The Goblin Cinderella (Fairy Tale Heat Book 5)
Author: Foxglove, Lidiya
Date: 2017-08-31

The Goblin Cinderella

Lidiya Foxglove

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Fairy Tale Heat Series

About the Author

Prologue

The court of the Goblin King was a busy place these days.

For many years, King Nyar had been cursed, his court transformed into household objects who could not speak to him, his gates sealed to anyone except the maidens he was bound to claim in exchange for a gold coin.

The goblins of the wider realm had no king to turn to. Now that Nyar was on the throne once more, the caves bustled with life, feasts and bonfires were held out under the stars nearly every other week, and the goblins were traveling down long roads to speak to their king. They had years of troubles built up to complain about. Usually it was the simple and tedious business of disputes between landowners or with humans. Nyar must have spent hours listening to the intricacies of goat farming, trade deals, the drawing of boundary lines, and the maintenance of roads. Times like this, he remembered why he had gotten himself into trouble in the first place, back when he was a younger king.

Being a good, fair king was a delicate balance, and also pretty boring. He would rather take up a sword or plan a feast than figure out this sort of thing.

It was his human queen, Sabela, who would put a hand on his knee when he fidgeted and smile at him in a way that said, It’ll be over soon and we’ll have fun tonight. She didn’t just listen to advisers, but consulted books and acquainted herself with the ins and outs of the kingdom. Sabela could dance the night away as well as any goblin, but humans were undoubtedly a more patient race.

“My family never treated me fairly,” she told him. “Now that your people are my family, I intend to do better by them.” Even when she had their first child, a dark-haired little boy with bright golden eyes, she only took two days abed being pampered by her ladies before she was back to the library, reading up on the laws of the kingdom, with the babe at her breast.

When Nyar saw her there, he pulled out a chair and grabbed one of the books himself.

“I’m not about to be shown up by my queen,” he said.

She grinned at him, and called for some hot chocolate.

The reputation of the king and queen only grew, and the court became so lively that the subjects compared it to the legendary reign of King Bradar the second, who was known for being fair and having the greatest feasts (and also for raiding human settlements and stealing flocks of sheep, but that was another story).

One day, a visitor came who evoked such curiosity that word of her arrival preceded her entrance to the throne room.

Dame Kayska was known as a skilled witch; they said she had faery blood on her mother’s side. But it was Kayska’s sister that everyone remembered. Elka the Beautiful, they called her, an entrancing girl who spoke to animals. Nyar didn’t remember her. She had left the goblin kingdom when he was a little boy, but when his oldest advisor Ravok heard that Kayska had arrived, he shook his head wistfully for memories of Elka.

“What happened to Elka?” Sabela asked. “Did she die?”

“She married a high elven merchant from Wyndyr,” Ravok said, his tone sounding very begrudging all of a sudden. “She was supposed to go to Fairhaven for six months to study magic. She never came back. Sailed off with him. Kayska was heartbroken. They were very close, those two sisters. It only figures, as pretty as Elka was, that she was too good for a goblin.”

“What’s wrong with goblins?” Sabela asked, indignant. “I’d rather be a goblin than a stuffy elf. And I’d certainly rather marry a goblin than a stuffy elf.”

“Good thing,” Nyar said.

“Oh, you’d understand if you’d seen Elka,” Ravok said. “She was simply too beautiful for our world.”

“Hmph,” Sabela said. She wouldn’t have it. Sabela, of course, was very beautiful herself.

Moments later, Dame Kayska was announced. Her hair was fairy hair: fine and soft and very long, drawn back across her small horns into elaborate braids. She looked much younger than she should, and alluring in the enchanted way of the fair folk moreso than any goblin. She wore a red dress and a short cloak and a great deal of cheap jewelry, and her claws were grown out to a fearsome length, and in this she showed her goblin side, but the overall effect was that of an ageless, alluring creature who was not quite of either world.

Only, she looked rather sad.

“Welcome, Dame Kayska,” Nyar said, greeting her immediately in the hopes of putting her at ease.

Kayska approached, curtseying to Nyar and Sabela before glancing at Prince Firo on Sabela’s lap with a slightly sad expression. “Your majesties,” she said. “I congratulate you on your new son and recent good fortune. May your son have many sharp teeth.”

Sabela glanced at Nyar.

“That is a compliment,” he whispered to her. Then,

“No need to be formal. Just tell me what troubles you.”

“I am sure you don’t remember my sister Elka…”

“I don’t, but Ravok certainly does,” Nyar said, making the older goblin cough with embarrassment.

“Very nice to see you well, miss,” Ravok said to Kayska. “How is Elka? She never writes.”

“No. She wouldn’t. She’s dead,” Kayska said. “Extremely dead. She’s been dead for almost eighteen years now.”

Ravok bowed his head. “Oh, no. I’m certainly sorry to hear that.” The head lifted again. “And who is responsible?”

Nyar glanced at him. The man looked ready to take up arms and sail to Wyndyr.

Kayska smiled faintly. “No one is to blame for that, exactly, although you have the right idea, sir. A sickness took her. I suppose that could happen anywhere, although the way high elves talk so highly of themselves, you’d think they would be above such problems, wouldn’t you? But she left behind a daughter who was an infant at the time. Elka’s daughter should not be without a mother. I offered for the girl to come live with me to be raised among her mother’s kin, but her father wrote me and said he loved her dearly and would never give her up. All well and good, I suppose.” She sniffed. “I mean, she could have been a goblin witch, but I suppose if she’d rather be some merchant elf-daughter, who am I to judge?” she said, judgmentally.

“A little later, he wrote me again and said he was getting married so little ‘Ellara’”—she sounded scornful at the elven name—“would have a new mother. And still worse, a little later after that, Ellara herself wrote me and said her father had died, and begged me to come and take her home with me. That was the last I ever heard of her.” Her eyes flashed. “My sister’s child, and for all I know, she’s been turned out on the streets.”

“That is certainly a concern,” Nyar said. “You didn’t go to her?”

“I can’t travel all the way to the high elven lands all alone,” she said. “A lot of the territory between here and there isn’t safe for a woman. I need an escort, but as long as you were cursed, naturally…I had no one to turn to. The goblins that were left have simply been trying to hold on in your absence, and besides that, my magic was needed here. So my poor niece has been alone in the elven lands without any kin to care for her for the past six years.”

Nyar, for the hundredth time, had to shove off a wave of guilt. Sabela gave him her reassuring wasn’t-your-fault look again, but it only went so far. “I am very sorry to hear this. Please, I will arrange an escort for you, and I know you are familiar with witchcraft. If there are any spells in the arsenal that you think might be useful for locating Ellara beyond your own magic, tell the mistress of spells that I have given permission for you to take a spell or two if we aren’t in immediate need of them.”

Dame Kayska bowed. “Thank you for your generosity. I will certainly make use of it. I will see that my kin has a life worthy of her mother’s blood.”

She left the room and Nyar looked at Ravok. The old goblin shifted position, his lightweight leather armor creaking. He might have had white, receding hair and weathered skin that showed his years, but he was still very fit, and quick with a weapon. Fine company, too. He had a pleasant singing voice and was a lot of fun—especially with a drink or two in him, as he tended toward shyness without a little encouragement.

“Do you want to escort her, Ravok?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know,” he said gruffly. “My place is here, I suppose, isn’t it. I’m quite old to be running around the elven lands, I suppose. Knees aren’t quite what they used to be. And it’s been a long time since I was in the company of a female. I suppose I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“You suppose a lot,” Nyar said.

“You are in my company all the time,” Sabela said.

“You protest a little too much for a man who doesn’t want to go,” Nyar said.

Sabela laughed. “And besides, she is an older woman. She might like an older man for company.”

Ravok’s ears turned red. Sabela was just trying to tease him at this point.

“If it is your command, my lord,” he said.

“It is my command.” Nyar waved a hand vaguely. “Like it or not, you’re going to Wyndyr. And come back with some good tales. I’ve always wanted to see the Palace of Waterfalls.”

The next morning, they woke early to see off Dame Kayska and her escort, who was still looking a little flushed. Maybe once he’d had a crush on Kayska’s sister, but the witch was no unappealing creature herself, and probably more in his league.

“I wish you well,” Nyar said.

