The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Sixty Seven: Hella

As if my night could not go any more horribly, I had subjected myself to Magni's company despite the soul crushing embarrassment I'd already put myself through.

Magni slumped at the small table in my kitchen, burying his face in his hands. His claws dug at the pale flesh of his cheeks. His spine was curved and even through the thick fabric of his coat I could see the knobs of his back bone. He seemed to have lost even more weight since we'd found him and I couldn't help but wonder if he had been eating properly.

"Are you eating well? You look thin." I said, hating myself. It was such a motherly question.

"Not really." He sighed, rubbing beneath his tired eyes.

"Would you like something to eat?" I asked, finishing one cup of cider and fetching the bottle to pour another. He shook his head as I shook the bottle. The golden juice sloshed around inside. The thing was already half empty. "Cider?" He shook his head again. "Good. More for me." I abandoned my cup and sat at the table with the bottle intent on finishing it off. 

Lifting his head from the cradle of his hands, he watched me take a gulp of it. "I thought you were trying not to drink so much."

"Alas, it is just another in a long list of things I've failed at." I tipped the bottle again to my lips. "It's been a difficult day. Now get on with it. Tell me what you want so I can go to bed."

He looked down at the table, his silvery eyelashes brushing his cheeks as he took a few shallow breaths. "I wanted to say goodbye." He said. His shoulders trembled. His lips were chapped and split from where he'd obviously been chewing on them.

I took the bottle from my lips and set it on the table, pushing it to the side. I was suddenly no longer thirsty. "And where, pray tell, are you going?"

He looked at me with a sorrowful expression, The whites of his eyes were red and raw. "Hell I suspect."

I recognized the hopelessness in his eyes as well as I would Knut's voice. I had felt it as I knelt in The Hollow's forest, my knees buried in the ashes of my children's kin and that of the son now sitting at my table. "Are you planning on dying?" I swallowed. "We need you, Magni You can't just off yourself now." Don't! Don't! Don't! I did not say what I wanted to. I did not plead with him, didn't show him any care or compassion. I wanted to hate him. I wanted to keep hating him and wish death on him for what he'd done. It would be a betrayal of Knut to do otherwise. I had to keep telling myself that. I had to or I'd regret it. 

"I am not thinking of killing myself." He said softly, looking at me with those hollow eyes. "I just...I don't think I will survive our fight in the Summer Branches or at least not long afterward." He swallowed and his whole torso seemed to shake. "They're going to kill me once this is over."

"They?" I asked. "Do you mean your brothers? Why do you think that? They agreed to follow your plan, didn't they?"

"I am not stupid enough to believe I've been forgiven. They haven't forgotten what I did any more than you have. Even if we make it to the sea and destroy the seed, the moment I do...the moment I am no longer useful, they will turn on me." His eyes met mine for the first since he'd arrived. "And so will you. If not before."

"I don't blame you for expecting that of Frit and Odd, Odd especially, but Floki truly meant what he said. He wants the very fiber of our world to change, for the ways of goblins to be gentler and more peaceful. He thinks he can achieve that as your ally."

"You don't."

"I'm not that hopeful...or naïve. People, whether they are goblin, human, elf or faeire are violent and greedy creatures. The sort of world Floki wishes to create is brittle and fleeting. It cannot last. It won't last."