“Do you understand?” the voice grates out. “If you see me, you absolutely can. Not. Run.”
My heartbeat turns ragged. “O-okay. But why would I run?”
My captor leans close, his breath hot against my ear. He drags in an inhale so greedy that my vital processes abandon me.
I tremble, chained to the earth not only by his grip, but by a paralyzing burst of fear. Is this the fae king? It must be. No one else would dare accost an Aethrolian princess in her own garden.
“I knew your scent was tempting,” he says, his voice dropping into agravelly register I didn’t know existed until this moment. “But shadows take me, up close like this, you’re irresistible.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I was somewhere else. Anywhere else. My assailant inhales again, concluding with a groan so obscene that if my sisters heard, they’d spend a week repenting for it. As it stands, I’ll need a scalding bath later, just so I can slough that horrible sound from my skin. “Irresistible?” I manage. “Because of what, my smell?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t have a smell.”
He laughs. It’s a dark sound—rough and heavy and inevitable, like the last rattle of autumn before snowfall arrives. “You do. You smell like something I’d chase until the ends of the earth. I wouldn’t be able to help myself, in this form. Which is why you shouldn’t run.”
A thousand urges collide in me at once. I want to scream. I want to flee. And yet this stranger’s warning carries gravity, enough to override the panic bubbling in my veins. I need to stay calm. Extricate myself from his hold, somehow.
“If I did run,” I hear myself say, “what would happen?”
The hand at my hip squeezes. “I’d chase you.”
“And then?”
“I’d catch you.”
I force a swallow. “And…then what?”
An eternity slips past, marked by the uneven rush of my pulse, by the pull of warm breath against the sensitive shell of my ear. My captor edges so close his chest brushes my back. “Something you wouldn’t like,” he rumbles.
Something I wouldn’t like. A violent shiver wracks my frame, because the mere thought of fleeing from the fae king—of being marked for capture by those merciless yellow eyes—sends dread spiraling through me.
I wouldn’t survive that. Survivehim. Or, if I did, I’d probably wish I hadn’t.
“Iwilllet go of you,” the voice behind me says, “if you promise not to run.”
I breathe around the leaden weight wedged in my airway. “All right. I-I promise.”
For a moment, his hold tightens, the pressure accompanied by the prick of…what are those,claws? Before I can decide, his grip vanishes, leaving me weak-kneed and wobbly, like I’ve been stranded amid empty air.
I breathe. And breathe. And breathe. Then gather my wits and turn around.
And immediately lose track of myself again, because this isnotthe fae king. At least…not in the form I last saw him in.
No, this is a goblin—indigo-skinned and impossibly tall, his frame so broadly muscled it’s as if someone carved him from a solid block of night. His long white hair gleams in the twilight, the top half pulled into a knot that bares his pointed ears, the bottom half cascading over his shaped leather armor. Starlit glimmers play across his bluish-purple skin, but the shimmers seem to be part of him somehow, not reflected from above.
And…Ishanna’s blood, Idowant to run. Some primal instinct courses through me, a bone-deep urge to flee—away from him, or toward him, I can’t tell. I can barely separate up from down right now, not with his presence diving into me like a thousand knives.
“You’re thinking about it.” The goblin’s eyes bore into me, as cold and bright as yellow planets. “Running. I can tell.”
I blink, needing a reprieve from his stare, from the sharpness of his jaw, but it’s hopeless. He’s too intense. Too overwhelming to possibly shut out with something as flimsy as eyelids.
“It’s kind of hard not to,” I breathe. “You’re… You’re…”
He waits, but no word exists in this language or any other to adequately conclude that sentence. He’s enormous. He’s dizzying. He’s devastating and otherworldly andimpossible.
And Ishanna help me, he isdefinitelynot what I pictured when I heard the word “goblin.”