Prim, the cook, presented them—with the air of a lady bestowing a sacred sword on a knight—a sack of spice buns, cured sausage, and hard cheese. “For your journey.”

At this point, Prince Firo burst into loud squalls, apparently displeased with the morning’s commotion, and Sabela said a hasty goodbye before taking him aside.

“I’ll avenge Elka,” Kayska said, with a firmness that made Nyar ever so slightly nervous.

“Please do bear in mind, I don’t have the resources to go to war with the high elves. Don’t kill anyone.”

“I won’t,” she said.

As she turned away, Nyar caught Ravok’s eyes and tapped his own eye, then pointed at her retreating back. You watch her.

Ravok nodded, but damned if the man didn’t already look smitten. You couldn’t trust a smitten man.

Oh well.

Nyar waved as they mounted horses, and then went to the library, where he knew Sabela would be.

“Nyar,” she said. “Can you guess what potion the witch took from our stores? Of all the things she could have chosen?”

“No, but I suppose you’re going to tell me.”

“A love potion.”

“A love potion?”

“Yes. Who avenges someone with a love potion?”

He sat down and put his feet up. “As long as she doesn’t start a national incident, I don’t care.” He paused. “I should have told her that.”

“If you’re not worried…,” Sabela said. “I thought it was curious. I hope she’s not just taking advantage of you. I know you feel guilty that you weren’t there for your people for those years, but you have to stop being so nice.”

“I know. Some goblin I am. But you won’t let me go on a sheep raid.”

“No, I will not.”

“I’m sure it will make a good tale, whatever happens,” he said.

She shrugged, picking up a book. “Ouch.” She looked down at the nursing Firo. “You know, as soon as you grow those many sharp teeth, we’re done.”

Chapter One

Ellara

“Hurry up, you lazy goblin! You still have to do my hair,” Cerralyn snapped, frowning at my reflection in her looking glass.

“Wait—not yet.” Gwynamer caught my hand. “You call that a proper Vermonese braid circlet? Do it again, from the beginning.”

“Gwyn, we won’t be ready in time if you do a Vermonese braid circlet.”

“Well, I would rather be late to dinner than look like my hair was dressed by a stupid little wench. We’re not just having any old guests over. I hear that Lord Hassari has more gold than a king.” Gwyn twisted her fingers around my wrist before letting my hand go. I could see the marks of her hard fingers, where they had dug into my skin.

I glanced at the clock, suppressing a sigh. They weren’t late. They still had bloody two full hours to get ready for the dinner party. Which meant I still had a lot of this to go.

To say I hated my stepsisters would be kind.

I despised my stepsisters more than vomiting, maggots, and smelly old Toothless John the rag seller telling me I looked pretty and should smile. I despised them more than all of those things combined. The only person, thing, or concept I hated more than my stepsisters was my stepmother, because she had raised these horrid creatures.

It was hard to believe my father had ever fallen in love with her, had ever replaced my mother with her.

“Cinderella, my dear.” I was trying to fix Gwyn’s braids, but stiffened as soon as I heard her voice in the doorway. It was a lovely, musical voice, and every time I heard it, it was like something from a nightmare. I don’t know if I would ever grow used to the nickname, even though I’d been hearing it for years now. “When you are done with the girls’ hair, could you come speak to me in the parlor?”

“Yes,” I said, annoyed every time she called that room a ‘parlor’, which was a fashionable new word. When this was my house, me and my father’s house, we just called it the ‘hearth’, a word that made me think of warmth and home and safety. But all those things were gone now.

“Yes…?” Her sweet voice was barbed.

“Yes, madam.”

She nodded.

“You’d better be quicker than that,” Cerra said, watching my hands carefully twist Gwyn’s fine blonde hair into braids. Gwyn kept fussing with cosmetics on her desk, moving her head. It was not uncommon for my sisters to spend hours in front of their vanities, primping and preening, caking makeup on their faces.

My stepmother was very beautiful. My stepsisters…a little less so. They had the beautiful elven hair that was so cooperative, unlike my coarse black goblin curls, and the refined features. But something was…off. They looked pinched and mean and beady-eyed; exactly as ugly as their true natures. And although they would never admit it, I knew they knew it. They were not popular in town, and when they did attract a beau he didn’t stay for long. I think they spent so much time at the mirror because they were hoping that makeup would change things.

But makeup can’t fix rot that comes from the inside. At least, that’s what I told myself. I wished I could take more satisfaction in this thought than I did.

Maybe, deep down, I was just angry.

“Please, try to be still,” I said, in the gentlest voice I could manage. It was impossible not to annoy her. If I told her what to do, she would snap at me, and if I didn’t and messed up her braids again, the result would be the same.

“I bet you wish you could come to dinner,” she said, apparently deciding that it would be more fun to nibble at my confidence today than grouse about my braiding skills.

“I’d rather be alone anyway,” I said, which was not quite true.

“It’s too bad. You could have been very beautiful, I think, if your mother was an elf. Sometimes—here, turn your head to the mirror for a moment.” Reluctantly, I did as she said. “Yes, I mean, you do have elven cheekbones and a nice enough mouth.”

Cerra snorted. “As long as she doesn’t open it.”

With my mouth closed and my goblin fangs hidden, I did almost look like an elf. I stayed like that, looking at myself, just a moment too long. Gwyn beat my hand with a hairbrush. “Go on, lazybones. This is my mirror, I only gave you permission to gaze in it for a moment.”

When I was done, Gwyn’s long fair hair formed an elaborate crown around her head. Cerra was the younger sister and she liked her strawberry locks to be styled younger and looser, so for her I only braided the front sections and then pulled them back, twisting them around her loose hair, fixed with a cascade of flowers.

“Hmm,” Cerra said, drawing out the moment just to torture me.

I fidgeted. Their mother was waiting for me, and they knew it. Finally, I had to say, “I beg your pardon, misses, but may I be dismissed?”

“I suppose. Hurry back to help us with our dresses.”

“No one yanks on corset strings better than your muscular goblin arms,” Cerra said, with false sweetness, attempting to make me sound like a brute.

Truly, though, although my arms were strong, I didn’t look that strong. I was rarely fed more than boiled vegetables and broth, except for the scraps I ate off their plates when they were finished. Goblin women were already known for being lean and scrappy, but I really had not grown much since my father died, as if not just hunger but also grief had sapped me of my will to achieve adulthood. My breasts had half-heartedly grown, while my stepmother kept me from my goblin birthright: looking dangerous. She insisted I trim my claws and wear a loose kerchief over my head to hide my horns. Only my fangs, she could do nothing about. But she didn’t let me leave the house, so no one ever saw them, except the various delivery boys and peddlers who came to the door with rags, pans, milk, oysters, flowers, and countless other things, for we lived in the capital city of Wyndyr with its throngs of aggressive merchants.

It was from them that I started to wonder what I really looked like, because in the past few years, I noticed the merchants had grown rather flirtatious with me. Not just Toothless John, either. Even Ferthin the egg seller, who was about my age and not a bad looking boy. He was very kind to me these days.

“Cinderella!” I heard my stepmother call my name, and hurried downstairs into the gloomy room. My stepmother usually kept thin curtains drawn over the windows. She didn’t like the way the windows faced the street. She complained about it like it was my father’s fault, as if he was both architect and city planner.

“Yes, madam?” I asked, as deferentially as I could manage without it slipping into sarcasm.

“Didn’t I tell you to trim all the candles yesterday?” Her elegant, mask-like face had a yellow pallor in the diluted sunlight.

“Yes, madam…”

She thrust a candle into my face with the air of a deeply wounded party. “Well? What have you to say about this? I found this, right here in the parlor.”

“I must have…missed one.”

She drew in a slow breath, and took a few equally slow steps around the brand new imported rug she had bought with my late father’s money. “I certainly hope we can find a place to keep you when the girls are married. I certainly do hope that, Cinderella. I would hate to have to turn you out into a city that is not friendly to goblin girls.”

She liked to go on like this, and there was nothing I could do but wait.

“I will not need such a grand house, then. You are eighteen, my dear. It’s about time you started to consider making your way in the world.”

“You never let me leave the house,” I said. “What would I make my way to?”

She looked at me with feigned pity. “I simply can’t have anyone knowing such a girl comes from this house, not until my daughters are wed. The time will come soon. Who knows, maybe one of them will be chosen by the prince?”

