The Goblin's Throne

Chapter Twenty Six: Strike

It felt like I was in a trance. Sitting there, staring at the place where Knut was only moments before, nothing felt real to me. It had to be a nightmare. Soon, I had to wake up. I thought I would be getting my life back. I thought I'd be sleeping in my own little nest with my babies piled around me, all of us warm and safe. Knowing now that it wasn't over and that my misery was far from done, it felt as if the entire world had been set on my ribs. The pain and loneliness were crushing me, suffocating me. 

Titania cackled and ranted, joyously reveling in Knut's defeat. I didn't hear a word of it.

While the tide of the sea of magic was returning to normal outside and the sun reached its apex above the palace, I was led away back to the room I shared with Cerise. I didn't drag my feet. I didn't fight at all. I was numb. My mind was empty, but for the picture of my family gathered around my stolen throne. I imagined Knut sitting in his throne beside mine, shaking as he tearfully told my children that he couldn't save me and that their mother wasn't coming home. I imagined Floki's face crumpling with sadness, Frit's cheeks going red as he fought back angry tears and Odd wailing at the top of his lungs, his tiny clawed hands reaching for a mother that wouldn't come at his cries. My hands ached with the missing of them. My throat burned with the threat of my own imminent breakdown. My body worked on its own, perpetually moving forward. Back to my cage with my fellow pets. 

The guards opened our door. Cerise leaped up from where she'd been huddled in a corner and stared at me. Her eyes were questioning, confused. I didn't let my gaze linger on them. "Better luck next time, Empress." My guards sneered. They pushed me inside and slammed the door shut behind me. The heavy bar that kept it bolted tight slid back into place. I shuttered at the sound.

The world was silent for a few breaths as we listened to the guards stomp away down the hall. "What happened?" Cerise asked once she knew they were gone. "I heard fighting. I could hear the goblins screeching. Why are you still here?" There were tears in her eyes, but she wasn't shedding them for me. Every once of her screamed with frustration. She shook with it, burned with it. It was in the grimacing set of her mouth, the way she fisted her hands in her own hair. She was wondering why she was still there, still breathing, more so than why I was still a slave.

"Knut failed," I mumbled.

"How?" Cerise's voice rasped. "You have literal death at your disposal. How could he have failed? I don't understand." Her face was red and blotchy, her voice tired from screaming. Her hands bore wounds and bruises from however long she'd been pounding against our door.

"Bran is no longer under Knut's control." I said softly as if he'd ever held it, "We needed him. Without him, everything fell apart." I practically fell face first onto my blanket on the floor and rolled myself up in it. "We were almost gone. Almost beyond her reach, but the tide returned before Knut could get me out of The Summer Branches. Titania's spell snapped back into place and it was over." I turned my back on her. My eyelids grew heavy as sleep called me into its dark, cleansing embrace. "I'm sorry," I added, apologizing to her and to everyone I'd let down back at home.

I heard Cerise begin to pace the narrow room. Her bare feet padded against the cold stone. Her breath came in heavy, deep breaths. "He'll try again." She assured me. "Knut's known for his intelligence, right? He'll figure out a way to get you out even without Bran. I know he will." She went on, trying to reassure herself more so than me. 

"How?" I asked. I wrapped my hand around my throat, over where I felt the noose of Titania's leash tighten. "So long as I'm leashed, Knut can't act. Our only hope was The Winter Solstice and now our chance is gone. I'll have to wait a whole year before we get another opportunity." I pulled my knees up to my chest, curling into a fetal position as I spoke, quietly venting my frustration.  I clenched my teeth at a particularly sharp pang of despair. "That's a whole year I will miss of my children's lives. Days, moments, that I'll never get back." Goblin princes already lived such short lives and their mortality had pressed down on my shoulders since the day the twins were born. Every moment I had with them was precious. Just one more thing the faeries were taking from me. Memories that I should have had. I shivered beneath my blanket bending myself into a tighter ball. I pressed my face into the cold stones beneath my head as I bit back a wail of pure pain. My tears wet the stones, darkening them to black. My nails dragged against them. How I wished it was living flesh beneath my nails, that there was something there I could rip apart to relieve myself of this tension, all of this rage. "Back at the beginning, during my war with Mab, I always seemed to have a plan. Even when things were bad and felt hopeless, I had an idea of what I had to do to set it all right. Pull the thread, take the City of Thorns, make a bargain with Athane, follow a goblin soul back to Knut. No matter what I've gotten myself into, I always found a way out of it, but I don't know...I...I don't know what to do now."