The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Forty One: Cycle

Head over heels, my body twisted and turned as I fell. A scream ripped its way through my vocal cords, shredding them to bits as my hearing returned and I awoke from my dream. As I flipped again, I saw a shadowy shape above me, growing in size and clarity.

"Take my hand!" Cat screamed at me. She hung halfway off the side of her goblin, stretching out her hand to me as far as she could. 

I hesitated despite my terror, a question filling my head. Do you really want to be saved? 

"What are you doing? Take my hand!" Cat screamed again, stretching her fingers out, she swiped at me, trying to grab a hold onto my arm, my clothing, anything she could reach. The wind tugged at her hair, yanking it back from her face, a face so much like my own in my youth, her eyes much the same, dark and glassy. Wet with tears. Surely, it was merely because of the wind in her eyes. She could not be weeping for me. What had she to lose if I died, but someone she deeply hated? 

Even so...

I reached out, grasping for her. Her hand remained a breath out of my reach. My fingers grabbed at empty air. The forms of the Unseelie's houses haloed my vision and suddenly many hands were on me. The Goblin horde enveloped me within their masses and pulled me down into the dark of their swarm. For a few fleeting seconds, I saw Cat circle overhead, kicking away the hands grabbing at her winged goblin's limbs. "Matilda!" She cried out for me and in the distance I heard Frit call for me as well, calling for his mother. He sounded much younger than he was.

I expected the hands clinging to me to rip into my body and tear out what was inside. I squeezed my eyes shut, preparing for a gruesome and painful end. Instead, I was tossed into the dirt. 

I coughed as I shoved myself up onto my hands and knees, spitting up mud from the dust mixing with the saliva in my mouth. "Get away from her! She's mine!" Someone shouted. The horde around me had quieted strangely. In my trembling, blurry vision, I watched someone step toward me. A pair of pale, long legs ending in taloned feet peeked out of a leather loincloth-like garment. "Well, well, well, the old queen rides again." A pretty, feminine voice laughed as the longest, most vicious of her black talons tapped against the ground and dug into the soil. "How long has it been? You look like you've aged twenty years!" I lifted my head, my vision spinning and going in and out of focus, flickering from my own dull vision to Knut's clearer one where goblin souls glowed brightly against the darkness of shadowy night. Ari scowled down at me, her eyes like torches newly lit. "You should've stayed in her nest. You were safer there among her jars of precious things. You made a mistake coming here." She said, pitching her voice lower.

I got one foot beneath me, then a second. With a growl, I stood, wincing at my body's many protests. I made my back straighten and yanked Wingclipper from its sheath. I brandished it between the fellow she-goblin and me, shooting wary glances at the horde surrounding me and baring my teeth in warning. "Come at me!" I dared them all. "Come on! If you want what's mine so badly, take it!" 

Ari grinned crookedly, flashing long white teeth. "What's yours?" Ari giggled to herself. The goblins behind her echoed the sound. "I think you've already lost all that, My Queen." The goblins behind her giggled gleefully. 

I glared at her questioningly. "My queen? You mock me."

"I do not." She said. "You are still very much my queen." She lunged at me with a snarl. Her skull bashed against mine, turning my vision white as I was shoved to the ground. She pinned me there, one hand pressing my armed hand against the ground, her arm digging into my throat as her knee ground in my thigh, keeping my body from moving beneath her. She lowered her face to mine. I felt her breath, warmer than it used to be, heat my cheeks. It smelled of blood. "My sister brides suffer from delusions of grandeur." Ari's eyes glinted. "As have we all. Thankfully a few are beginning to wake from their dreams." She tilted her head. Her mane of feathers fell over her shoulder and brushed against my cheek. "Have you awoken yet, My Queen, or are you still squeezing your eyes shut?" The way she spoke sounded foreign coming from Ari, a she-goblin I'd known for so long. She'd always been blunt and to the point, now she spoke in riddles. Her eyes were too wide open and were glassy with the same madness that was in the others. Madness born of the terror of being completely and utterly mortal.