The Goblin King (26 page)

She cried out. It
hurt
.

The light flashed once, pulsing outward to envelop everyone and everything in the clearing – and beyond. The universe was enveloped in a
cocoon of illumination.

Finally, Diana’s eyes closed. She
let her head drop forward, feeling light, as if she were floating.
I must be dead
, she thought.

But she wasn’t dead. As she listened in the strange and new silence, she heard her
own heart beat. Once. Twice. It pulsed in the quiet, loud as an echo.

Diana opened her eyes and raised her head. Movement had all but stopped. All around h
er, the world literally continued in slow motion. The fire was gone, the light had just died, but it was as if she were stuck in a space or moment between here and there, now and then. Everyone and everything was frozen.

In that final moment of the spell, she and Jason had both been moved away from Damon. She stood several feet away now, not knowing how she’d gotten there.
She listened to that beating heart, and moved once more to the center of the clearing where Damon rested on his long emerald altar.

As she drew nearer, a second sound joined the first. It was another heart, a distant, softer copy. Its beats echoed her own, increasing in volume until she stood directly beside the Goblin King and was staring down at him, and the second heart beat fell in time with hers. Synchronized
.

She
held her breath.

Damon’
s eyes flew open, casting the world in their emerald light. Beams of glowing green emanated from his all powerful gaze. Diana stood transfixed, watching in silent wonder as the light rode across the field, turning the black flowers to a full range of verdant shades from pale pastel jade to deep forest.

This green continued on, and Diana could imagine the black ribbons changing, the lights in the windo
ws of the tree houses changing, the ocean surrounding the kingdom melting from midnight black to that vibrant color in Damon’s eyes.

Then the light faded, the high-beam green settling down to center once more in the Goblin King’s irises.

He blinked. And looked up at Diana.

“Now
that’s
my Fluttershy,” he said, his deep baritone voice slicing through the frozen silence like pleasure made into sound.

Diana felt a splintering around her, a cracking and breaking of every stress and worry and doubt she had held on to for what felt like forever.

S
he inhaled, breathing in a new kind of air.

And
Damon was moving, sitting up so fast he blurred, his hands cupping her face with both infinite tenderness and incredible desperation. They met in a kiss that took that worry, like the fractured porcelain vase that it was, and shattered it.

The scent of rain surrounded her, the
smell of wood smoke and power, the taste of mint and coolness on her lips and tongue, even as heat coursed like wildfire through her awakened body.

“Well, I think
that
would be
our
cue,” said Dannai Caige from somewhere on the sidelines. Diana recognized her voice, but was capable of paying little heed. Warm, hard hands held her, strong arms embraced her, and the world had turned to the color of life once again.

“Grab those embers,” said Lalura. “But be gentle. We’ll need to nurse the elementals back to health. They really gave it their all.”

One by one, flashes of light signaled the departure of kings and queens from this forbidden but no longer forgotten realm.

Suddenly, Damon broke the kiss. “Wait,” he said, looking at someone over Diana’s shoulder. “
You
stay. I know you were ordained once.”

Diana turned to find Roman D’Angelo and his wife Evie were the only two who had not yet transported away. Roman’s brow arched.

“You were
ordained
?” Evie asked, clearly perplexed.

Roman turned to look down at her. He s
hrugged, managing the movement with the utmost grace and gentility. “You live long enough, you’ll try just about anything. I’m a complicated man.”

It was Evie’s turn to raise brows now. She smiled, shaking her head. Roman
brushed his thumb across her cheek admiringly and then turned back to Damon.

Damon took Diana’s hands in his and stood. As he did, the emerald remains of his
casket vanished into thin air.

“Then say your right words
,” he said. Diana recognized the line from The Labyrinth. Damon winked at her, smiling broadly. He peered into Diana’s eyes so deeply that she could feel him chain her soul to his.

“
Do you, Damon Chroi, sovereign of the Goblin Kingdom, take this woman, Diana Piper, to be your queen and wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, in times of angry gods and rogue goblins, in true name-induced death and in health, because she resurrected you – you lucky bastard – to love and to cherish even when she’s more powerful than you and kicking your ass at everything you do, from this day forward until she can no longer stand the smell of rain?” Roman asked. Diana could hear the smile in his voice.

“Not a damn thing in any world could stop me from doing so.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dannai
Caige shook herself a little, and realized that she’d been standing beside the bassinet, gazing down at her twin children for more than ten minutes. Just watching them.

Her eyes strayed to the pendants they each wore around their necks.
Thin gold chains held equally gold medallions of an artfully winged scarab. Looking at them made her feel strange. Sometimes the medallions felt warm to the touch. Sometimes, it almost seemed they pulsed… like a heart.

Lalura had told her that
Ramses Amon Re himself had placed the pendants upon the twins. Because they were his grandchildren.

Because Dannai was his daughter.

Dannai had always wondered who her parents might have been. Lalura Chantelle had never had children of her own, and Dannai was as much her daughter as anyone born by blood would have been. But like any adopted child, in moments of angst or anger, Dannai had of course imagined her real parents were kings or queens or princesses and that if she ran away and found them, they would welcome her back into their kingdoms with open arms. And in moments of happiness and contentment, she couldn’t help but understand that her parents might have actually been underage children themselves, or overworked multiple-time parents already, or even crack heads – and be grateful that Lalura had been the one to raise her.

But there would always be that question in the back of her mind. It was natural. It was the question every adopted individual carried around unspoken….
Who were they?

Now she knew.

