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But then Anrid released him and stepped toward Jael, a disturbed and inquisitive expression on her face. She said nothing, however, until he and Math led the way from the bedroom and closed the door behind them.
“What in the world is going on?” Math hissed. “You all were screaming like banshees had invaded Imenborg. I heard it way down in the workroom.”
Which explained why it had taken the apprentice so much longer to get to the room than it had Kora and his rock-eaten naked torso.
The least he could have done was put on a shirt.
Chapter 23
Anrid snagged a blanket on her way out the door and slung it around her shoulders. Jael and his apprentice whispered as she stood off to one side and waited. Every part of her ached to be back in her room, in her bed, with her children.
She wasn’t sure when she had become so attached to them: was it as Jael had said, that they’d bespelled her? She didn’t think so.
But nothing about this place made any sense. And it was filled with magic. She could feel it now that she was connected to the Bifrost, pulsing around her like a warm fog kissing her exposed cheeks. And then there was this new and terrifying connection to a certain goblin prince.
Waves of worry and discontent wafted from him. How strange to feel another person’s emotions! She worried she would begin to confuse her own feelings with his: was there a way to put up boundaries, she wondered, to keep him out?
A chill raised goosebumps on her arms. If she could feel him like this…was he also reading her?
“We should go someplace else,” Jael said at last with a glance in her direction. Had he sensed her horrified question in his mind? Of course, not. She hadn’t been able to read his thoughts, so surely he wasn’t reading hers.
“The workroom?” Math suggested with a wave of a hand.
But Jael still stared at Anrid. She wasn’t sure she liked the way his deep-set eyes clung to hers. His searching expression, mingled with the dark circles beneath his eyes, made him appear vulnerable.
Looking like that, it would be far too easy for her to add him to her collection of goblin children and take him under her wing. He was so big and strong—she had noticed that fact, to her humiliation—but how could she not have noticed when he had his arms around her to carry her away from danger? But now, with that lost and worried expression on his face, he appeared young and defenseless and that made her want to take care of him, to be the strong one for a change.
She became deeply aware that his eyes still fused to hers. What was he searching for? She shivered and hugged the blanket closer and tried to clamp down on her emotions. She didn’t want him to know what she was thinking and feeling right now. That would be…awful.
“Are you all right?”
She found she couldn’t answer, not truthfully. How could she tell him that she wasn’t all right at all without sounding like a complainer? Without sounding ungrateful for what he had tried to do to make her comfortable?
He shifted to stand closer, dipping his chin to peer down at her. She avoided catching his eye and pretended to readjust her blanket. “What is it? You can tell me.”
She didn’t want to tell him that his world was smothering her, that his problems were too big for her. She was only human and wasn’t meant for shadows and magic and deep, dark places. She didn’t want to be soul bound, her privacy at risk of invasion in the most secret places of her mind.
“I fear I am going mad in this place,” she rasped. “How do you stand the weight of the world on top of you?”
When he did not answer, she risked a peek at him from below her lashes. She could almost see his thoughts churning as his expression shifted into varying moods. At last, he cleared his throat. “No, not the workroom,” he said to Math and not to her. “We’ll go to the greenhouse.”
Math seemed surprised but didn’t comment.
Greenhouse? Anrid wondered. Did that word mean something different to goblins than it meant to humans? How could they have a greenhouse under the ground?
She followed them without comment. It wasn’t until they were too far from her room to go back that she realized she should have grabbed a pair of shoes. Her bare feet felt icy cold. But she took comfort in the fact she wasn’t alone in this miserable and awkward state.
Jael, too, wore no shoes. In fact, she had never seen him in such a state of undress, wearing only a pair of knickers and a sleeveless tunic that showed off his broad shoulders and well-defined arms.
Her cheeks blazed, and she returned her focus to her feet, determined not to study him again. It would be safer not to look when he, well, when he looked like that. All mussed and adorable and complicated. No fellow had the right to look like that in the presence of a woman destined to marry someone else.
Her heart tightened a bit as she thought of this dark elf husband she’d never met and the elusive future that was beginning to drift further away.
She didn’t know what she wanted anymore.
They walked for about ten minutes before reaching a winding set of stairs. She followed at the back, the walls of the windowless stairwell pressing in on her. It was dark, unpleasantly so, with only the faint glow from the runestone Math held high to light their way. But he was at the wrong end of the line and always around the next spiral so that she felt as if she were being left behind.
Left to the mercy of the shadows.
