“You can’t even stand,” he counters, and it’s true. My legs tremble, spent from my run and that fall and the bone-deep wrongness dragging at my soul.
So…I give up. My laughter peters out, and I don’t fight. Instead, I lay my head on the Shadow’s shoulder and let him carry me through the winding corridors, marveling at the absurdity of it all. Because if someone had told me this morning that I’d end my day in the embrace of a goblin—willingly, no less—I would’ve laughed. I would’ve told them, with absolute certainty, that they had lost their mind.
But here I am, being carried to bed by a monster. A demanding, heathenfaewho just saved my life and wants to keep me forever.
My fist curls against the Shadow’s breastplate. His grip reflexively tightens, and even though I tell myself to shrink from the presumptuousness of his touch, I don’t.
Instead, I say, “Thank you. For saving me.”
He grunts. I feel the vibration in the center of my palm. In my soul.
“It was nothing,” he says. “I would’ve come from any distance. Against any odds.”
That renders me mute for a moment. “But what if you hadn’t gotten to me in time? What if I’d fallen?”
“Then I would’ve jumped after you.”
He says it with such simplicity that a bolt of wonder drills into me, sharp enough to steal my breath. All my life, I’ve dreamed of beingwanted. Cherished. Somewhere deep, in a locked, forgotten room inside me, something rattles its cage and begs to break loose.
But I press it back down. I glance up, only to find myself falling into liquid pools of gold, and I drop my gaze again, my eyes fluttering shut.
This goblin is dangerous. To look at, to be around, to touch. The fact that he exists at all terrifies me.
Still, I let him carry me onward. But as he cradles me close, I wonder if maybe, just maybe, dying in that abyss will someday turn out to have been the better choice.
Chapter 7
Imust sleep, because sometime later, my aching body sinks into something soft, the shift propelling me into consciousness.
I open my eyes to find the Shadow hovering, his brow creased in concern. Iridescent blue light shimmers from somewhere behind him, highlighting the points of his ears, turning his pale hair turquoise. I grind the sleep from my eyes and allow myself a moment to marvel at the effect.
Good goddess. I know he’s dangerous, that he should repel me, but for some reason, my gaze insists on clinging to him.
“Where are we?” I say softly. “And what time is it?”
“We’re in your room. It’s almost sunrise.”
I blink up at him, the words tangling in my head. “Almost sunrise? But didn’t we just come from the garbage chute?”
“Well…” His expression turns guarded. “I may have let you sleep for a while before bringing you to bed.”
I stare, trying to make sense of that. “You let me sleep? You mean you carried me around?”
He says nothing, the guilt on his face answer enough.
“For how long?” I demand.
He retreats, scrubbing a hand against the back of his neck. “Most of the night,” he admits.
I gawk. Most of the night? I try to imagine that—me curled in his arms, him cradling me close, maybe even watching my face as I slept. But where outrage should fill me, something warm swoops in my belly, instead. Which isn’t helpful in the slightest.
“Goddess,” I say, for lack of anything else. “That’s…alarming.”
He drops a sheepish glance to the floor, and I prop myself up on my elbows, eager to leave this unsettling revelation behind. Luckily, the room provides plenty of distraction. I look around and, for what feels like the hundredth time today, do a double take at my surroundings.
The Shadow has taken me somewhere private—another fusion between forest and castle, where pink light flows along the branches forking across the walls. A luxurious bed spreads beneath me, draped in silvery linens that cushion my battered limbs. Across the room, a wide, paneless window opens to the night, but it’s the hollowed-out tree trunk in the center of the floor that commands my attention.
The trunk is as wide as I am tall, brimming with glowing water in crystalline hues of aqua and silver and blue. Steam rises from the water’s surface, wisps curling toward the ceiling before floating out the window. “What is that?” I whisper.
