The Goblin's Throne

Chapter Fifty Three: Paying for Loyalty

While the crowd around us continued their bloodthirsty roaring, there was a quiet stillness around me and my family their sound couldn't pierce. I spoke to them in hushed voices, petting them adoringly with bloody hands and promising boundless love with a voice that was hoarse from my raging. "I'm sorry you had to see me this way, but if there's anything I want you to take from this it is that I would tear the world apart for any one of you." I kissed them each, hugging them tightly. "I love you," I told them again. I couldn't say it enough. I never would.

"Love you too." Frit and Floki said, echoes of each other and the set of twins that came before. 

Odd growled his own sentiments.

Knut watched us the whole time with an odd little smile on his face. It didn't reach his eye, but at the same time, it didn't seem forced either. He ran his fingers through my hair, lazily untangling the knots where the strands were stuck together by blood. 

"I'm sorry I made you kill Rikard. I know you liked him." I said, sighing at the feeling of his fingers grazing my skin. 

"I hate killing any child. Children are full of boundless potential. When they die young, all that potential is destroyed with them. Rikard could've been a great elf king or he could've been a poor one. I don't know and now no one ever will. However, Tova killed mine first. She robbed Magni of his potential so as much as I liked Rikard, why should he get to keep his? She is lucky I left her punishment for you to decide because if it were left to me I would've skinned them both alive in front of her." 

I clenched my jaw, swallowing hard. "Do you disagree with my choice?" 

"No, I'm just surprised." He tilted his head. "I can understand wanting Tova to live and prolong her suffering, but why let Dara go? Why release them and half our prisoners back into The Boughs?"

Why indeed. The old me certainly would not have. The new me, still trying to mend herself after her shattering was a different creature altogether.  I started to open my mouth to answer him when a goblin ran up and whispered something in Knut's ear. He listened intently to it and the look on his face brightened. "What is it?" I asked when the goblin darted away again.

"It seems that Liber's tender loving care has paid off." Knut grinned. "Aurora is awake."

After cleaning ourselves up as best we could, we went quickly to the room we'd given them, a guest room off of the entrance hall that was rarely used at all. I carried Odd in one arm and clutched Knut's hand as we went. The twins trailed behind us. Frit, skipping, jumping, and running. Floki clinging to my skirt. I could hear little Neasa whimpering softly before we even reached the door. "Stop running ahead, Frit." I scolded him as we came to the doorway. He stopped as he was told, but that didn't stop the pouting. "You three must be on your best behaviors and be quiet. Aurora still isn't well. You can't run and scream around her bed." Frit wasn't looking at me. He was looking up at the door, his head slightly tilted towards the sounds drifting through it.

"Who is that crying?" He asked. His ears wiggled and his nose wrinkled. "They sound weird. Smell weird too."

"That's Neasa, Aurora's daughter," I answered. I wasn't sure what he meant by any of that. Perhaps he could smell the ointments they used to relax her muscles, but Neasa sounded no different to me than any other little girl.

"You smell and sound weird too, but we don't complain about it." Knut teased him. "Mind your manners." With that final warning, Knut opened the door. 

Aurora lay in her bed, very still and pale, her hair a shock of red around her pallid face. Liber sat at her bedside, clutching one small hand in both of his. Herod sat on her other side, leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed over his broad chest. He still looked tired, as I imagined I did still, but his lips were curved with a smile of pure relief.