For the Love of a Goblin Warrior (Shadowlands) (28 page)

“I planned battles for the king.”

“What king? I thought you grew up in Wales.”

“The king of the Decangli.”

“I’ve never heard of the Decangli.”

Meryn rubbed his hand over his hair, then over his jaw. “Do you want the truth or a fight? Do you want to run or to understand?”

Run. She should run. But her feet remained glued to the carpet.

“How do I know I’ll get the truth?” she demanded.

“I am not a liar.” Then he softened his voice. “But I left out pieces.”

“Lying by omission.”

His face hardened. “Just go. Run like you always do.”

Nadine stared. How dare he? He knew nothing about her. And she knew nothing about him. If he’d been a casual date, it wouldn’t have mattered, but her stupid heart had gotten involved in what could have been good sex and someone to talk to.

“I want to know whose bed I was in.” She crossed her arms. She wasn’t going to turn tail and run from Meryn. Her blood was pumping and she wanted a fight—a fight so they could break up whatever had started and she could walk away knowing she’d done the right thing in leaving.

Chapter 18

Meryn flexed his fingers and forced out a breath. He didn’t want Nadine to know who he was. He didn’t want to see fear in her eyes every time she looked at him, but he was her nightmare. He was the goblin who’d stood by and watched her mother kill herself after being taken during the solstice. However he was also remembering what it meant to be a man, and that meant being honest with those he loved. Starting with Nadine—even if that cost him her love. What they had would never be real if she didn’t know who he was.

“Fine. But let me speak.”

“Fine. Don’t trip over your lies.”

“I speak Latin and Decangli because they are the languages that were spoken when I was born. My wife and children were killed by Roman Legionnaires. There are no pictures because there were no cameras. All I have left are my memories. The happy ones cut as deeply as the bad ones.” He took a breath and studied Nadine’s face. She didn’t believe him. One eyebrow was raised and her arms were crossed. “I was cursed to the Shadowlands with my king.”

Meryn let his words settle like the fine gray dust of the Shadowlands. They coated everything and sucked out the life and joy. Her eyes widened and her lips parted, but she didn’t speak, so he took a step forward into the living room.

Maybe he should’ve told her sooner. Maybe he shouldn’t have let her poke around his things, but he didn’t want to hide his past. He didn’t want to spend his second chance at life living Dai’s cleverly created lie. He wanted to be himself and to be known for what he did, even though it had all happened so long ago.

“I know the story of
The
Goblin
King
because I lived it. I spent nearly two thousand years trapped in the Shadowlands.”

“You’re a goblin.”

“I have lived as a goblin. After I was made to watch Idella’s murder, I gave in to the curse. It was easier to want nothing but gold than to remember her screaming at the sight of me in a body that wasn’t mine.” He glanced at his hands. Even now they seemed strange, like they belonged to a man who had lived another life. In a way they did, because he would never be that man again. Too much had happened.

“You stole gold like a goblin.”

“That was a mistake.”

“The mistake was mine. I should’ve known better.” She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

“Nadine, please.”

“No. I don’t want to hear it. There is nothing you can say that will change my mind. Were you ever going to tell me you’re a goblin?”

“Would you have believed me if I’d told you? I told you what I could about my life and tried to protect you from the rest.”

“You lied to me about everything.”

“No. Do you really want to know about everything I’ve seen and done? Do you want to know how hard I fought to keep the Decangli free? How many people I saw die? Do want to know how brutal goblins are when they see a speck of gold? I live with these memories every day. You don’t have to.”

“I have a right to know who I’m sleeping with.”

“And now you know. Does it make you happy?”

“You’re a goblin.”

“I was born a man and will die a man, becoming goblin was a twist of fate.” And while not one he’d want to repeat, it had enabled him to meet Nadine and experience a life so far from anything he could’ve imagined. “If I hadn’t become goblin, we wouldn’t be standing here talking. I’d be long dead. I’ve gotten a second chance at living.”

She shook her head. Her eyes were hard, like her tears had frozen and left only ice. She hated him, hated what he was, hated that he’d hidden the truth.

“Goblins don’t get a second chance.” She opened the door.

Meryn took a couple of steps toward her.

“Stay away from me.”

“There’s something else you should know.”

“Oh yeah? What?” She spat out the words.

“While I was in the Shadowlands, I saw a woman who’d been taken by the goblins at solstice.”

“Was I next on your list?”

“No.” He frowned. For a moment he considered staying silent, but knew if he did, it would just be another lie he was keeping from her. She should know the truth. “Your mother disappeared on the winter solstice.” He paused, letting the words settle.

Nadine didn’t move. Her fingers whitened against the door handle.

“Your mother was taken by goblins. Your father is innocent,” Meryn finished.

She stepped back. “You don’t know that.”

“I see the resemblance every time I look at you.”

Nadine shook her head. “You bastard.” Then she left and slammed the door after herself. The room echoed, but the tension remained.

Meryn sank to the floor and leaned his head against the wall. His fragile heart cracked again as the screaming filled his skull. This time there was no ice-cold curse to take away the pain. There was no way out. He was trapped in his own nightmare. His nails dug into his scalp. But nothing stopped the ragged edges from cutting through the hurt and dragging him down. He closed his eyes, and tears clogged his eyelashes.