They were always her daughters, and I was no one’s daughter now. My father had married this woman without knowing how she would treat me.

I still remembered when he brought her home, with her two girls. Two girls my age, Father said, hoping I would finally have sisters. They had all worn such elegant clothes, and all of them wore gloves although it had been summer. I thought it was strange—how could they stand having to feel everything through a layer of fabric?

Before long, it was obvious. These were not people who liked touching things.

“Mind your place tonight, of all nights,” my stepmother said. “We have some very fine people coming to dinner and I don’t want them reminded of your father’s transgressions.”

I should know better, but I couldn’t let this slide. “It wasn’t a transgression. He loved her. They were married.”

She sucked in a warning breath, her narrow nostrils flaring. “If I hear one peep out of your insolent mouth tonight, tomorrow I will send you to the work house down by the docks. Do you understand me?”

“The work house?” I didn’t even quite know what a work house was, but it sounded bad.

“Yes. They are always in need of girls. If you were to go there, you would have nothing, not even privacy. You would sleep in a room with a dozen strangers, work all day and eat gruel for dinner. Now, you’d better get back to the bedroom. I know my daughters have much still to do.”

By now, I was absolutely dreaming of making them suffer. I didn’t go straight to the bedroom to spend more time taking orders from Gwyn and Cerra, but detoured to my garret. Where once I had a proper bed, now I had a pallet stuffed with straw and an old horse blanket. The mice? No, they had earned more than mice tonight. I crouched in the corner and put my hand out. “Spiders and mice…,” I called. “Please, I call upon all of the bravest among you. My stepfamily is having a grand party tonight, with lots of wealthy guests…”

I didn’t remember my mother, but my father used to say she had witch blood in her. I thought it must be true, because when I called a spider to me, it crawled right into my hand. Now, several of them came creeping out of the cracks in the floorboards and the corners of the room. Mice scurried in, squeaking.

I probably should have behaved myself, with the threat of the work house hanging over my head. But, whether or not I was a witch, I was certainly a goblin. They never let me forget it. And goblins loved nothing more than making trouble.

I would make sure no one forgot this dinner party.

Chapter Two

Ellara

I hadn’t always made friends with spiders and mice.

Sometimes it was hard to remember, these days, that I had once been raised by a high elf gentleman. My goblin mother died young, and it was just Father and me. My elegant father was a spice merchant, a wealthy man who wore silk and velvet, and was mannered and graceful, but also very kind. He had to work a lot, but when he was home, he was devoted to me. It wasn’t just the gifts he brought me; any rich father could have handed a girl dolls and ribbons and ignored her the rest of the time. No, he told me stories, he played games with me, he asked the cook to make tiny food for my tea parties. He took me out in the carriage on fine days and showed me the Palace of Waterfalls and the High Court of Lords and the Library of Elvish. He took me to the seaside. He told me I reminded him of Mother, spirited and a little too honest.

But I strived for the manners of an elven girl, back then. I tried to keep my dresses clean. I kept quiet when Father had important guests visiting. And if I saw a spider in my room, I screamed for the maid to beat it with her broom, like any lady would.

Then, I became the maid, and I realized I didn’t really like killing things, and perhaps ladies weren’t as nice as I once thought.

I suppose it was my loneliness that got me to start giving names to the spiders and mice, and talking to them. I saw them as my fellow prisoners. I ushered them to safe havens whenever I could.

At some point, they started to actually listen to me. I no longer had to trap them. If I told them to hide in the kitchen or go out the window, they would simply obey my commands.

No one had ever taught me magic, but it seemed I had unlocked a piece of its powers of my own accord. And why not? Someone had to be the first witch, the first mage, the first one to discover how to use powers without the aid of a spell book.

“Spiders, I want you to crawl up the legs of my stepsisters and stepmother,” I said now to my miniature army. “Mice, I would like you to scurry across the feet of the guests. Everyone will panic in the commotion. As soon as they do, hurry out again quickly before they can hurt you. I would be most grateful to you.”

The mice squeaked in what might have been acknowledgment. The spiders quietly crept off. I had never called upon all of them to make trouble at once, but I knew they would do it. They had never failed me. I liked to think they understood my plight, and relished making my stepsisters scream as much as I did.

“Cinderella!” Gwyn screamed.

Indeed, that sort of scream was why I liked to make them scream in other ways.

I yanked their corsets tighter and tighter—there was no limit to how much my stepsisters would suffer for fashion—and helped them into their dresses, finishing just as we heard the sound of horses and carriage wheels outside.

“That’s enough, you clumsy thing,” Gwyn said, batting me away. She pulled on her gloves. “Go to your garret and stay there.”

I went up to the attic. It was often freezing cold or baking hot, depending on the season. Tonight, it wasn’t so bad yet; it was raining gently outside, the autumn day cool but mild. The bare ceilings were sloped, and I couldn’t stand fully upright in the room, but it was a sizable space. My straw pallet was up against the chimney. I had one small window, where I could peer out to see the visitors.

A man was climbing down from the carriage. I had never seen a man like him before. He wasn’t an elf, but an older human man with dark skin, white hair, an elegant mustache, and golden robes, unlike anything an elf would wear.

Or had I seen a man like him before?

Something about him seemed familiar.

I strained my eyes to see through the raindrops training down the windowpanes. I heard the door open downstairs.

I left the window and perched at the top of the stairs, trying to listen. The rain was causing me all sorts of trouble; the din made it hard to hear.

“You have had a long journey, Lord Hassari,” I heard my stepmother say.

“Just Mr. Hassari,” he said, with a faint laugh. “I am not a lord.”

My heart clenched. I remembered him now—his low, gentle voice, his melodious accent, and his name. He was one of my father’s business associates. He visited us on occasion, and had once brought me a beautiful shawl dyed with patterns. I don’t know where the shawl had gone, after my stepsisters raided my things, giving some of them away as gifts to their friends.

“Oh—my mistake.” My stepmother sounded annoyed. I think she wanted to call him a lord whether he was one or not, just to make a fuss of him to other guests.

Her friends were arriving, elven men and women, some with familiar voices. It sounded like Mr. Hassari praised the house, which had been furnished by my father with treasures from around the world. My sisters cooed over something or other. I think Mr. Hassari had brought them presents. Their voices were simpering.

“I did business with your late husband,” Mr. Hassari said. “I was sorry to hear of his death. I had also brought something for little Ellara…” He paused. “Well, I suppose she would not be so little anymore.”

He remembered me.

Briefly, the entire party went silent at the mention of my name.

My stepmother generally told people I was dead. But around her own friends, she didn’t try as hard.

“Mr. Hassari—“ My stepmother was trying very hard to sound aggrieved.

She wanted to say I was dead. I knew she did. She was doing quick calculations as to whether anyone else at the party would question her. These were her friends. They didn’t think much of goblins either—but they knew I was alive and no one knew what direction the conversation might turn, with this wealthy traveler.

My heart was beating fast. I didn’t quite know how Mr. Hassari had come to be at this party, but I could imagine. He came to town and everyone talked about him and how much money he had. My stepmother was eager to fete anyone who had a great deal of money. I knew the money my father left behind upon his death was starting to run low. She heard he was a friend of my father’s and hoped to use the connection to her advantage.

Was he here to help me?

“Ellara is a very sickly girl, just like her mother,” my stepmother said. “She doesn’t attend parties. She doesn’t leave the house. And you are aware—she is a goblin?”

“Yes,” he said. “I remember her. Elka. She was a very delightful girl. Faery blood as well.”

“Faery blood? I was not aware. Ellara looks like a goblin, to the very core. And she is as wicked as a goblin. She plays tricks on all of us.”

“Yes,” Cerra said. “I bet she’s the one who puts mice in my bed all the time.”

Hmm. Maybe my plan wasn’t such a good idea.

“I’m afraid she inherited none of her dear, departed father’s sophistication, or, from what I hear, her mother’s…delightfulness.” She sounded like she had just swallowed bitter medicine.

One of my stepmother’s horrid friends added, playing along, “It is a wonder she’s lived this long. It’s consumption, isn’t it?”

“Nevertheless, I must see her before I go,” Mr. Hassari said.

