawn long ago etched themselves into the rock, forming serpents and dragons and angels – or something like them. Vines crept from cracks around the edges of the door and crawled across its surface as if to choke and hide it.

The last thing to appear was the knocker.

It had been made of gold, but long ago, and a verdigris now painted itself across a once shining surface. Avery glanced
at his companion, whose purple eyes glittered in the magic-filled air. Caliban nodded.

Avery gripped the cold and heavy handle, and the world seemed to pause. He raised the creaking ring as high as it would go and lowered it with a firm hand. Gold met gold, the metal gong-like sound reverberating through Avery’s hand and then surrounding the two would-be travelers.

Avery prepared himself as he released the knocker. The stone door trembled in its brick casing. Dust puffed from the cracks and pebbles knocked loose to skitter to the ground.

The brothers stepped back. The door dislodged itself and slowly swung outward toward them, revealing a vine covered corridor of the same rutted stone beyond. The two remained standing still where they were and gave the threshold the respect that an open door to a fae kingdom deserved.

Then Avery stepped through – and was thrown violently into the wall on the other side of the corridor as the world tilted beneath his feet. Thunder rumbled like an earthquake, magic so thick it made the air un-breathable warped the atmosphere, and Avery clutched at the stone to keep his balance.

Caliban was behind him, having followed him through; Avery felt the man’s hand grip his shoulder. The portal slammed shut with a bomb-like calamity, and both kings shoved themselves to their feet, casting up transport spells with the speed of instinct and experience.
Now that they’d crossed the border into the forbidden kingdom, they would be able to transport from one point to another within it.

They were hurtled through time and space so fast, it nearly knocked them senseless. Something was wrong with the melted colors and liquid hours; they’d gone dark and twisted and seemed to be edged with the pain of fire.

With
death
.

The exit portal to the transportation spell opened like a sliding glass door to toss them both violently into the shifting and burning great room of Damon Chroi’s massive stone castle. Avery hit the ground hard, but rolled, managing to get his boots under him to rise once more. As he did, the room tilted. He leaned, grasped the nearest couch, and held on tight as he cast his gaze about the room to take it all in.

Not far from him, Caliban seemed to be doing the same thing. His tall, broad frame was wedged safely against an outcropping of carved stone near a stained glass window that had already been shattered, either by the unsteady movement of the castle or by a stray bolt of lightning; the electricity was erratic across the Goblin Kingdom’s angry and tumultuous sky. Caliban’s dark suit was ruined; the expensive, once immaculate material had been muddied and torn by their short trip. The Unseelie King’s eyes were lit from within by the power that flowed through his veins, heightening their contrast of amethyst and jade.

Avery knew his own were doing the same. Their magi
c was at the ready. One of the fae worlds was literally coming to an end.

The rugs, throws, and tapestries in the great room were on fire. Most had fallen from their casings along the walls. The crystal and candle chandelier that had once hung from the high domed ceiling far above had fallen to the ground to shatter into a billion icicle shards that littered the floor like diamonds.

The ceiling was cracked open, and the crisscrossing of maniacal web-like lightning overhead illuminated the great room through the fissure. The stone floor had split in two, dividing the great room evenly in half. On one side of this divide was a pile of sand roughly the size of a human male.

On the other was
a beautiful woman with a waterfall of shimmering ginger hair. She was kneeling, head bent as if in mourning. In front of her lay the unmoving form of Damon Chroi, the Goblin King.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Diana barely noticed the twist and turn of time and space when she was pulled through the transport spell this time. A small portion of her mind was beginning to grow accustomed to the sensation. But it was the state of the
rest
of her mind that truly made her numb to the spell. Her hands rested on Damon Chroi’s broad and un-breathing chest – while the Seelie King, and the Unseelie King each gently grasped her upper arms to cast the magic around the four of them.

Diana could not look away.
The world had fallen apart around her, beams had fallen, the ceiling had cracked open, and fire was everywhere, but she’d remained where she was, taking life for granted in numb shock, gazing down at the man who had just made real, honest love to her.

Damon appeared
to be a sleeping god, his terrible perfection unmarred by his battle with his doppelganger. His eyelids didn’t move, but she half expected them to. He looked as though he dreamed. She wondered what those dreams would be about. His lips were slightly parted, as if he would speak any moment now. When he did, everything would become heightened senses, temptation, and electric sexual tension. Everything would be perfect – like it almost was.

The spell ended, and vaguely, Diana recognized the feel of a thick, soft rug under her knees. But still, she couldn’t look away.

There was a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder, and a scratchy, weathered and aged voice said, “He’s gone, child.”

“No
, he’s not,” Diana replied. Her tone was foreign to her own ears. It was like she was listening to someone else speak through her. “He’s dreaming.”

