The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Twenty Two: Prison of Nothing

"What have we to fear from some human lord?" Asked a handsome, but hollow-eyed Seelie faerie as he tore my dress away and tossed it aside.

"My husband is no human, you fools! You smelled my man on me when you got here!" I hissed, gritting my teeth as a hand slipped beneath my shift. "He is Knut the goblin king!"

"Knut's king now?" The elf giggled at my ear. His breath was hot and rancid. "Last I saw him he was in much the same position as you are now. I wonder if you can scream as prettily as he did." I felt the knife scrape against my thigh, drawing blood.

"Such pretty skin." Another Unseelie with eyes as black as the world around us hissed, his voice like the last gasps of a dying man. "So soft and supple." His bony fingers traced along my ribs. "Can we skin her? I need a new coat."

"Not till I'm done." The elf growled, the knife at my throat. "It's been far too long since I've tasted a woman's flesh." He panted at my ear, the hand beneath my shift pawing at my breast.

"Who said you were getting first dibs?" The silver eyed Unseelie shoved the elf aside. "You wait your turn, elf. You can have a go after the rest of us are done." The faerie's hands fumbled with his belt. I stopped breathing. Stopped thinking. All there was ...the only thing allowed to exist here...was fear.

A sharp inhale overcame the sound of his jingling buckle. I saw him come down onto his knees and then topple over. A crudely made arrow, carved from more bone, protruded from his eye socket.

"Damn it!" One of the others snarled. "It's him! Run!"

"What about the girl?" The elf hesitated, still wanting his fun.

"Leave her!" The others screamed, rejoining the darkness from which they'd sprung.

A whistling sound cut through the silence and struck the elf in his neck. He screeched as he fell with blood jutting from the wound like a fountain. His attacker, a man draped in a dark blue cloak, popped out of the black. He raced up to the elf's flailing body and put a knife through his temple, giving him a swift end, he didn't deserve.

My hands clawed at the dark floor as I tried to get up. My body still refused to work, and I was forced to helplessly listen to the attacker's heavy footsteps drawing nearer and nearer.

A pair of bare feet stopped beside me. "Fucking scavengers!" The man spat. He laid his hand on my shoulder and began trying to turn me. I sank my teeth into the fleshy bit between his thumb and index finger, biting down until blood flooded my mouth.

He howled in pain and reeled his hand away. "You bit me!" He yelled, holding the offended appendage against his chest.

I spat his blood out at his feet. "Don't tough me," I warned through blood red teeth.

"Humans. I save you and this is the thanks I get." He knelt and lowered the hood of the ragged blue cloak, revealing his face to me. "I'm not going to hurt you." It was a Seelie faerie. His face was thin from malnutrition, but classically handsome, his wiry frame covered in skin still tanned by the sun, despite having been imprisoned in The Pit for God knows how long. Honey blond hair was pulled away from his face with a scrap of cloth and a pair of clear evergreen eyes looked down at me with concern. "Did they..." He began, his eyes glancing at the blood running down my leg.

"No." I answered. "I'm fine. The elf just cut me." The Seelie removed his cloak and draped it around me, covering my nakedness. I hadn't realized that they'd ripped one of the straps of my shift, revealing my chest. "Thank you...for scaring them off." I tried to say as quietly as possible. My voice was still too loud in this world of silence. I looked down at my bite wound on his hand. It was already starting to heal. The bleeding had stopped, and scabs were forming. "Sorry about your hand."