THE DARKENING (The Divided Realms: Book 2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The phooka turned baleful eyes to Willow. His gravelly voice rumbled. "What have you done, faerie?" He sat up, touching his human-looking hand to his muscled belly, then running it through the black matted straggles of his sheep's beard. He had a stiff dignity to him that the goblins seemed to lack.

"She's a fixer." Pitt popped up beside Willow's knee, his helium-high voice bright and cheery. "Fixed up me an' Nox an' Lunk. Don't know why. Says she ain't gonna torture us. Guess maybe they's thinkin' on tradin'." He scrunched his little nose up at Willow. "But me fadder don't much like phookas. Says they stink. I'd leave him here iffin I was you."

"And if I were you, Prince Pitt, I would cut out my tongue so it wouldn't babble so much." The phooka stood up and pinned his baleful gaze onto Pitt. "You don't make much of a trade either. The king has ordered you flayed upon your return."

The little goblin blanched. "Did not!" he jeered, but half-heartedly. Willow gave Pitt a reassuring pat and confronted the phooka, somehow forcing herself to look into his creepy eyes. "I won't let you hurt him," she said. Brand's sword hissed as he unsheathed it, backing up her words. The phooka looked around, saw the pile of his fallen comrades and Brand's amber blade. His sheep's face was hard to read, but Willow thought he looked confused. His fingers ran through his muzzle again and then rubbed where the thick horns sprouted.

"I feel strange. As if my skull is larger." He shook his head, thrusting his horns out viciously, so that Willow had to step back to avoid being struck. "What have you done to me, faerie girl?"

"I –"

"I already told ya," burst out Pitt. "She's a fixer."

The sheep-man snorted, aiming a savage I'm-about-to-head-butt-you look at the goblin prince. Pitt scurried behind Brand's leg. "Ya was gutted like a fish," he crowed, "and she fixed ya up like new."

"I speak not of sword wounds." He glowered at Willow. "Am I drugged?"

"What? Ya mean the tingly head stuff?" scoffed Pitt. "We had that too. Didn't we fellas?" The other two goblins nodded from their hiding spot behind a rock. "Goes away after a bit."

The unblinking phooka continued to bore holes through Willow. She decided they all needed to hear the truth. "You had a ... a thorn in your heart. All of you did. Not a real one but a magical one that ... that blocked things. I removed them."

"Thorns? That blocked things?" The phooka appeared mystified. "Blocked things like what?"

"I'm, uh, not exactly sure, but I'm guessing, um – good."

"Good?"

"Yeah, you know, things like kindness ... compassion ... um, love." Willow ignored the phooka's skeptical grunt. "No, it's true. The thorn's been blocking half your feelings. Half your thought processes. That's why, I guess, your heads feel bigger. They're running on full now."

The phooka gave another skeptical grunt. He turned his gaze to Brand and the amber sword. "I sense no magic in you, faerie. Yet you stand there unharmed and have slain a battery of phooka soldiers. How is this possible?"

Pitt yanked on Brand's cloak. "Yeah. What goes on with ya? They's never sent us faeries before that couldn't be killed."

"I'm not a faerie. I am human."

"What's a human?"

Brand and the phooka regarded each other, both ignoring Pitt's question. Finally the phooka nodded. "You are protected, then, by the ancient Compact. We cannot harm you. And your healer, she is human as well?"

"Yes."

"What happens next? Are we your prisoners?"

"I don't know." Brand turned to Willow for direction. She shrugged, not knowing what to do with a phooka anymore than Brand did. He decided on his own. "You are free to go. Tell your goblin king that we come and wish to treat with him."