They weren’t kings or queens or princesses. They weren’t drug addicts or waitresses.

They were gods.

It was a lot to take in.

“
I think managers who insist their employees be at work at eight in the morning even if there’s no more work to do should be brought up on murder charges.”

Dannai blinked, totally taken by surprise by the comment that had just come groggily from behind her. She turned to find
Imani Zareb sitting at the dining room table, bags under her eyes, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee.

Imani was the herald of their coven, but like any good witch, she knew that it was
important to keep up a believable facade. Money wasn’t supposed to grow on trees. So technically, she worked for a living. That morning, the two women and the children were at Imani’s house. The home in Trinidad, California was a two-story that the two witches used to share. Lucas had agreed it was probably best that Dannai and the twins change their location frequently – to be on the safe side.

“Murder charges?” Dannai asked.
She was admittedly as much against mornings as the next person, but homicide was perhaps a bit harsh.

Imani looked up, her expression one of complete exhaustion. The
African-Brazilian woman was absolutely beautiful… after two o’clock in the afternoon.

“Just hear me out,” Imani
said before she took a long drink of her coffee, closed her eyes, and then opened them again. “I’m a hard worker and I don’t spend much time gossiping because, let’s face it. What could possibly be going on in the human world that is half as interesting as what’s going on in, say, one of Roman D’Angelo’s safe houses? So I get all of my tasks done, pretty much by Tuesday afternoon. That means that by Wednesday morning, I’ve done the entire week’s work and have nothing to do but browse online shoe stores and bullshit on Facebook.”

Dannai could feel a smile coming on, but she held it back, gave the sleeping twins one last glance, and made her way to the table to sit down across from Imani.

“I’m doing that on the company’s dime, but they don’t seem to care. They would rather pay me a salary for a forty hour work week than pay me less for fewer hours and the same amount of work. Idiots.”

“I agree, but that’s not murder. It’s just bad business.”

“I’m not finished,” said Imani, shaking her head. She took another drink of coffee, refilled the mug with a magical pointing of her finger, and went on. “So now we’ve clearly established that the company owners are stupid, favoring slow workers and a loss of money. But that’s just the gateway drug of their wrongness.”

Dannai magicked up
her own steaming cup of brew. For her, it was Irish Breakfast tea with cream in an Amnesty International mug she’d earned by donating often. She took a testing sip and continued to listen.

“What these guys can’t seem to comprehend, or what they won’t even pause to consider, is that life is short. Each and every moment of it that we spend doing something unnecessary and unpleasant is like a moment
literally
stolen
off the ends of our lives. The woman who loves hiking but is stuck in a basement sending emails to friends because her boss wants her there for the full forty even though she’s finished her work? Her life is literally being wasted. The girl who loves to dance but has to sit at a desk? Her life is being wasted. The man who just wants to photograph that rare bird but whiles away the hours playing Text Twist in an office with no windows? Wasted.”

Imani shook her head, her frustration shining through loud and clear. “
Wasted life is the same thing as not being alive,” she insisted. “Therefore, every hour wasted is like an hour of death enforced on the victim.”

“The victim.”

“Yes, the
victim
. The more wasted hours, the more forced death. And forced death? Well, that’s the same thing as murder, now isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact as far as Imani was concerned.

An
d when Dannai thought about it –
really
thought about it – she realized she had to agree.

“Fair enough. But I have to say, you’re rather on your game for one who hates mornings so much.”

“It’s caffeine and righteous indignation. That’s a powerful combination.”

Now Dannai smiled. “So are you gonna quit?”

Imani blew a raspberry. “No, they’ve got a good internet connection. T3.” She nodded, took a sip, and swallowed. “It’s fast. Plus, being chained to a desk is a good excuse for browsing Louboutin’s latest heels.”

The two women
drank in companionable silence for a while.

“That cat is back,” said Imani suddenly.

Dannai looked up. Imani nodded to the kitchen window. Dannai turned to find a familiar large, regal ginger cat seated on the sill outside the glass, bathing in the morning light.

“Funny,” said Dannai softly. “He keeps showing up. No matter where we are.”

“You know…” started Imani, “Cats are pretty important in Egyptian culture. The goddess Sekhmet, a lion-headed goddess, is also known as –”

“The Eye of Re,” finished Dannai, cutting her off. “I know.” She smiled, turned away from the cat, and looked over at her children. “And maybe he is. If so, he’s gone out of his way to protect us in more ways than one.”

Imani waited a second, then said, “I was going to say the goddess of healing. But either way, it’s too much to be coincidence.”

Dannai didn’t say anything to that.

“Have you heard from him at all?” Imani asked softly. “I mean… Ramses?”

Dannai shook her head. “No. I honestly think he did something to himself in order to create those medallions.” She nodded to the pendants around her twins’ necks.
Certainly The Healer and two infants couldn’t be that hard for a
god
to locate, and yet her uncle, Kamon had not come anywhere near either her or her babies. They were well shielded. “But… I… think I dream about him.”

“Oh?” Imani asked, leaning forward.

Dannai shook her head, which felt fuzzy. “It’s indistinct, really. Almost like… memories. I had this one dream where I stepped out onto hot sand barefoot, burning myself. A man scolded me. I could only hear his voice. It was gentle but deep.” She swallowed, her chest suddenly feeling tight. “In another one, someone is brushing my hair. I’m looking into a sheet of metal, like a mirror. I can almost see her face.” That was the dream that bothered her the most. She so badly wanted to see the face of the woman who was seated behind her.