The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Thirty: Silence

I stood at the precise center of The Hollow's arena and stared up into the void above, where light could not reach. "What do I do?" I asked it quietly. My question echoed through it, enveloping me in my own voice. "I couldn't kill him. I wanted to. I wanted to watch him die so badly, but I let him live. Why?" The Hollow remained quiet. "Do you have some purpose for him? Did you stop me?" My questions grew louder, more desperate for an answer. The echoes faded swiftly and only a pregnant silence was left in their wake. "What would you have me do with him?!" I screeched, demanding and forceful. "Answer me!" The Hollow remained mute.

I screamed and screamed and wailed, begging The Hollow to speak to me again, to guide me, to help me make sense of the mercy I'd shown Jasper when I'd wanted nothing more than to see the light fade from his eyes. Silence was my only answer.

Afterward, I meandered through the palace with no real destination, my steps slow and shuffling. Even with the soft slippers, my steps sounded too loud in the cavernous hall. The palace was nearly empty, with only a few goblins scurrying about their tasks. It was oddly lonely without their usual swarm choking the halls.

For the first time ever, I dared to look at the paintings of goblin kings, queens and their children that lined the walls, directly facing my ugly predecessors and their hideous babies. Beneath each of the paintings, was a golden plaque that was inscribed with the subject's name and a bit of information about them like whose wife or son it was, what number brood they'd mothered and how many children they'd had. I lingered a moment on one that hung by the entrance to the dining hall. I'd always found it particularly terrifying and avoided it at all costs. It was of a she-goblin named Dragoslava, a name that I found endlessly fun to say. She was covered in glistening scales that shone like silver coins. A golden circlet ringed her head above fiery eyes and nostrils that released plumes of smoke. But no, it was not her fearsome looks that had me shivering in my robe. It was the fifteen...fifteen boys crowded around her. None looked any older than twelve. The eldest ones stood behind her, their faces serious, but eyes shining with menace. The youngest ones sat at her feet, so tightly packed they sat shoulder to shoulder and still, the ones on the sides were leaning inward so that their faces could be seen. Their bodies were out of the picture entirely.

I was still struggling a little with reading goblin, their words tended to have several meanings, but if I understood correctly, this was her husband's third go around, his third brood of princes. And his last. One of the little ones craning his neck to be seen over the mass of his brothers stood as a man in the next painting, grinning victoriously from ear to ear.

Funny how I could see a resemblance to Knut even hundreds of generations back. There was something about the eyes... I stared up at that ancient goblin king, at the features that had been passed down through generations. His father had fifteen sons in just one brood. How many of his own children had he slaughtered to maintain his power? How many would I bring into the world only to see them turn to ash?

I don't know if it was really the painting that did it or having finally confronted Jasper that brought the weight of my choice down on my shoulder all at once, but it was crushing and painful and robbed me of all my strength in an instant.

I crumbled down to the golden floor, my knees going out from under me as a sob escaped my chest. What was the point in family, really? If not just to add to your own misery? No matter how big and loving a family starts out as, like flowers in a vase, one by one your loved ones wither away. They die, leave or just stop caring. I'd seen it happen with my own family...I saw it happen with Knut's....I'd see it again one day. No matter how many children I had. Eventually, it would just be me and my husband's murderer.

"What have you done, Matilda!"

I slowly lifted my head at the call, turning my face just so, so that my hair hid the tears wetting my face. "If you value your life at all, you really need to stop barging into our house whenever you like, Ib." I mumbled.