The Goblin's Throne

Chapter Forty Nine: Fear of The Unknown

I shrugged on one of Knut's green jackets as we strode towards The Hollow where our returning forces were beginning to gather. I bowed my head against my chest while I rolled up the too-long sleeves, discretely breathing in my husband's smell. Knut's fingers found my hand and linked his long digits with mine. I looked up and smiled at him as he smiled down at me. Relief still had a stranglehold on us and we were both content in that comfortable silence, happy enough just to look at each other and hold hands. I was glad to hear his voice though when he was able to find his words.

"Cold?" He asked, noticing how I pulled his jacket tight around me with my free hand. 

"I got used to the heat," I replied, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from shivering so much. I'd forgotten just how cold it was in our kingdom. It was a different sort of cold from The Winter Branches. There the wind had teeth and the air was so dry it burned when it entered your lungs. Here, the cold was a damp sort that sank slowly into your bones and stayed there. 

Knut stopped us cold. He seized me by my waist. He dipped me backward and kissed me so deeply my entire body turned into a flame and my eyes rolled into the back of my head. "Better?" He asked when he was done sucking the soul out of me. 

"You're very bad at this behaving thing." I panted, stretching my neck towards him in desperation for his lips. 

"And you're very bad at hiding how badly you want me to ravish you." He chuckled in that low, rumbling way that made my toes curl in delight. "Believe me when I say that the minute I get you all to myself I'm going to ravish you good and thoroughly." He set me back on my feet and put his arm around my shoulder, keeping me pressed good and tight to his side. I was blushing worse than I think I ever had in my life but...at least I wasn't cold anymore.

The Hollow's forest was not the silent, still graveyard it normally was by the time we reached it. Goblins and faeries both poured out of The Hollow's split side, either going to fulfill new tasks or to add bodies to the growing garden of dead. There were corpses lined up around the perimeter, laying on that dark, ash-made earth, their bodies covered with white sheets that were quickly becoming stained with blood and the black of the earth. Around them, humans staggered in a daze, checking beneath those sheets for familiar faces. They wrapped their arms around themselves, sometimes tilting their heads back to look up through the gloom as if they were looking for the sun that had beat down on them so brutally for the majority of their lives. We could hear their confused, frightened bleating among the cries of the wounded from within The Hollow's trunk. As happy as I was sure they were to be free of their captors, not knowing what was to become of them was more frightening to them than remaining slaves. That life they had known. The one they had now was uncertain. I remembered well that particular terror. 

As we drew closer, the people outside grew quiet. The faeries cheered as we passed them, clapping their hands, stomping their feet and beating their wings, filling the forest with triumphant sound. The humans fell to their knees and sobbed in terrified silence until we were inside and out of their sight.

Inside, Herod knelt on one knee with two other men that were nearly on the ground themselves. Together they held the portal open, their arms quivering with the effort as others went back and forth between The Hollow and The Boughs carrying humans and their own wounded to safety. As we approached, I spotted Cerise kneeling by a young girl. "Cerise!" I called to her. Leaving Knut, I moved to her side. Her hands were pressed against a wound in her chest and were slick with bright red blood. The girl beneath her hands was pale, her blue eyes wide open and staring up towards the endless darkness overhead. Cerise's whole body trembled, with what emotion I wasn't sure. Fear? Grief? It was difficult to tell the two apart. "Cerise," I called again, laying my hand on her shoulder. "Cerise, she's dead." She continued to press down on the girl's chest, shoving her hands against her ribs in a steady rhythm as if doing so would startle the child's soul back into her body. "She's dead," I repeated once more. I pulled Cerise away. She let me and knelt there in the dirt, her bloody hands falling to her lap. I looked the girl over, noting the shape and cleanliness of the cut. "She was stabbed through the heart. There's nothing you could've done for her." I said as if that would bring any comfort at all. I didn't recognize the child myself, but I had hardly even glanced at most of the humans in the entire year I'd been a slave. Cerise, however, was a far more compassionate soul. She knew most of the others by name, but even if she didn't recognize this child, she would've likely mourned her no less.