The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Fourteen: The Chains that Bind

I licked at a cut on my bottom lip, tasting blood, limping due to an ache in my hip where I'd struck a limb and tight muscles that had gone so long without use. It was a good sort of ache though. The kind of pain that promised future strength. 

We stepped through a new doorway  Odd made, stepping from one corner of the empire to another, back into the gilded stone halls of the palace. I took a deep breath, refilling my lungs with the scents of home. A sense of relief washed over me just as the cool air chilled the skin of my cheeks.

"We should do this more often," I said to Odd, grinning as we moved down the hall. Behind us, we drug the body of a deer by its back legs. "If you survive, I mean. Don't let what I said go to your head."

"Too late for that. It's already swelling." He laughed. His dark eyes flashed in the gloom of the palace's lower passages. "King Odd, it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?" 

Servants came rushing out of the woodwork, bursting in a stream out of the doorways ahead. They took the deer from us, carrying the thing away like a bunch of ants with a morsel. "Not just king, emperor." I corrected, pride in my past accomplishments coloring my voice.

Odd's eyes shifted toward me, but he said nothing to that. Like his father, I knew he'd likely never refer to himself as an emperor. The term empire implied that the regions beneath our rule were still separate, a collection of kingdoms ruled by one, but in their minds, it was all one, one kingdom, one people, those that were goblins and those that were not. 

Ask came bustling out of one of the rooms ahead, fixing her bonnet that was threatening to slip off her bald head. "I hope you've enjoyed your little trip, you're both late." She huffed. "The dressmaker is already here."

"Dressmaker?" My brows furrowed. "Why would the dressmaker be-" I clamped my mouth shut. "I see. He's trying to bribe me again, isn't he?" Anger rolled through me with white-hot heat. "Dismiss them. I don't need any new clothes. Nor am I that easily bought."

"It's Lady Eadan." 

The familiar name doused my anger like a bucket of water over a flame. Eadan ran one of my favorite shops in the city along with her assistant, Cicero. Despite her being the daughter of an Unseelie council member and Cicero being a former slave, the two had become not only close friends but business partners. Both of them were amazingly talented and their artistic sensibilities had melded well with goblin tastes over the years. They were personal favorites of mine. Knut knew this. Bastard.

"Oh," I muttered. "N-never mind, I'd hate to be rude." It was a thin excuse. Greedy little Tilly was raising her ugly head again. "I might as well see what they've brought me before I send them away." 

Odd and I parted ways, each of us heading back to our quarters to make ready for the feast. I looked back over my shoulder as Ask led me away. My final image of him before he was out of sight was of him holding up the skull of the bog beast, flashing a grin at it that mirrored its own, all sharp teeth. 

Ask had me washed in a concoction of perfumed water and healing tonics, getting rid of both the dirt covering my skin and the aches in the muscles beneath it. Afterward, she brought in Eadan and Cicero while I was still bundled up in towels. 

Little Lady Eadan glided into the room, cocooned in layers upon layers of intricately patterned fabrics. A slip of golden wheat, A dress of dandelion greens, A coat of sunlight filtered through thin clouds. She exuded the scents of summer, of earth and living things. An odd perfume for a woman who'd been born in a land of perpetual winter. At her side stood Cicero, so tall he had to duck his way inside. He wore a red coat that gave off the smell of rosewater. It brought out the earthier tones of his skin and made the white flecked through his tightly coiled hair stand out more. Cicero was still entirely human, unblessed and unaltered. He'd begun to grow old in the twenty years since our first meeting. Lines appeared around his mouth and forehead, the promise of more appearing as he smiled. And there I was standing there a few feet apart, looking the same as I had back then, my age showing only in the weariness that clouded my eyes.