“After dinner, perhaps,” my stepmother said, with some relief.

Oh no. What now? The spiders and mice would all be downstairs already, waiting for their big moment. I wondered if I dared to go downstairs, dressed in my tattered old clothes, to tell Mr. Hassari that my stepmother abused me and beg him to rescue me. But it was quite likely that he didn’t want to rescue me, he just wanted to say hello and give me a little present. And if that was the case, once he was gone, my stepmother would punish me like she never had before.

They adjourned to the dining room. I edged down the stairs so I could hear better.

“Yes, he’s invited every girl in the realm,” a woman was saying. Mrs. Tansy. She was one of my stepmother’s friends, and her daughter Lisitha was a friend to Gwyn and Cerra. I thought they were talking about the prince’s upcoming ball, the one my stepmother was holding out hopes for that one of her daughters might be the next princess.

“Every girl?” Gwyn asked, dismayed. “Not every girl, surely. The prince wouldn’t invite peasants to his ball.”

“Well, every girl who can afford a dress and shoes and transportation and proper hair styling…,” my stepmother said. “I am sure no peasant girl would be allowed past the doors. That will narrow it down.”

“Just think…” That was Lisitha herself. “One of us might marry the prince. And be a princess.” I could hear the edge in her voice. If one of them was chosen, the other two would tear her apart.

Cerra sounded annoyed. “The competition is going to be so tiresome. If anyone is allowed, hundreds of girls will attend such a ball. We’ll be lucky if we get to dance with him once, much less marry him. It’s hardly fair.”

“Cerra, my dear, you will never win any prize with such an attitude,” my stepmother said. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be one of you.”

“Of course, the rumors about the prince…,” Lisitha said.

Now, that, I would have liked to hear. I was left out of town gossip. But the food must have come out and interrupted her. I heard dishes clinking and murmuring and my stepmother calling for a certain bottle of wine.

I could smell the food. The food was never very good anymore, not like it was in my father’s day. He was a connoisseur of the spices he traded. My stepmother had no such refined palate. Still, with such a feast, there would probably be a lot left behind for me. I used to hate picking morsels off their used plates, but hunger had long since robbed me of that pride.

Suddenly, the cook rushed into the hall and spotted me on the stairs. I was on my feet instantly. “I was—just going back to my room,” I said.

“You’re wanted downstairs,” the cook hissed.

The cook barely spoke to me most of the time. “I am?”

“Yes. One of the visitors is inquiring about you. The mistress said to dress quickly in Miss Gwynamer’s old blue gown and make an appearance. Don’t say anything much besides ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ and then cough and say you have a headache and go back upstairs.”

“Now?” I was bewildered. I wondered if Mr. Hassari had said more to my stepmother out of earshot, for her to actually expose me.

“Yes. Now. Go on.” She started climbing the stairs and I realized with some chagrin that she was going to follow me. She pulled the blue dress out of the wardrobe and motioned for me to get on with it. I untied my apron and unlaced my bodice, finally stepping out of my faded skirt. She yanked the blue dress over my shift. Gwyn’s dresses had been made to fit her corseted body. I was so bony that it hung a little loose on me without any corset at all. She had large breasts and I had tiny ones, so the bodice sort of stood up around me.

“It barely fits,” I said.

“Here,” she said, opening a trunk and pulling out a new shawl. The ephemeral scrap of fabric fluttered in her hand and I knew Gwyn would be furious if I wore it. “Tuck this around your neck and into the front of your gown.” I took it just to annoy Gwyn.

My shoes were another matter. “I certainly can’t wear these!” I exclaiming, wiggling my toes within my sturdy but threadbare brown work boots.

She huffed. “Here, here.” She handed me a pair of Cerra’s shoes, too large for my feet. We had to wedge handkerchiefs in the toes before I could walk in them.

Adrenaline coursed through me. For years, I had dreamed of some long-lost family member saving me, especially my Aunt Kayska. When years passed, I forced myself to shove hope aside. Now I felt a glimmer of my old optimism. Maybe Mr. Hassari would see what a wretch I was and do something about it.

At the same time, I was terribly nervous. I didn’t want to come to dinner in ill-fitting clothes and messy hair, just for Gwyn and Cerra and Lisitha to laugh at me, and it all to come to nothing in the end.

The cook took my arm and pulled me down the stairs. “I don’t have time for this, girl, I have a second course to plate. Go on in.”

“Ah,” my stepmother said as I walked into the room. Her friends were staring at me like I was an actual piece of gossip made flesh. “There she is. As you can see, Mr. Hassari, she is rather sickly. I don’t think the air here agrees with goblins.”

Mr. Hassari stood up, clasped his hands together, and bowed to me elegantly, as if he didn’t hear my stepmother at all. As if he had something glorious to say and all my dreams of a savior were about to come true. “Miss Ellara,” he said. “I am glad to see Pelmerrin’s daughter again—auggh—!”

As he interrupted his dignified, accented speech with some shocked utterances in his own native language, Gwyn and Cerra screamed their heads off, and then Lisitha hopped up with an “Oooh ooh ooh!” In another second, the entire dinner party was on their feet and screaming.

Oh, yes. I’d almost forgotten about that part.

Chapter Three

Ellara

I can’t say I was sorry.

I never got to see the results of my pranks. Usually I sent my little friends to hide in my sister’s beds or drawers. I heard them scream, but I made sure not to be around at the time, so it was harder to prove that it was my fault.

This moment was a thing of absolute beauty.

Gwyn spilled a spoonful of soup down her entire front. After wanting her corset tied so tight, Cerra was red-faced and gasping. My stepmother was trying to garble out something about how they had never had a mouse problem before, never ever! As a bonus, Lisitha was sobbing out, “Mama, it touched me, something touched me!” She sounded like a two-year-old.

Mr. Hassari had recovered quickly. He was still standing. His eyes followed something on the ground and he moved to crush it.

“No!” I breathed.

He quickly looked up again, meeting my eyes. He kept his foot still and we had a silent understanding.

But my stepmother looked at me with triumph. “It was you,” she said. “You did this. You little goblin trickster, you can speak to vermin, can’t you? You’re the reason the traps are always empty. You tell them what to do and they invade our house, our beds and our kitchens by your will.”

“I just don’t like to kill things,” I said.

“Every goblin likes to play tricks,” another one of the guests put in, a stead gentleman who was one of our neighbors. “That is well known. They have little spells they use to filch things and make a fool of other races.”

“Go back upstairs, Ella,” my stepmother said, in a voice that was forged from steel. She had been waiting to catch me at something like this for years. She was definitely going to beat me bloody. Maybe she was even going to turn me out on the street.

So what did I have to lose, at this point?

“Very well,” I said. “I did it. I told every rodent and bug in this house to come mess up this dinner party, because you bloody well deserve it. My father loved me. I was his own flesh and blood. And then you marry him, you and your stupid, mean, ugly daughters, and a year later, he’s dead, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you killed him. Since I was twelve years old, you’ve made me sleep in an attic, shivering all winter, sweating all summer. You make me clean your rooms and fix your daughter’s hair so they can go out to parties while I am trapped at home, dressed in cast-offs, fed the scraps of the elegant meals you buy with my father’s money. You treat me like a rat, so why should you be surprised if the rats are my friends and I like them better than you? But you are the rat.”

By this time, our gentleman neighbor had gotten up to try and remove me from the room, and Mr. Hassari got up too. He helped the man usher me out. I could hear my stepmother huffing and making excuses and everyone agreeing with her that she had done the best she could with an unruly orphan.

“Unruly?” I screamed, still trying to claw back toward the room. “Unruly and sickly at the same time? How talented I must be!” Now that I’d let it all out, I had thrown sense out the window entirely.

It had been bubbling up inside me for a very long time.

“I’ll see to this,” Mr. Hassari told the neighbor. The man nodded, pulling the dining room’s pocket doors shut behind him.

“You had better go before it gets worse,” Mr. Hassari said. He put a small box in my hand and mouthed, I will return.

I rushed to my room and pulled off Gwyn’s dress. Then I stomped on it several times. Then I started to cry. I flopped onto the floor, shaking and sniffling, and opened the box.

Some exotic scent wafted out. There was a little white piece of paper folded up into a pouch with a seal. I opened it and found tiny red-yellow strands. I remembered this fragrance from childhood.

