The Goblin King (18 page)

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you make your choice.”

Illumination gathered around his hand. Like a snake of light, it left his hand in a string and floated through the air, entering the largest, nearest cave and lighting it from within before it vanished down the natural corridor.

Diana b
raced herself. Damon lowered his hand and moved around her, stopping when he stood at her back. She could feel him there like a hot brick wall, emanating heat and magic that licked at her and heated her from the inside out.

She kept her eyes glued to the cav
e entrance and refused to fidget, promising herself she wouldn’t back down from this, no matter what.

T
he first of a half-dozen xenobe goblins scraped their massive ways through the entrance of the cave and into the painful, dawning light, and Diana inadvertently broke that promise, stepping back – right into the solidness of Damon Chroi.

“They’re coming out to see
you
, Diana,” he said, leaning over to speak the words in her ear. “So I would suggest you stay. I allowed them to witness what you did for their brother in the alley. Obviously, they want to know if you can do the same for them.”

“What if I can’t help them?” she asked
. She became exhausted after healing only a handful of dogs or cats back home. This was so much more. It was bigger than her – several times over.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

*****

The first of the giant beasts shuffled his w
ay very slowly toward Damon and Diana. The others hung back, remaining where they’d gathered at the entrance to the cave. A few of them seemed to be surprised by the clear skies and lack of rain. Their multi-colored eyes gazed upward and outward, and they made small, curious sounds.

Damon had to hand it to his queen
. She hadn’t yet
really
tried to retreat. She was hesitant, understandably. But she had met these monsters before.

“The same,” she whispered now as she took in the goblin’s appearance from his bleeding maw filled with row upon row of jagged teeth to his three-foot-long claws that scraped along the ground as he moved. “They’re all like the other one was.” She shook her head, and he moved around her to see that her expression had gone from uncertain and a little frightened – to angry.

“What kind of natural selection allows an animal like this to form?” she asked softly, her voice hissing with renewed energy. She moved forward in a sudden brave burst and me the animal half way. It remained still and simply looked down at her as she reached out, gently grasped its paw, and lifted it in order to study the swollen and bleeding nail beds. “One that is always in pain? One whose own natural body causes it endless agony? What kind of world are you ruling over, Damon Chroi?”

She looked up, caught his gaze, and held it with
silent, seething demand. She wanted an answer. So he gave her one.

“A world that you could make better.”

Diana Piper went very, very still. Their gazes held, heating up and filling the space between them with so many things unspoken.

Then, finally, she looked away. He felt the disconnection as something profound. His heart hammered, his breath held.

His would-be queen turned her attention to the xenobe goblin. With the grace of natural born royalty and the strength of a true healer, Diana placed her free hand against the goblin’s fur covered chest.

Twenty minutes later, she’d shortened more than a dozen pairs of overgrown claws, fixed a dozen painful maws, and changed more than a dozen lives for the better.

She let her hand drop from the latest healed xenobe and turned to look up at Damon. “I don’t understand it,” she told him. “I should be dropping just about dead by this point. But… I feel fine. I honestly feel like I could do this forever.”

Warning bells went off in Damon’s head. Appearances could be
deceiving. No one knew that better than a fae. “I don’t think we should push it,” he told her. “Are you hungry?”

He looked past her to the group of goblins speaking their odd language and comparing their new bodies with one another. They’d been completely transformed. They’d once been the most frightening and unpredictable of his charges, and now they reminded him of massive,
cuddly plush monsters. They were even laughing. He’d never heard a xenobe goblin laugh before – but the happiness that a laugh exuded, no matter whose it was, would always be instantly recognizable.

“You’ve been here quite a while,” he continued as he looked back down at her. She was so beautiful standing there with her eyes shining and her smile gleaming and her strawberry blonde hair all wild all around her from the outdoor breeze and latent humidity…. For a moment it took his breath away, even though it was the hundredth time he’d looked down at her and taken in her beauty since they’d met.

But he schooled himself and kept the conversation on topic. “I think you should eat, and I make a mean breakfast.”

Diana
gave a small laugh. “I could eat,” she told him, smiling broadly. “Just no haggis, okay?”

Damon’s gaze narrowed.
“What in the realms would make you believe I would eat haggis?”

“The accent,” she said, shrugging and laughing softly again. “And you’re a fae, right? Isn’t the Goblin King supposed to be fae? And the fae are Celtic or Gaelic or something. Right? And don’t they eat haggis?” She laughed outright now, her expression self-
deprecating in the most adorable way.

And he found himself chuckling as well.

“Perhaps you’ve hit on a few truths somewhere in all of that,” he said through his laughter. “But I wouldn’t feed haggis to the xenobes.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Damon reached down and took Diana’s hand. He went stock still when he felt how cold it was. It was as cold as death.

His eyes shot to hers. The shimmer that had been in her stormy eyes
only a moment ago was gone. They were charcoal now, dull and tired and confused.

Diana’s laughter faded and her smile slipped. Her forehead creased in a
perplexed frown. She pulled her hand out of his and touched her forehead. “I’m… suddenly not seeing everything so clearly….” She swayed on her feet.

Damon
moved fast, leaning over to sweep her up into his arms at the very moment that her legs gave out and her eyes closed. She slipped into unconsciousness.

Alarm shot through Damon
, cold and hard. He could feel her essence draining away; the color faded from her cheeks even as he watched.

No….
Desperation terrible and fierce claimed him. He was losing her. He had no idea why or how. It was a bolt out of the blue, cruel and meaningless.

He acted without thinking. He had no choice
in the matter. His body and mind knew where to go and what to do while his spirit cried out and cursed the fates and mourned the death of his hope.

