The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Seven: Torchlight

The room felt cold and sterile. The fire in the hearth had long since died. Knut's sobbing was nothing but a constant whimpering. Nothing came from me. Not a tear. Not a scream. Not a word of comfort. I sat beside him in our bed, inches apart from him, staring at the door while gripping my knife so hard my hand was turning an angry red. It looked like it should hurt, but it didn't. I felt nothing. I was numb. Finally, wonderfully, numb.

"We should get up. We have a lot to get done today." I said in a level, toneless voice, setting my knife on my bedside table. "We need to tell the boys, put together a guest list, send out invitations..." I slipped my legs over the side of the bed, moving to get up, to run from the room, from him. Every motion was slow and agonizing, like time itself were moving at a crawl.

"What?" He asked, his watering eye following me as I stripped my sweat-drenched nightgown off my skin and ducked behind a changing screen to slip on a clean black dressing gown with little rosettes and wolf's heads embroidered in silver around the neck. 

I came back out, cinching the dressing gown closed, focusing on the buttons at my bust to keep from looking at him. "The coronation, what else? We might as well get it all over with...I'm tired of fighting it. It's no use anyway." My hands fell uselessly to my sides, leaving the last few buttons at my throat undone so the gown hung sloppily off one shoulder. "Why didn't you tell me?" My voice sounded strangely small and quiet even though I desperately wanted to scream at him. 

 He looked away from me. His mousy grey hair slipped across his shoulder, veiling his expression from me. "I didn't know how...I...didn't want to scare you...I was hoping I might be able to convince you to have the coronation before you found out. I never wanted you to see them that way."

"You haven't asked me about the coronation in years." The smallest bit of venom seeped into my voice. I couldn't stop it.

"No," He let out a soft breath. "I suppose I haven't. You always gave some excuse as to why we couldn't. Frit's neglecting sword practice. Floki isn't doing well in mathematics. Odd's not tall enough yet. For one reason or another, they weren't ready. And even knowing what I do, I gave in. I never quite learned how to tell you, no. I've tried a few times, but whenever I did, I just couldn't get the words out..." He frowned and new tears dripped down his face. "I knew it would hurt you...I never wanted to hurt you."

"Well, congratulations," Finally, I managed to hiss my true feelings at him as anger took a stranglehold on my throat. "You hurt me anyway." Pain radiated through my ribs as if the words had cut me open on their way out of my body. I wished I could take them back, but I couldn't. No more so than I could bring Magni back from the dead. 

And still, the words kept flowing out of my mouth. "Not only, have you kept the fact that our sons are going to butcher you one way or another to yourself, but their nightmares and murderous thoughts as well. You didn't even tell me that your health was failing."

"You knew?" His voice shook.

"I know everything." I spat at him. "Including the fact that you promised me a baby when you knew goddamned well that you can't have anymore. I had to learn all that from my friend and my own children instead of my husband who I thought loved me enough not to keep secrets from me."

"That's not fair."

"Tell me, have you always been a liar or is that a new skill you've picked up?" I snarled through clenched teeth. "I thought you trusted me...You used to let me run headlong into a fight without batting an eye because you trusted my judgment and my ability... somewhere along the way, you stopped. I became something to protect, something pathetic and brittle."

Knut's bottom lip trembled as he tried to hold back a flood of tears. He failed. "Forgive me." He moaned in an agony I'd never heard before. "I do trust you, Matilda. That's never changed. I've never doubted you, just as you've never doubted me."