White Stag (Permafrost #1)(83)

“What is it, Soren?” Lydian looked intrigued. Soren was standing with blood streaming from his body, turning his white hair crimson. Behind him was a trail of bodies. Some moving, some not. “You’re quite the proficient fighter, I see.” He scowled, shooting a loathing glance at the dead. “I thought they’d be enough to engage you for now. I obviously thought wrong.”

“You need me, right?” Soren asked. “For your stupid ritual.”

“It’s not stupid,” Lydian hissed. “It will save everyone. It’s for the greater good. I guess you can’t understand that; you’ve been raised by greed and lust.”

“I’ll go with you,” Soren said. “Willingly. I’ll go with you, and we’ll fight to the death. I know as well as you do that the kill has to be made during combat for it to count to the stag. Maybe you’ll win, maybe you’ll lose. But you can’t force me to fight you, Uncle. You know as well as I that it wouldn’t count to the stag. So, I have a proposition.” Warmth and longing and regret filled Soren’s eyes as he looked down on me. “Let her go. Let her go, and I will fight you to the death. May the new king win.”

I struggled to my feet. “No!” I screamed. “Soren, no! Don’t. I’m not afraid.” My feet were numb under me, and I staggered forward until I fell. “Soren, please, no. You don’t need to.”

The soft sounds of boots against the ashes appeared by me, and his lips pressed against the top of my head. “I love you,” he whispered, then he said, a bit louder, “and I release any hold over you by all folk, men, and gods. You are free of any burden or punishment the Permafrost may hold against you in the court of the Erlking or of the clans. I break the binds that tie you and leave you free from my world, from my kind, from me.”

I crumpled to the ground as white, agonizing pain blazed behind my eyes. It was as if someone had set my mind on fire, letting molten lead drip down my throat until I suffocated slowly. Twisting and contorting, fighting for breath, fighting for a way past the pain of the broken bind, he whispered to me one last time. Three little words that set my heart ablaze.

The world went black as he walked away.





20


IRON FIRE


A HAND BRUSHED against my cheek, pulling me out of my fitful slumber. My body was tied against one of the skeleton trees, aching after being dragged from the back of a horse. Other places ached too, but I tried to forget about them because those pains were so much worse.

“Wake up, sweetheart,” a light voice said. It sounded like poison to me.

I blinked groggily and lifted my head, staring into the green eyes of the goblin who had claimed me as his. It was sick; he was beautiful. I knew goblins had two forms, a natural one and a predator one, but I didn’t think they’d be beautiful in their natural one. I thought no matter what, they’d look like monsters. But this man with his strong jaw and aquiline nose, his crystal eyes and golden hair, he was beautiful. Beautiful and terrible.

“There’s a good girl,” he said.

I cringed away from his hand. There was still blood under his nails, long dried now. It wasn’t mine. But it had to be the blood of one of the people I grew up with. This man—no this goblin, this thing—had killed them all.

I coughed, my throat burning from the water I’d inhaled during the swim underneath the waterfall that let me escape and the smoke from my walk through the ruined village that led to my capture.

He pressed something to my lips. It tasted like copper and iron. When I spat it on the ground, the red staining the earth could only have been blood.

“You don’t like the taste, sweetling?” he taunted. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Go eat your young!” I coughed the insult with as much strength as I could.

A slap had my head reeling. These things were so powerful. Why hadn’t they killed me yet? When would this one finish toying with me?

“That wasn’t very nice,” he said. “I’m your master now. You should be nice to me. How about we tell each other our names, would that be a good start?” Still, he had that sickly sweet, taunting edge to his voice. I wanted to rip my ears off. Anything not to hear it. “My name’s Lydian,” he said, “but you’ll call me master, you understand?”

I didn’t respond, so he slapped me again. Then with blood bubbling from my lips, I nodded.

“Say it.”

I stared at him defiantly, not allowing anything to pass my lips. He wouldn’t, I wouldn’t let him, he would never own me.

Another slap made me see stars. “Say it!” The force of his next hit was so strong, my head cracked against the tree I was tied to.

“I-I u-understand,” I managed to say with a mouth full of blood.

“You understand, what?” he asked.

I closed my eyes. This wasn’t real, this wasn’t real, this wasn’t real. I would wake up soon, in my village, and go about my daily chores. This was just a terrible nightmare. But when I opened my eyes, I was in the same place, staring down the same green-eyed goblin. Something inside me broke, and the strength I had dwindled away to nothing.

“I understand, master.”

Lydian smiled at me. “Now was that so hard?”

“N-no, master.”