The world melted around them, twisting and turning, pushing and pulling. It sent them coursing through the veins of quantum reality and opened up again at some other end, depositing the Goblin King and his dying queen in a bedroom.

It was a second floor bedroom in a log cabin. The smell of fresh cut wood permeated the air, accompanied by the distant aroma of fresh brewed coffee, shampoo and soap. A woman with black hair and a towel wrapped around her stood beside a lace covered bassinet by the bed. She spun around as he solidified with Diana in his arms. The woman had eyes that reminded him of the xenobe goblins’ eyes, multi-colored and gemlike. They were rather famous in the supernatural world. This was Dannai – the Healer. And the sleeping fraternal twin babies in the bassinet were her children, Kavanagh and Jazarah, or Kevin and Jessie, for short.

For a
moment, Damon fully expected Dannai to let loose with a scream of surprise and a whollop of an offensive spell. After all, he had just materialized in her bedroom, and she was clearly just out of the shower.

However, this was not Dannai Caige’s first rodeo.
Instead of screaming or attacking, she looked from him to the woman in his arms and her shoulders relaxed. Her hand, which she’d placed protectively on the handle of the bassinet, rested with relief. Then her gaze slipped past Damon and Diana to something over Damon’s shoulder.

Damon turned.

Lucas Caige stood in the doorway. The six-foot-plus werewolf was bare chested, having obviously just slid into his jeans before heading downstairs to brew coffee and start breakfast. Right now, his dark eyes sparked with that predatory wariness werewolves displayed so easily. It looked as though he had been a half-second away from shifting.

But
the alpha was no stranger to emergency situations either and, just as his wife had, he’d very quickly assessed the situation. Plus, he recognized Damon anyway.

“
Dannai,” Damon turned his attention back to the Healer. “Can you help her?” He appealed to her in the least desperate tone he could manage. But that desperation was quickly replacing the blood in his veins like a poison.

Dannai
strode forward, waving her hand dismissively. The towel flashed bright white, shifting with magic into a pair of denim shorts and a white t-shirt. “Put her down on the bed,” she instructed.

Damon moved carefully but swiftly to the bed. Diana was a light, warm weight in his arms, delicate despite her strength. A part of him didn’t want to let her go as he leaned over and deposited her on the king sized bed against one wall in the center of the
log and wood beam room.

Dannai was at her side at once, and he forced himself to step back to give her room.

The Healer placed a gentle hand on Diana’s forehead and then moved that hand to Diana’s chest. “She’ll live.”

Relief flooded Damon like an actual rush of hot water, cleaning through his body and soul to wash away th
e terror that had taken him over bone and spirit.

After a moment, Dannai’s
back stiffened and she straightened, looking at him over her shoulder. “She’s your queen.”

He nodded, just once.

“And she’s… a
healer
?”

Again, Damon nodded.

The look on Dannai’s face was just as Damon had imagined it would be. She was shocked. Until now, only Dannai was known to possess her kind of power. But she was also relieved. For the very same reason.

It was a lot of responsibility.

“Well, we have to get this girl on her feet again right away,” she said, shaking her head in bewilderment. “She’s gonna to be my new best friend.”

“What happened to her?” he asked as Dannai’s hand began to glow, emanating a bright warmth that radiated from her palm and spread across Diana’s chest and then moved outward to her arms, midsection, and legs.

“She’s just drained. I’ve been this way before, so it’s easy to recognize. She overexerted herself. How many people did she heal?” Dannai asked the question with a quick glance over her shoulder before she closed her eyes and appeared to concentrate.

Damon was afraid to answer the question. He was afraid… and overwhelmingly ashamed. What had he been thinking allowing her to heal so many goblins? So many
enormous
goblins? Especially after she’d been in that fight with those punks and had healed the
cat
too. Not to mention how ever many furry bodies she may have repaired during the day at her clinic….

Oh gods
, he thought as he felt the blood drain from his face and his stomach turn to lead.
What the hell is wrong with me? I’m a bloody fool!

He’d been so desperate to convince her to stay.
So desperate, he’d almost killed her.

“But she seemed fine,” he whispered, unaware at first that he’d even spoken out loud.

The glow from beneath Dannai’s hands faded and the Healer slowly dropped her arms to the edge of the bed. Diana’s chest rose and fell in even, deep breaths. She appeared to be asleep.

Damon could sense Diana’s
magic back about her again, slowly rebuilding itself. She
was
asleep. He wondered if she dreamed, and if so what about.

Lucas Ca
ige went to his wife and helped her stand. “You okay?” he asked her softly, words between lovers. She nodded, then returned her attention to Damon.

“What did she heal?” she asked, an edge of accusation to her tone.

“Goblins,” he told her without pause. There was no point in hiding it. He wanted to know what had gone wrong so he could prevent it from ever happening again. He made his way quickly past them to kneel beside the bed – and took Diana’s hand in his own. It was warm, not cold as he’d expected. That warmth helped soothe the cold fear that had earlier coiled through him.

Dannai’s brows raised. “They must be very big goblins.”

“You have no idea,” Damon said without looking at her. Instead, his eyes roamed over Diana’s sleeping, beautiful face. Her lashes were light colored, but so long that they brushed against the tops of her cheeks. Her recently kissed lips were still plump from his attentions and were parted slightly in sleep. Up close and in the early morning light coming through the windows across the room, he could see the smattering of her freckles outlined against the fair color of her skin. They had been delicately placed across her nose and graced the apples of her cheeks. Her shimmering hair spilled across the pillow beneath her head, inviting him to touch it. He could have looked down at her for hours.