Saffron. The most expensive spice in the world.

Vague memories stirred. I remembered my father talking about saffron when I was a little girl. He was excited about it. He had bought part of a saffron farm, hadn’t he? What happened to it? Had it ever made money? I didn’t remember any discussion of saffron when he died. And yet, what child really pays attention to an adult babbling over some distant investment?

Still, a speculation was beginning to form. Mr. Hassari had been one of his business partners. Maybe the saffron had made money after all. And maybe that money was meant for me.

Mr. Hassari probably didn’t expect to find me in such a state. But why didn’t he say anything? Was he worried my stepmother might find a way to seize the money?

It was not an unreasonable assumption.

I don’t dare hope. I don’t dare hope. I have hoped too many times…

* * *

“You little wench.”

My morning was not the sort of atmosphere where hopes are cultivated.

My stepmother hauled me out of bed early—so early that I knew she had not slept for thinking of punishing me.

“What is this?” She was holding the box of saffron. “This is what Mr. Hassari gave you?” She opened the paper and the saffron scattered all over the floor.

“Do you know what that is?” I cried. “You don’t, do you? You married a spice merchant and you don’t even like spices. Saffron was one of my father’s favorites, but I bet you never knew that either. We used to have a cook who made the most wonderful, fragrant dishes and now all you eat is boiled this and boiled that.”

It enraged her when I talked about Father. “What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked sharply.

“It was worth every moment,” I said.

She gripped my arm. The leather strap in her hand came down hard against the back of my knees. I bit back a scream, my fangs digging into my lip until they drew blood, and she didn’t even pause. She rained a whipping down on me until I could only cower on my straw mattress, shuddering, waiting it out, while pain striped my legs and back.

When she had tired herself out, she stood over me, breathing hard, and ground out, “That’s it, girl. I have fed you and clothed you all these years; I have done my duty as best I could with such a wicked child. You are a woman now. Too old for the beatings I can give you. The work house will be happy to have you.”

“But what about Mr. Hassari?” I asked.

“What about him? You didn’t speak to him, did you?”

“He wanted to see me. He gave me a gift. And he was one of father’s business partners. I believe he has some of Father’s long-lost assets—a saffron farm. That’s why he’s here.”

“A farm?” she said, condescendingly.

“Madam, don’t you know? Saffron is worth its weight in gold. Maybe more. But obviously he remembers me fondly. If he comes back and I’m not here, why shouldn’t he just slip back onto his ship and keep the saffron for himself? Clearly you were none the wiser about it all this time.”

Wheels turned behind her eyes. She was slightly stuck. She wanted money, but she didn’t want to see a single gold coin go to me. It chafed her that she needed to be nice to me in order to court the wealthy merchant. “Behave yourself,” she said.

A day passed, and then another. I waited eagerly for Mr. Hassari’s promised return. My stepmother went out a lot during these days, and I had a worry that she was cooking up some scheme. But I was hopeful, despite myself. Mr. Hassari told me he would come back, and he would.

At midweek, Ferthin the egg-seller boy came to the back door as he always did. He handed me a box of eggs packed in straw, glancing behind him. Then he grinned at me, a little shyly. “Open it before anyone sees you,” he whispered.

“What?”

“A man asked me to give you a note.”

“Oh.”

I started to take the eggs in, and Ferthin doffed his cap to me. “If you leave town, it’s been nice doing business with you.”

“If I—leave?”

“Read the note,” he said.

I opened the box and plucked out the note, reading quickly. The cook was out doing the bulk of the shopping, but I didn’t want to dawdle just in case.

Dear Miss Ellara,

Your father intended for you to be generously provided for, so you could marry well and have a good life. He hoped your stepmother would care for you until you came of age, at which time you would inherit his spice holdings overseas. I do not think it worked out as he intended. I have been investigating the situation and it seems that your stepmother has already seized and spent most of his money. But there is one holding left, the one he and I partnered on. It was not profitable at the time, but it has become so in subsequent years. Half of my saffron farms should be yours.

I know your stepmother will try to block you from your remaining inheritance. I suspect she altered his will, and you have no birth records in the town court. I would guess that was also her doing. If I give you the money that is owed to you and you stay in Wyndyr, I believe she will take legal action against you and attempt to prove your illegitimacy. It would be for the best if you sailed home with me. You can start a new life in Cabria as a wealthy woman, well out of her reach. I will send my man for you on Saturday night while your sisters are at the prince’s ball to escort you to the docks.

Your friend and your father’s associate,

Ebo Hassari

I clutched the letter. I could hardly wait for Saturday. To leave this place forever? I could think of nothing better, except that I wouldn’t see my stepfamily’s faces when they realized I was gone, and they would never see me gloat over my piles of gold. Quite unfortunate. But I wouldn’t rest easy about it until I was on that ship.

Saturday night could not come soon enough.

Chapter Four

Prince Ithrin

A bold knock rattled my door. That was my brother. No one else still dared to bang on my door in such a way.

I shoved the spell book in a drawer. “Go away,” I said. “I still have two hours.”

“The ladies are already gathering outside,” he said. “Come on. I want to know which ones you’re genuinely interested in. I’ll leave those alone.”

I opened the door. “I’m not interested in any of them.”

“Two hours?” he said. “You don’t have two hours. You have to get ready.”

I blinked patiently.

“Or—is that what you’re wearing?” He poked my black wool sleeve. “Are you in mourning?”

“In mourning for my unwed solitude, yes. I already indulged Father once, going to Princess Bethany’s travesty of an engagement ball. And I must have spoken to twenty different princesses while I was there. I am fully aware that I’m the eldest son and that I need to implant a baby in some womb or other, but as far as I’m concerned, you might as well dance with all of them and choose one for me. I can’t fall in love in one night within the confines of some ridiculous ball.”

He looked at me, slightly aghast, and then walked into my room without waiting for an invitation and sank into a chair. “Ithrin. Of course you’re not going to find a woman if you’ve already decided this is some sort of…torture buffet.”

“Whoever I choose, I’m going to be spending the rest of my days with her, sharing my bed with her. I just don’t know how to—I mean, I don’t have anything in common with princesses.”

“Are you…I mean—are you sure you’re not more into men?”

I didn’t even glorify that with a response. He had never seen me make a pass at a man anymore than a woman. He knew, like the rest of the court knew, that I was a man lost down a dangerous path. I couldn’t resist my calling any more than Wrindel could resist flirting with every girl who batted her lashes at him.

No one spoke it aloud.

Dark magic.

I claimed to have a passing interest in mage-craft. But everyone knew that long ago, it had gone beyond that.

“It’s not that big of a deal, is it?” my brother pressed. “Just to have fun for a night? Father is letting you choose between every girl in the realm. Who knows what might show up? These won’t just be princesses. You might fall in love with a member of a theater troupe.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me?” I asked. “I don’t want a scandalous bride. I don’t want any bride. I don’t want to fall in love. It never ends well. I don’t want to choose. Father is trying to make me happy and it isn’t going to work.” I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t think I am unaware of what this is really about. He wants to quell the rumors.”

“He needs to quell the rumors,” Wrindel said gravely. “The rumors are true.”

“It’s too late for me to stop.”

“They’re dead.” Wrindel practically begged me now. “Mother, Seldana, Jiriel…they’re all dead and they wouldn’t want to see you like this.”

I paced to the window, retreating into silence. The dark magic had gone beyond my childhood dreams of bringing them back, or finding their spirits in the realms beyond. It was a fascination and an addiction. The realms of the dead whispered to me now. I should never have been a prince. I should have been a sorcerer, who could hole myself up in some remote corner of the realm and experiment, left to my own devices.

Wrindel practically stomped toward me and grabbed my shoulders. “I’m your little brother. Your only brother, now. The throne is yours and neither of us can help that. I could stab you in the back and some of the kingdom might be relieved if I took your place. You could reject the throne and plunge yourself into scandalous exile. But I don’t want that. Neither of us really want that—I know you care about this country. I am, however, tired of putting up with your shit. It’s only one ball, one night, one girl. Indulge your people and try to act like you’re having fun for once in your life. Come on and take a look. Wave to the crowd. Those girls don’t know yet that you’re the dourest man who ever lived. They’re out of their mind with excitement to meet you. Don’t ruin it. It won’t kill you to give them a night of happiness, and it wouldn’t kill you to have a night of happiness yourself.”

