The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Thirty: Silence

I stared out of the balcony doors at the glow of the goblin city below as I lay in bed, unable to sleep. Knut snored softly beside me. One of his arms was strewn across me, his large hand laid heavily on my belly. I grazed the blotchy skin on the back of that hand with my fingertips, noting the inhumanness of it. The skin was pale and was just as cold as a long dead man, but I'd grown used to him since we'd wed, just as you get used to the frigidness of a pool of water if you stay submerged in it long enough. His touch was warm and comforting to me now. I could feel the bones beneath that dead man's skin, pronounced and knobby. The long fingers ended in claws that could easily slice me open yet were never used against me. These hands that could so easily end my life, had only ever touched me with gentleness and adoration.

"Having trouble sleeping?"

I turned my head to see a dark eye peering at me through a veil of knotted, mussed gray hair. "Yes," I muttered, keeping the turmoil going on in my head to myself. My blood was still racing through me, pumped by a frantic heart that still hadn't calmed. I felt restless and nervous. I hadn't even been able to doze, knowing that Jasper still breathed in an Underground prison cell. I'd let him live...and it had been my decision. I pushed away Knut's arm and sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. "I'm not tired. I think I'm going to go for a walk."

He was silent while I snatched a silky robe with pink and violet posies embroidered along the hem from the end of the bed and pulled it on over my nightgown. I ran my fingers through my hair, undoing the knots. I could feel his eyes on me, watching every minimal action with interest. I didn't hear him move across the bed to sit behind me. "Would you like me to go with you?" He asked as I slipped my feet into a pair of soft slippers, I felt his arms loop around my waist. He pressed his brow against the base of my neck and breathed in the scent of me.

"No," I replied, pining for the door, for the freedom and space beyond it where I could be free to wallow in peace. "You stay here and sleep. You need your energy for practice tomorrow. I won't be gone long." I tried to remove myself from him, but his hands merely shifted, moving slowly up my body to hold me flush against him with one hand gripping my shoulder and the other looped low around my hips.

"Talk to me." He pleaded lowly. His voice rumbled through me, shaking my insides. "Don't close yourself off from me like this. I hate it when you do this. What is it that troubles you?" He pressed his lips against my spine in a chaste, adoring kiss.

"You can't know everything," I forced a little sly chuckle. "You can't know everything about me. Some thoughts are mine alone."

I felt him sigh with irritation. His cold breath broke my skin out in goose flesh. "It's not too late to kill him." He cooed, raising his mouth to my ear. When he spoke, his teeth almost grazed my earlobe, threatening to bite. "We could go down there now and string him up. Just say the word. Anything you want."

"I don't want to talk about him." I huffed, yanking off his restraining hands. "Go to sleep." I strode quickly for the door before he could lure me back with gentle touches and words.

He sat back in our bed. Leaning his back against the headboard, he raked his claws through his messy gray hair. "Do as you please, Precious." He smirked at me as I fled out into the hall.

I found myself going straight for the Hollow. I navigated the winding passageways with ease. The path to it that had once made no sense to me and frightened me down to my core now appeared perfectly clear. If monsters were watching from the shadows, they were giving me a wide berth.

The Hollow stood tall among its children, grand and proud, its very being shouting its power. I felt something in me quiver in its presence, some ancient knowledge passed on through the generations. I touched the stone-like wood of the inner walls as I entered, feeling the old one's skin, wrinkled and aged by its long life. A grandmother's cheek beneath my palm. This place was the world's beginning, the mother of us all. My bones and blood remembered.