There was no response for a while, and after some time, Diana steeled herself and looked up.

Lalura Chantelle stood beside her. Behind Lalura stood Dannai Caige, Jason Alberich, Roman D’Angelo – and behind him, around half a dozen men that Diana didn’t recognize. All of these men were beautiful in different ways. All wore dire, stricken expressions. All were gazing down at the Goblin King.

“I’m sorry,” whispered
Alberich. “For a warlock to resurrect someone, he must be more powerful than the one who’s been killed.” He shook his head and Diana processed his words. Her mind was working slowly, as if she’d been dipped in cold, bitter molasses. “I’m the strongest of my kind,” he admitted, but it was not a boast. He, too, looked truly stricken. “But I’m only a king, and no more powerful than another king.” He looked down at Damon and any other words he might have had to say slipped away into silence.

Diana barely understood what he was telling her. Somewhere in there, there was an explanation for her dawning agony, but she couldn’t quite grasp it.

“You are a queen now,” said Lalura, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You will need to pick up where the king left off.”

“I’m not,” said Diana. Her voice came to her through a tunnel long and narrow. She
’d met the king a single eye-blink ago. She’d known him for a heart beat of time, no more. She was not a queen. And she hated the universe.

“
What matters is the heart,” said Lalura. “You were born with one that beat like royalty. You have already taken your place on the board.”

*****

Lalura watched the new Goblin Queen with knowing, sad eyes.

The night came unnoticed to Diana
Piper. While at Dannai’s house, seated around the dining room table, she had told them all that she loved the moon, for which she’d been named. But now the moon she normally looked upon as a smiling Cheshire cat friend rose and fell in its frolic but never gained in her its faithful audience. It must have looked down and noticed the odd cast to her eyes, the distant expression. Perhaps it worried. Maybe it mourned for her, its bright white smile a mask.

Diana would never know.

None of the 13 Kings had ever before been buried. There had never been occasion. Sovereigns had come and gone, but under war and conquer and subjugation. Not like this. Not where the deceased was one of the powerful, eminent, and unforgettable men who had once been seated at the world’s ultimate table of peace and cooperation.

It seemed the entire universe knew
and mourned. Traffic on the streets seemed slower. Lights were dimmer. It was raining…
everywhere
.

Everywhere, that was, but in the Goblin Kingdom. There, the
clouds hung heavy but did not weep. They
would
not. It was out of deference. The teasing drench they had forever unleashed on the king’s realm was now quieted and held back. Instead, fog covered the ground, thick and sorrowful. A silence accompanied it, deep and true.

A
s the fallen king lay still as death in the otherwise empty chamber beneath the castle he’d once inhabited, the others gathered. Among the royalty of the 13 supernatural factions, the tones were hushed, fear and desperation levels were elevated, and the colors had all been turned black. Every suit was dark. Every dress somber.

All but one.

At her softly spoken request, Diana Piper’s long satin gown had been turned from black to green. Dannai cast the spell without a word, only waving her hand slowly through the air, revealing the shimmering emerald hue as her hand lowered back to her side.

Diana looked down, her expression unreadable. But she nodded. “Thank you.”

All too well, Lalura understood. Green… was the color of Damon Chroi’s eyes. It was then fitting that at midnight on the full moon of May, the emerald month, Diana Piper would be addressing the inhabitants of the Goblin Kingdom as their queen. It would fall to her burdened shoulders to decide what she must do: Return to her world and attempt to put the pieces of her life back together again amidst danger she could not comprehend? Or take over for the man she had only just met and only just lost and attempt to put that new life together from scratch?

Lalura felt an ache
she hadn’t felt in decades. She would miss Damon Chroi and his beautifully twisted smile and genuinely kind heart. She could not imagine what Diana must have been going through.

The old witc
h turned in her transported goose feather chair in the magically repaired castle great room and looked to where Diana now sat beside the stained glass in a plushly cushioned window seat.

Diana’s gaze was distant,
stretching far beyond the fog that striped the windows with condensation and blurred the world. But as if she could sense that she was being watched – that she had an audience, she began to speak.

“The last time I cut my hair, I was with my mother,” she said, her voice as distant as her gaze. “We went to the hair dresser together, a ‘girls day out’ kind of thing. It had been forever since we’d taken the time to treat ourselves. She was a public defender. She’d gone to law school when my father died…. She wanted me to have a good life
.”

Diana paused and straightened a little.
Her hair fell to her mid-back and cascaded over her shoulders like ginger water. She took a lock of that strawberry blonde hair and gazed at its ends. “This right here,” she said, turning the hair between her fingers, “this is the day before my mother died.”