I sighed, allowing him to lead me toward the balcony. “Just so you are aware, I’m only doing this so you will leave me alone.”

We stepped out together onto the ornate balcony. Water cascaded past the window from the upper pool of the castle, falling into the moat below, which doubled as a sort of water garden, with blooming flowers, lily pads, and silver-blue fish. The second we appeared, a chorus of screaming came from across the water. The drawbridge was pulled up so the ladies couldn’t swarm the castle before the ball officially opened, but there they were. A hundred of them at least.

Wrindel threw up a hand and waved.

I pulled his hand down. “Don’t encourage—“

I broke off at the sound of a splash. I don’t know if the girls were pressing in on each other so much that someone fell, or if she jumped, but there was one elegant coiffure ruined, one ball gown turned into a heavy, sodden mass of petticoats. She spat out water and staggered toward the bank, looking close to tears.

“I call the first dance for you, darling!” Wrindel called, pointing at her. “I like your spirit.”

The crowd of girls cheered. The soaked girl lifted her hands in triumph.

Well, Wrindel was right about one thing. Clearly, these were not princesses.

“I’m going back inside,” I said. “This already feels like a long night and the sun is still in the sky.”

Chapter Five

Ellara

Of course, my sisters were particularly high maintenance before the ball. They were very put out because they had ordered a professional hair dresser and she canceled at the last moment—no doubt offered more money by some other rich girl. I braided and pinned and perfumed and dusted gold powder on their heads, sewed last-minute ribbons on their dresses and squeezed them into their gowns in what seemed a defiance of the very laws of nature.

But for once, I was glad to be busy, because it kept my mind off of my own business.

The only potential hitch in my escape was that my stepmother was not going to the ball, of course. I had a plan for her, but it was not the sort of thing I usually attempted.

I had picked up every last strand of saffron from the floor and put it back in the paper, given it to Ferthin and begged him to trade it for a sleeping potion. He came through—or at least, I hoped he did. I wouldn’t really know until I tested it. I would give it to my stepmother when she had her evening wine.

If that didn’t work, I would have to sic the mice on her, which I hated to do because I feared she might kill them.

“Ouch!” Gwyn pretended I had stuck her with a pin. “You clumsy oaf.”

I decided that when I was a rich woman in Cabria, and lived in some airy estate, I would commission a portrait of myself standing in front of my mansion just to send home. It would be the only gift I ever gave them.

Finally, it was time for them to leave. Out my attic window, I watched them climb into a hired carriage with gilded doors. My stepmother had spent a pretty bit of coin on that, and I wondered if the prince would even notice their arrival. And then I gazed for a moment at other carriages going by, and glimpsed other ladies peering out of curtains, young women with faces full of excitement and hope. Others were walking by, perhaps able to afford a gown but not a carriage. I would bet some of them rented their gowns. No one would pass up an opportunity to dance with Prince Ithrin. The whole city was infused with the air of a holiday.

For a moment, I had a pang of jealousy.

I don’t care, I told myself.

Princes! What a lot of talk over nothing. I imagined princes were just ordinary men with crowns. And I never thought about men, confined as I was.

Well… I bit my lip. I did get such fuzzy feelings when Ferthin was nice to me, and sometimes—thought I hated to admit it—I found myself watching the postman, who was twice my age and not even very handsome, but very tall with a crooked, reluctant smile that made receiving it feel like quite a prize. And then there was the book I had found shoved under Gwyn’s bed, with the pictures of slender elves tangled together in some very creative positions that made me blush all the way down my body… I could not help but wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to dance—to be held close—

I suddenly noticed my father’s own carriage going by, having come out of our stables. My stepmother was inside, wearing her black cloak.

She’s gone.

What a stroke of luck. I didn’t even need the sleeping potion.

I came downstairs. The cook was waiting for me, looking out of place in the parlor with flour dusting her clothes. “The mistress has gone out. She said to have a hot bowl of soup and a hot bath waiting when she gets back, in an hour or so. The tub needs a bit of scrubbing.”

“Where did she go at this hour?”

“None of my business, nor yours.”

The cook loved to tell me that things weren’t my business. “Well, I’d better go draw more water.”

I went out the back door. There was a little alley for delivery carriages and servants to go in and out unnoticed, and a garden surrounded by a high stone wall climbing with vines. It was a wealthy part of town where all the houses had gardens behind them. As soon as I walked out, sparrows hopped toward me hopefully. I often brought treats to feed the songbirds.

“Sorry,” I said. “Nothing today.” I swung open the gate, looking ahead to the well—but beside it was a woman I had never seen before.

A goblin woman, who looked so much like my dim memories of my mother that I started shaking all over.

“Ellara!” she cried, reaching for my hands. “Thank the gods, you are even more beautiful than Elka.”

My eyes widened and I glanced around in confusion. “Did—did Mr. Hassari send you?”

“I don’t know who that is,” she said dismissively. “I am your Aunt Kayska. Your godmother. Sworn to care for you like my own in the event of your mother’s death. It has taken me all this time to get to you, since you’ve been in this damned elf country. And you’ve been through hell, I see. Just look at you! Where are your claws?”

“My stepmother makes me trim them.”

“Well, for our purposes now, it’s for the best. But this ends now. It ends tonight.”

“I—Aunt Kayska? How did you get here?”

“I sailed in. King Nyar is back on his seat and all’s right in the goblin kingdom again. He funded my passage. I got here with no time to spare. You’re going to the prince’s ball, my love. Oh yes.”

“That isn’t—exactly—necessary,” I said. “I actually have my own plan to escape already. My father left me money. His old business partner is going to help me get away to my birthright in Cabria. Spice farms.”

“Cabria? Spice farms? I don’t know what you’re going on about, but you don’t belong in Cabria, no, no, no.” She took a slender stick out of her pocket. A stick? It was sparkling. A wand, maybe. “Don’t you want to show up the stepsisters who have tormented you?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Do you remember the letters you used to write me? You hated those girls from the moment they arrived. And it doesn’t take a master of logic to deduce that the situation hasn’t improved since your father died. You look like a scullery maid! They’re at the ball now, aren’t they? Dressed up beautifully, hoping to catch the prince’s eye, while you’re here hauling buckets…?”

“That is true,” I said. “But—Mr. Hassari is sending his man for me.”

“I’ll speak to Mr. Hassari’s man, then, and explain the situation to him. You will go to the ball and captivate the prince, and the looks on your sister’s faces will be worth everything you’ve ever suffered.”

Well, it didn’t really take that much to convince me. I wanted to see exactly those sorts of looks on their faces.

“All right,” I said. “But—the ball is starting any minute, and I’d have to steal one of their dresses, and my hair—“

“Shh shh. Don’t you remember? I’m a witch. I have it all planned out. Hold out your hand.”

I put down the bucket and lifted my palm.

She took out a bottle of potion and sprinkled it on my skin. Then she handed me a pair of elbow-length gloves made of fabric so fine that both gloves together hardly weighed more than a thimble. “Put those on.”

I drew them over my forearms, although I felt ridiculous drawing fine gloves on under the threadbare sleeves of my dress.

She waved the wand around me, chanting spell words, and my clothes began to shift around my body. The hem of my tattered, dirty wool skirt fell lower and fluffed out around me, transforming into layers of sheer, shimmering fabric the color of sky-shadows on ice, white and blue and slightly gray in certain lights. Bright, yet mysterious. The skirt was voluminous, and puffed sleeves hung on the precipice of my shoulders. The neckline was not as low as my stepsisters’ gowns, but the fragile fabric didn’t leave as much to the imagination as I would like. I had the fleeting thought of wondering where my underthings had gone.

Something had happened with my hair, too. My dark curls were drawn up into some semblance of being tamed, with a ribbon and a jeweled comb.

Aunt Kayska nodded at her handiwork. “When you meet the prince, say his name in greeting, and then take off your gloves and touch his hand. He will be enchanted by you and will dance with you, to the envy of your stepsisters and everyone else. Don’t take the glove off before then.”

“All right…” I looked at my hands, hoping I could get the gloves off gracefully. I was very nervous. “Not many goblins at the elven court,” I said.

