“Understandable.” He gripped the edge of an alcove and patted it with his fingers. “Set yours here.”
I retrieved the goblin from my pocket, conflicted by my first impression of it and what I knew now. “If Faery is your home, why are you here?”
“We were exiled to this place.” His jaw ticked. “The labyrinth is a prison. It is meant to confuse and disorient as it feeds on our life source until we wither.”
I fumbled with the goblin in my hand, nearly dropping it. The walls felt like they were closing in as my breaths came faster and faster. Twisted expressions taunted me from everyangle. Horrified, I stared at the goblins around me in their little mausoleums. “You said you brought me here to make a baby, not to have my soul sucked out!”
“Breathe, Calista.” Astaroth cupped my cheeks as I hyperventilated. “This will not happen to you.”
“Why?” I jerked my arm out, pointing at the other corpses with the corpse. “It happened to them. It happened to my brother when he was here! Will you send my mummified body to him or put me up on a shelf in your museum?”
“It won’t happen to you because I won’t allow it.” His thumbs stroked my cheeks as he spoke softly. They slipped over the tears I didn’t notice in my panic. “You will remain as you are, beautiful and infuriating.”
My breath hitched, and I pulled out of his hold. “What? How?”
Astaroth slipped the goblin from my fist and set it in the alcove. “I will stitch you to my magic and prevent the realm from feeding on you.”
“If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it for all of them?”
“They will drain me. If that happens, we all die.”
He watched me as all the bits of information I’d learned clicked into place.Everyone owes Astaroth a debt.“Your magic already keeps everyone alive,” I mumbled.
“It does.” His tired voice reached all the way to my bones. “They are my brothers and sisters. They chose me as their king because they believe I can save them and take them home.”
Home. I’d imagined Kaiden working with a group of D&D nerds to discover a way into the labyrinth. They would teach him about all the fantastical beasts and how to slay them. When he reached me, he would go head-to-head with Astaroth. A fight like no other would ensue until only one of them survived. Unlike me, Kaiden would defeat him, and then he would reveal a magical doorway to take us home.
The goblins were doing the same thing, only they were using Astaroth to save them from the labyrinth. I knew what awaited me when I returned home—Kaiden, Gina, even Patty if I wanted her there, and my tiny apartment. Maybe I even had the hope of living a normal life, but I wasn’t sure if I could after these experiences. The goblins, however, had no idea what lay on the other side for them. That old adage “jumping from the frying pan into the fire” came to mind.
“And you?” I wondered. “Do you believe you can return home? Find your family?”
“This is my home.” A sad smile played at his lips. “I was brought up here, Calista. They are my family.”
“They don’t treat you like family.”
“Things change.”
“Wait. You said you were brought up here. That means—”
“I’ve been here since I was a wee babe.”
Air rushed from my lungs like it was sucker punched out of me. Who abandons a baby in a place meant to suck the life out of someone?You thought about it.No, that was before I knew what the labyrinth did to people, and regardless, I very well couldn’t toss my child to the wolves to save myself. My fingertips brushed the pendant he gave me as I clawed at my chest. While he was trapped here keeping everyone alive, he sent me home to live my life and have everything I could ever dream of. I only had to ask for it.
I cradled it in my hand, the stone pulsing as his words echoed in my mind.“Did you think taking the one thing I ever desired would get you what you want faster?”
He would give me the world and beyond as long as I gave him a family. But would he give me the freedom to roam it?
Astaroth closed the space between us, moving carefully to not spook me. He gently tucked my hair behind my ear, his fingertrailing along my jaw to my chin. “You wear your thoughts as clearly as a lissier weaves a tapestry.”
“I have no idea what a lissier is.” I wetted my dry lips and swallowed when his chin dropped, and he smiled.
Don’t get me wrong, Astaroth was breathtakingly handsome—an Adonis in his own right—but sometimes his expressions and mannerisms were alienesque to the point of being downright freakish. And sometimes, they were so relaxed and human my brain would forget who we were dealing with and my body responded.
The closeness. The way he touched me like I was precious and would break. The way he looked at me as if I were the only one of my kind. How he put the care of others before himself. I wasn’t ready to humanize Astaroth or for the reactions it stirred up. I didn’t know if I could give him what he wanted.
He focused on my chest where my fingers stroked the pendant. My heart thrummed in rhythm with it as he drew near, as if coaxing him closer. I wasn’t sure what scared me most, the stone itself or how the stone interpreted what I was feeling. Astaroth said it manifested our deepest desires of the current moment. And in this moment….
Astaroth’s cool fingertips touched mine. “How long will you deny your desire?”