Sunlight crept across the floor. He grew cold. But he was used to that. He was also used to the hunger that followed. He knew he had to move, but he didn’t know how. What did he do now? The screaming continued. He tried to smother it, to silence it. He should never have gotten involved with Nadine. He should’ve remained faithful to his wife. But it wasn’t his wife his heart ached for. She was long dead. The woman who’d just been in his bed and in his arms was the one he wanted. Nadine gave his second chance meaning when the world around him made no sense.

Meryn scrubbed his hand over his face. He’d told her love was worth the hurt and he couldn’t live up to his own words. It was much easier to believe them when standing at the top, instead of stranded at the bottom. His hands fell to his side. The house was silent, waiting for him to do something.

If this were a battle, how would he win her back?

***

Nadine turned her face to the window of the nearly empty train, but she didn’t see the city passing by. She sniffed and tried to swallow the ache in her throat.

Lying
bastard. Everything she thought they had was a goblin lie.

The points of the cross dug into her palm. She wished she’d never found it. Then she could’ve ignored all the things that weren’t quite right about Meryn. There were so many of them, and yet there’d been so many things that she’d liked about him. She’d liked him because he was different. He was different because he was a goblin and every word had been a lie.

Her eyes brimmed and tears crept down her cheeks. She swiped them away. She didn’t cry. Not now, not ever. Certainly not for a man who claimed to have lived the fairy tale of
The
Goblin
King
.

He was either a goblin or insane…no matter how much she’d rather Meryn be crazy, she knew that wasn’t true. Which meant he’d spent a couple of millennia as a goblin hoarding gold and fighting and stealing women.

Yet he’d never hurt her. He’d saved her from the thieves. And when she’d left, he hadn’t tried to stop her—because he was goblin, so why would he care? But she’d seen the pain in his eyes. Old or new it didn’t matter; he’d laid open his past for her to see and she hadn’t believed him. Her heart clenched like it would never beat again.

The memory of Meryn wild and covered in gray dust rose like a rotting corpse in a stream. Only now it made sense. He’d come straight from the Shadowlands. When he said he’d lived rough for a while, he’d meant in the Shadowlands. When he’d said he was numb, it was because he’d been goblin.

Her body shook as she tried to hold back the tide that threatened to drown her. His words echoed in her ears.

You
father
is
innocent
.

Nadine opened her fist. For days after her mother’s disappearance she’d refused to open her hand. When they’d finally pried it open, the cross was coated in blood. If Meryn were telling the truth, he’d seen her mother die and done nothing to save her from the goblins.

She couldn’t put the cross back in his apartment and forget finding it any more than she could un-hear the truth or un-know the monster hiding in the man. But all she wanted was his arms around her, making her feel safe again. She hated herself for that weakness. For falling for him and needing him. Until Meryn, she’d never needed any one and had never risked her heart on something as dangerous as love.

The train stopped at her station and she got off, knowing people were staring at the crying woman. They could all go to hell.

Her shins and back ached from the attack. But between her thighs ached for a very different reason—one she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. She sucked in air like it would be her last breath. She’d broken up with men before and it had never felt like she was dying. Meryn wasn’t a man. He was goblin and he’d stolen the cross and her heart.

Had he taken her mother?

He’d said he had seen a woman in the Shadowlands, not that he’d taken her—but he could be lying about that too. Is that what her father had been hiding?

She unlocked her front door, her memories and nightmares colliding with everything her father and Meryn had said. It had been midwinter when her mother disappeared.

No. It was a fairy tale, nothing more. Goblins weren’t real. They were a myth to scare children into behaving and not being greedy. But Meryn had known the story—a different version of it. Had he really lived it? She opened her hand and looked at the cross. In the bathroom she looked at the torque he’d given her.

A gift from another life. A life where it had been more than jewelry and a sign of rank. His clothes, the claim that he’d been waving a sword, and his lack of language. The ill feeling in her stomach swelled and crashed against her lungs.

What he wanted her to believe was impossible. He couldn’t be a Celtic warrior returned from the Shadowlands. It was easier to believe in goblins than that.

She changed clothes, the skin on her palms tender and raw. But she remembered the touch of his lips on her flesh, the way he’d stepped in and defended her from the thugs without hesitation. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to be able to trust him. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to push down the hurt, but it wouldn’t go.

There was only one person who could answer her questions about goblins, who knew almost as much about them as her mother. And who had always pleaded not guilty to her murder—her father.

Maybe he wasn’t guilty. She had to know if the secrets he was hiding were about goblins too. Had goblins taken her mother on the winter solstice like Meryn claimed? But why serve time for a crime he never committed, why never tell her that he was innocent and goblins were to blame?

And if they had taken her mother to the Shadowlands, what did that mean? Did that mean Meryn really knew the Goblin King? Had the curse really been broken? Was he really a man with a second chance?

Her father was the only person who would be able to prove Meryn’s story. She snatched up her car keys, not sure if the truth would make what Meryn had told her better or worse. Could she love a man who’d been goblin?

Chapter 19

Meryn had walked the paths of Kings Park without seeing. He half started down the road to the hospital where Nadine worked, then turned back and headed home. He needed a better plan than just turning up and asking for a second chance.

He was everything she hated. Goblins had ruined her life as a child and so far he wasn’t doing a great job of proving that he was any better. Would there have ever been a good way to tell her?

To tell anyone? He sank onto a chair at the dining table and cradled his head in his hands. No matter what he did, he would always have the same problem. No one would ever know who he was and he’d be stuck. A man without a past was a man without a future.