“Your hair covers your horns, so your fangs are the only giveaway,” she said. “If you don’t speak much, no one will even notice. You’re a lovely girl, too lovely for a goblin, just like your mother. Not that I would encourage you to hide what you are, on any normal day. But—there is a time and a place. You deserve a moment to show those elves not to mess with a goblin clan.”

I grinned. It was going to be delicious to see the looks on Gwyn and Cerra’s faces, to be sure.

“How will I get there?” I asked, lifting my skirt. My shoes had changed too. My sturdy work shoes had been transformed into slippers made of glass. They matched my ice-blue dress beautifully and fit my feet very well. But they also had dainty heels, and I wasn’t so sure about walking to the palace in them, besides that it was too late to start walking.

Aunt Kayska glanced around and spotted a large pumpkin growing in the garden. “You shall have a carriage. But—bear in mind—this enchantment will only last until midnight. I can’t keep up magic like this for very long.” As she spoke, she hauled up the heavy pumpkin and lugged it toward the gate. She didn’t even cut the vines. The pumpkin patch was so sprawling that the vines almost reached.

A goblin man was waiting in the street. “Here—let me help you with that.” He yanked on the pumpkin. I think they might have uprooted the plant. The cook wasn’t going to be very happy.

“And who are you, sir?” I asked.

“Just her escort. I mean, guard escort, not—romantic escort. Your aunt, that is. Your aunt’s guard.” He flushed, fumbled with the pumpkin, almost dropped it, and then bowed to me. “Rovak, adviser to King Nyar, young miss. I knew your mother.”

“Oh. Pleased to meet you.” I had to take a step back as Kayska waved her wand at the pumpkin and it started to plump up, the vines twisting into a chassis and wheels.

At this point, we had caused enough commotion that the cook came running out. “What on earth is going on—“

Kayska blasted her with her wand. The cook fell backwards, unconscious.

I snorted a laugh.

“I swore,” Kayska said, “that if I ever made it here to the elven realm, I would take good care of you. Whoever that was, she’s not waking up for three days.”

“That’s good. Because she would certainly tell my stepmother what happened as soon as she gets home.” The carriage was taking a fine shape by now, with a door and a gold ornament instead of a stem. The interior of the pumpkin was not pulp and seeds, but two upholstered seats.

“Oh, your stepmother, I am giving her a piece of my mind.” She waved her wand again and I realized my mice and spiders were gathering around my feet.

Aunt Kayska smiled at me. “You take after your mother. Trusted by beasts of forest and field.”

“More like the creatures of city streets, but…” I smiled back. “Mother spoke to animals too?”

“Yes. She was not a studied witch to the degree that I was, but this was one of her natural talents. And the fact that you share it makes my job all the easier.” She waved her wand.

The mice and spiders started to transform. The mice became four beautiful white horses, and the spiders became two coachmen with spindly arms and legs.

My mouth might have dropped open and stayed there for a good minute or two while the spider-coachmen bowed to me and one of them opened the carriage door. My spider friends had the faces of lean, craggy men with dark hair, and they were looking at me like they had always been my servants. It was too strange.

“Sp—spiders—?”

“Raaaah,” one of them said, like he was testing his voice.

“They don’t really speak,” Kayska said.

“But they know how to drive a coach?”

“Magic is about intent. I didn’t give them the magic to speak. It’s not really necessary.”

“That’s a little creepy.”

The spider coachmen’s faces fell.

“I mean—you’re fine,” I hastily assured them.

Kayska waved a hand. “Go on, my dear. You have a ball to attend and no time to waste. You’re in good hands. I will manage Mr. Hassari…and your stepmother.”

Chapter Six

Ellara

I climbed into the plush interior, trailing my hand across the seats, wishing I could take off my gloves. It smelled like something new, and it was astonishing that it was all magic, and that it would all vanish in just a few hours. I would never admit how thrilled I was to be a part of this night. I had never cared about the prince, but for once, I almost thought I belonged somewhere.

The horses trotted along confidently like they had always been horses, and the spider-coachman steered through the traffic like they had always been coachmen.

Before long, the Palace of Waterfalls was visible. Even though it was just a few miles from my house, I hadn’t seen more than the highest tips of its tower over our neighbor’s rooftop since my stepmother forbade me from leaving the house.

The palace was as stunning as I remembered, and I think I remembered it perfectly. It was built into the side of a cliff, where streams emerged from the rocks, and long ago, the elves had engineered a series of channels that went all through the castle, bringing fresh running water through the entire palace. On each of the palace’s four levels, waterfalls cascaded down into pools on the next level, until finally they reached a moat where strange flowers grew in the clear waters. The palace itself was made of pale gray stone, and had tall windows. One central tower was flanked by two smaller ones, and each level had balconies jutting out to circle the pools. On such a night, all the balconies were lit with colored lights, which sparkled on the waters.

The palace was also swamped with girls. I was definitely late, but it didn’t matter. There was still a press of girls waiting to get in, crowding the drawbridge. My carriage drew to a stop in the front. Girls were still straggling in on foot, but perhaps I was the last one to arrive in a carriage, because everyone was pointing at my conveyance and then to me. My spider coachman helped me out, and then pointed at the clock tower of the High Court, which was visible from the palace.

“You will be back before midnight?” I asked him.

He nodded.

I gathered up handfuls of voluminous skirt and went, rather self-consciously, to join the crowds on the drawbridge.

My stepsisters were nowhere to be seen. They must be inside already. That was a relief, at least. I didn’t want them to find me before I had a chance to enchant the prince.

But everyone was looking at me, although they were being more subtle and polite now. I hadn’t been around other young women (and, indeed, a few very optimistic not-so-young women were here too) in a long time. The first thing I noticed was that most of these women seemed like proper elves: exquisitely graceful, speaking in soft voices, projecting a dignity that my stepsisters could only grasp at.

This was how I remembered my father. I quickly found myself trying to emulate them, but I’m not sure I could do more than grasp at it either. It’s harder to reach the pinnacle of elegant grace when you’re short and you have a thick rat’s nest of hair, no matter how many jeweled combs you jam into it.

I tried to stand on my tip-toes, my heels lifting out of the rigid glass shoes, and up ahead I saw palace guards letting girls through the doors in pairs.

A willowy girl standing beside me glanced at me. “I have never seen you before,” she said.

“Mm.” I shrugged. I was trying not to show off my fangs.

“Where are you from?”

“The—border of—Lainsland.”

“A lot of the girls here are very low born,” she said. I sensed she was trying to sniff out whether I was one of them, and I’m not sure she noticed my fangs; maybe it was too dark. “Well,” she said, “good luck tonight. I heard there are over three hundred girls here.”

“I’m happy just to…bask in the atmosphere,” I said.

She smiled. “Yes. Some of the girls are so obsessed with actually marrying the prince. I think they’re quite ridiculous. Marry that man? I’m just curious to see him up close.”

“Yes, I feel the same,” I said, which was true. I certainly didn’t need the prince now, with a goblin witch godmother and a mysterious benefactor, not that I had ever been the marry-a-strange-prince type even if it had been an option.

Another girl poked her head in. She was black-haired, with red feathers in her braids. “You know the rumors about him, then?”

“I heard…something,” I said. “But gossip is slow to reach the border.”

The willowy girl said, “I heard that ever since the black fever wiped out half the royal family, he’s been strange. Touched by death. And now he dabbles in the dark arts.”

Red Feathers didn’t look deterred. The opposite, actually. Absurdly, it made me feel competitive. “And have you seen him?” she asked. “Delicious as sin.”

“Sin isn’t delicious,” Willowy said. “Sin is sin. And the dark arts are a sin too. You don’t want to mess with such things!”

“Hmm.” Red Feathers shrugged.

“I still do want to see him, though,” Willowy admitted. “But that’s all.”

Well, I had to admit, now I did too. I’d never met anyone who dabbled in dark arts before.

We edged closer to the entrance. Some of the girls were getting stopped and questioned by the guards. I could hear the music, magnificent airs of strings and harp to match the refined dances of the elven court…

Gods, I didn’t know any dances.

I hadn’t even thought about that.

I heard the clock outside strike nine, stirring impatience inside me. I had three hours. It would be gone in a flash.

But before long, I reached the doors. The guards waved me through. I paused in front of them, waiting to be evaluated.

