The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Sixty Eight: It's Over

"Open it! Open the portal back up!" I screamed at the goblins.

The younger goblins, Snorri's siblings, gathered at the spot where Mab and Bran had vanished. They clawed at the open air. Their claws dug into...something, finding purchase, but no matter how hard they pulled or clawed or bit, reality would not bend for them. I dove in among the throng, clawing at the sky with fingers that couldn't even find the seam. My hands passed uselessly through the air.

"It's no use, Mistress," Snorri muttered, grabbing my arm in an effort to calm me. "It feels like she's barring it from the other side. We're not strong enough to open it on our own." I yanked myself free of him, hating the feeling of goblin hands on me that did not belong to the one I longed for.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I drove my knife down repeatedly into the dome, sending a pinging sound, like the tole of a small bell through the branches. Anger and frustration tightened like a vice around my throat, bringing tears. They began to prick at the back of my eyes.

Mab had escaped me.

Again.

A part of me knew that Knut was already paying dearly for my failure. I could feel it inside, the twist of the knife in Knut's gut, the cutting away of his flesh as my own brother tried to pry his treasure from his bowels. I felt every sting of every cut just as surely as if it were my own flesh. Were it not for the baby currently resting in my own body where Knut's crown laid within him, I would gladly take his place. At that moment, it was the only thing holding me back.

I flinched at the touch of a warm hand on my shoulder. I moved on instinct, slashing wildly. "Don't touch me!" I half screeched and half sobbed, flipping around to face them.

Lysander darted backward from me, his wings giving a faint beat to lift him into the air for a moment. The blade had come dangerously close to catching him in his handsome face. It whizzed past his nose and passed harmlessly through bright white feathers. "Matilda, calm down. No one is trying to harm you." He said sternly, holding his hands up between us.

A strange laugh shook through me. I didn't lower my blade. "Everyone tries to harm me." I spat. "Everyone. Everyone but him." I bit my own cheek at the sickening sight of my knife trembling in my hand so hard I almost dropped it. I could hardly believe it was my hand.

This wasn't me. This person, the one wearing my skin and my armor, the one who wielded both my weapons of iron and tongue was not the same person I knew myself to be. It was another that I had thought long dead and buried. It was the small, broken child that had screamed in despair for her dying father and had called a goblin to her side instead. "He doesn't deserve what she's doing to him. He deserves it the least of any of you." My wild-eyed gaze bounced from Lysander to Titania and Demetrius and the elf lords. I was glad none of them could see the tears spilling down my face behind my skeletal helm. I didn't have the strength left in me to try to hold them back. It was all suddenly too much. The stress, the anger, the fear and the pain, all of it, came down on me like an enormous weight that threatened to crush me flat. "She's going to kill him now. She's run home to finish him off." My voice cracked at the imagined touch of Jasper's knife pressing into my belly. I feared being left alone again more than anything else. More than losing the war, more than the loss of Knut and I's child or my own certain brutal death.

In flashes I recalled all the years I'd spent in the human world after they strung my father up, remembering every cold and lonely night of hunger and pain. My brothers had done their best to provide for me and they'd taught me to fend for myself. For that, I would be eternally grateful, even to Jasper himself, but they had never been affectionate with me. The only time I could truly remember being held by them was when the twins were being led to the gallows. Truth be told, I hadn't known what a truly kind touch was until I'd married Knut.