The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Twenty Eight: Test

"I'll look around. You call the doppelgangers. We're going to finish this tonight." I scurried around the tiny house, checking every inch, corner and loose stone. Above every window, an iron tool or horseshoe was nailed with iron nails and at every corner, lay stones inscribed with odd little drawings. Behind the loose stones, I found bundles of fresh herbs, newly cut. I dug out the herbs and tossed them into the woods. I threw the stones as far into the sea as I could, I yanked the horseshoes down and pried the nails from the wood. With my bare hands, I tore away his protection, growling like a hungry wolf the whole while.

"You did it." Knut hugged me from behind when I'd finished. He rested his head on top of mine. "It's still blurry from the lamb's blood, but I can make out its shape." The doppelgangers, goblin copies of the twins and I, but dead and gray and brutalized, flanked us. Other goblins, the twisted, demonic ones I'd helped design, stood at our back, breathing heavily in their eagerness to fulfill their purpose.

"We still cannot pass through the door, but the windows are clear now. We will slip through them instead." The goblin me spoke, sending a wave of nausea crashing over me. Her voice was raspy and wrong sounding. It was my voice and yet it was not. The marks on her throat stood out against her death's pallor as red and vibrant as the thread tied tight around her wrist. A thread never pulled. A gift never accepted. Her eyes, my eyes, milky with death shifted towards me. "What will you have us do?" She asked.

"For now, just slip inside and wait. Do not show yourselves until I tell you to." I ordered. I focused my gaze on her bruised, chapped mouth, on the marks left by Jasper's own fist. I couldn't stand to look at the rest of her. "I want to see the pretty life he's made for himself before I tear it all down." I went to rush in, to storm through Jasper's front door and demand the answers to all my questions, but Knut held on, firmly rooting me in place.

"How curious it is that the man who didn't even believe in religion would fear fae and know of so many ways to keep us out." He whispered into my ear.

"You think someone's helping him?"

"Not just anyone. Someone with great knowledge. It is quite the coincidence that the very place Titania chose for your meeting would turn out to be your brother's home."

"Titania? But why would she hide my brother?"

"It's a test." He whispered, sending a shiver rolling down my spine.

"That's quite enough out of you." We turned at the sound of the strong voice to see Titania calmly sitting beneath one of the ash trees. "Goblin Kings, always an annoyance." She sighed. Rising to her feet, she walked towards us with soft, silent steps. "Your husband is right, Matilda. This is a test; one I've been designing for a long while. When I heard you'd become queen, I sought your brother out, just in case I should ever need leverage."

My stomach tightened and my jaw clenched, my entire body tensing with burning rage. "Have you been hiding him this entire time?"

She smiled at my glare. "Just since you let loose a wave of death on an entire city for no good reason. He left on his own. I found him here, building this house for a woman heavy with child, carrying the very girl you followed here. Since then, I've worked my way into his mind, visiting him in dreams both at night and in waking. I made him turn his house into a fortress. One made to keep us out and your vengeance at bay."

"For no good reason?" I hissed. "That city is putrid, the people in it no better than starving wolves. If you'd stood where I stood... if you saw the looks on their faces when they were watching us die..."

"You murdered children." She spat back. "Children as sad and lonely as you once were. They were innocent. They did not deserve to suffer and die as they did."