The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Thirty Nine: Castle

They say that before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. If one eye once belonged to another, does that mean their life plays out before you as well? 

I continued to drift through Knut's life, soaring along by his side as the lost prince returned to the palace in which he was born. Years' worth of filth was scraped from his skin and his long matted hair was cut short near his scalp. Without it, his pointed ears stuck out comically. I laughed to myself at the cuteness of the image. 

Young Knut was practically vibrating with nerves as the servants cleaned and dressed him in a dusty purple-colored coat and white stockings. Memories of his mother flooded our shared mind. Sybil with her feline features grinning, laughing, and singing. 

Frode came to fetch him once he was dressed. "Come now, your mother is excited to see you and for you to meet your brother."

"I have a brother?" Knut gasped, his black eyes going round. 

Frode smiled beneath his heavy whiskers. "Oh yes, his name is Kai. He's....five...I think. I forget." He batted his hand through the air dismissively as if it were a trivial matter. "Hurry along, now." Frode laid a long-nailed hand on Knut's back to usher him out of the door of his chamber. 

Knut suppressed the desire to flinch away from Frode's touch, unused to the idea of skinship. Usually, when someone laid hands on him, it was to inflict pain, and his body had learned to react to every touch as if it were a blow. He focused his mind on the path ahead, his curious gaze flitting about the cavernous halls of the goblin palace and the sea of goblins moving through them. He knew this was where he was born, knew it was his rightful home, but it was a foreign place to him. He didn't remember it well. He hoped that he would feel welcome there soon, that his mother would help him.

As they entered the palace's lower tunnels, the path ahead shifted and shortened while Frode mumbled a spell beneath his breath. Suddenly, the door to the brooding chamber was before them. Knut's heart was in his throat. He was practically chanting the word, "Mama," in his head. He was so happy, so excited to see her again. I burned with pain, knowing who he would find on the other side of that door.

Another spell was muttered from Frode's lips and the door swung open on its own accord. Knut began to run inside only to stall just over the threshold. He froze there, staring toward his mother's bed, at the other woman sitting there with another little boy playing with toy soldiers at her feet. 

The woman was some other she-goblin he didn't recognize. She was rotund with a face like a carnivorous fish. Bizarrely red hair coiled about her hideous head. By goblin standards, she was quite the beauty. Her claws were sharp and her jaws looked strong enough to snap through bone, but hers wasn't the face he was longing to see. The boy are her feet looked much like her, portly with teeth so vicious his lips couldn't quite hide all their sharp points. 

"Prince Knut," the she-goblin smiled in that mindless way all she-goblins smiled at princes and kings. It was something they did on instinct. "Welcome home," she said with a respectful bow of her head. 

Knut's hands curled into tight fists at his sides as he hung his head, glaring at his new brother who'd yet to even glance his general direction. He was only vaguely aware of his father speaking.

"Knut, this is Aslaug, my new queen." Frode was saying. Aslaug lifted her head with pride at the sound of her new title.

Knut heard him, every horrible word, but he already knew in his gut what this other woman's presence meant. "Where is my mother?" he asked in a tiny whimper. "What did you do to her?"

"Sybil?" Frode scoffed, chuckling as if that were a bizarre question for his son to ask. "I unmade her of course." 

Frode's confession, or rather his blunt statement, knocked the wind out of Knut's lungs. He rocked on his feet, nearly pitching forward. Were it not for Frode's firm grip on his shoulder, he would've collapsed.