“Go,” Red Feathers whispered, and I realized that the wave meant I had been approved. Should I have known? I felt like I didn’t know how anything worked. I almost tripped on my slippers crossing the threshold.

We came in through a grand hall, with its square pools of water and fountains and soaring marble columns. What had seemed a crowd on the drawbridge was now dwarfed by the room. Girls wandered forward slowly, marveling at the fountains that were shaped fancifully like fish spraying water from their mouths and mermaids splashing, and I don’t think I was the only one slightly dazed. We followed the music to the ballroom. A large dance floor was packed with dancers, including plenty of court men to occupy the ladies when they weren’t meeting the prince. A staircase led up to an observation balcony and then back down around to the dance floor again. Here, a new line trailed up those stairs, where I believe the prince was meeting each girl. I watched for a moment.

The girl at the front of the line stepped forward, beckoned by a guard. She curtseyed to a tall, fair man. He took her hand a moment, exchanging pleasantries, and then she went down the other set of stairs. The next girl followed behind her. I wandered to the end of the line.

The girl ahead of me already looked bored, although she couldn’t have been there for long. Red Feathers came in behind me, followed by Willowy.

“This isn’t as romantic as I hoped,” Willowy said, looking at the line in dismay. “Is he meeting everyone? Will he tell us if we’ve been chosen for a dance?”

“You got here just in time,” Bored Girl said. She had a Docktown accent, so I don’t think she was rich and now I wondered if she was only pretending to be bored. “King Borel said they’re about to start the dances. This reception is just to be sure he gets a good look at everyone. I’m sure he’s making his choices, but he isn’t telling anyone.”

Willowy looked fretful, twisting her hands. “My nerves,” she said. “I’m sure he won’t choose me to dance, anyway. But my nerves.” So much for her just wanting to get a look at him.

“But once we’ve been through the line we can dance with anyone we like. And there are a lot of handsome men here,” Red Feathers said.

I kept quiet, searching the crowd for my dreaded stepsisters. It didn’t take me long to spot them. Cerra’s strawberry blonde locks were unusual, and I was certainly familiar with her hairstyle. They stood on the sidelines, talking to each other, not dancing with anyone. Gwyn’s arms were crossed. I could tell they weren’t having a good time from a mile away.

I chuckled.

The line snaked up the stairs, step by step. It was moving pretty fast, actually. Only two more girls joined the end and someone announced that it was cut off. I was one of the last girls here. The prince must be getting tired of looking at strange faces; I would. I felt a little sorry for him.

We edged up and I made it to the top. From here, I could finally see this prince everyone was talking about.

He was absolutely beautiful.

Damn it. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking of the prince. I wasn’t here for him. I was here to be the envy of my sisters.

But he was. He was tall and graceful, with dark eyes that were, just now, beautifully shadows by the ridge of his lashes as he greeted a girl three places ahead of me. Those dark eyes offset his fair hair and pale skin. He was blonde in the way that only elves were blonde, like he was made of marble and moonlight. And he had those exquisite elven hands, with long expressive fingers, delicate enough to look suited to playing an instrument and yet too large and strong to be feminine.

His clothes were a somber black and gray, and very simple, adorned only with silver clasps and an ornamental sword. He wasn’t wearing a crown or anything like I somehow expected of princes. The simple black was striking against his fair skin.

I felt a traitorous little thread of giddiness worm through my body.

I was next in line now. Soon, he would look me in the eyes. Bored Girl approached with a curtsey.

“Greetings,” the prince said, his voice dry and disinterested. He sounded a little older than his years. “And what is your name?”

“Rowena Mirel, your majesty.”

“I hope you’re having a good evening.”

“Yes—yes, indeed, your majesty. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Please, enjoy yourself.” He nodded. A guard waved for her to keep going.

And that was that.

“Miss?” another guard said to me. “It’s your turn.”

I flushed, my heart suddenly exploding out of me. His eyes met mine.

For all his strength and authority, he seemed a bit hollowed out when I stood this close to him. Shadows surrounded the fair prince, and I wondered if it was true, that he dabbled in dark magic. I barely remembered the death of the queen and the two eldest royal children. I was an infant when the black fever swept the land, claiming my mother, but the prince would have been six or seven. It must have devastated him.

“Come on, miss,” Prince Ithrin said. “No need to be shy. They want to get the dance going soon.” He glanced behind me, finding the end of the line. I think he was relieved.

I walked up to the prince, scrambling to remember what I was supposed to do. I was frozen between the curtsey and taking off my glove and ended up doing an odd half-bow before tearing my glove off.

“Good evening,” he said, arching a brow slightly.

“Prince Ithrin,” I said, remembering myself.

His eyes widened a little when he saw my fangs, although I had been trying not to open my mouth too much. “A goblin?” he said.

“Half-goblin,” I said. I held out my hand. He glanced at it. The handshake seemed to be a breach of protocol. How was I supposed to touch him, then? I would have to grab him. He wasn’t wearing gloves. That was fortunate, at least. But I couldn’t just grab a prince.

“I just wanted to meet you and say that I hope we are able to do business together someday,” I said. “I am about to sail to Cabria to claim my stake in a saffron farm. My father used to import the best spices in Wyndyr, and I’d like to offer you superior prices.”

I really had no idea where that came from, except that I knew people shook hands when you talked to them about business. I kept mine held out.

He seemed a little puzzled now, but he took my hand. “What is your name?” he asked.

“Ellara…,” I said, but I faltered.

When his palm made contact with mine, it was like a firework exploding inside me. Something was happening to me. Something very strange.

Chapter Seven

Prince Ithrin

I had almost made it through the reception, which was a miracle. Every moment I was tempted to stalk off. It was even worse than I expected. Father thought this was an ideal way to meet a woman—to just go down a line. He believed in love at first sight, the way Wrindel did, except Father was a little more inclined to monogamy than my hopeless brother.

I didn’t believe in love at first sight or even love in an evening. Certainly not in these circumstances. The concept of a beautiful girl loses all meaning when faced with a hundred of them. (Or three hundred at last count, gods help me.) It’s like saying ‘a hundred desserts’—it sounds good on paper, until you try to taste them all. One hundred bites of dessert is about ninety bites too many. Then again, I had always been more for the savory course.

The point is, none of them stood out. In fact, I think I only remembered the terrible ones. Either way, I would marry for money. If I had to make my choice in an evening, money was more faithful than love.

Then, one of the last girls appeared. A scrawny thing, but strangely alluring, not like any elven girl I had ever seen. She had a wildness about her, a spark, like she belonged somewhere else, with her thick tousled hair and the golden sheen in her eyes. Even her dress was strange, the fabric light and semi-translucent as if conjured from magic.

I don’t know what it was, why she stood out. It seemed to transcend her appearance. Or maybe I just wanted to think so. I didn’t want to think I was like Wrindel, lured only by a pretty face.

Deep down, I wanted my wife to be the sort of girl who would make my family feel whole again. I remembered the sound of my older siblings running down halls, my mother singing, my father’s hearty laugh. When they died, all that was left of us was the facade of elven royalty. We looked the part, offering our people regal benevolence.

When the girl spoke, her mouth was crowded with sharp teeth, and I realized she was a goblin. A goblin, daring to attend my ball! Goblins were rare in these lands and not the most popular of races—usually the goblins and faeries stuck together as the rogues of the realm.

I knew I shouldn’t be intrigued, but at least it distinguished her from every other girl here. It showed that she was bold.

And then she started saying something about saffron farms and trading, speaking a little too fast so it was hard to understand her. She was trying to pretend she wasn’t here with the hopes of becoming my princess, like everyone else, but she hadn’t quite fooled me. She wasn’t composed. Her cheeks were flushed.

Still, I liked her. Not enough to call it love at first sight or anything close, but enough to dance with her, enough to be pleased that I could see the hard outlines of her nipples beneath her thin dress. If I had to choose someone…she was a prospect.

I took the nervous hand she offered me, and was hit by magic like a lightning strike.

It spread from her hand straight down to my cock. Hot, all-consuming desire. For a moment, I was too overcome by it to do more than squeeze her little hand.

I knew enough about magic to guess at this feeling.

They called it a love potion, but you couldn’t really create love from a potion.

You could create lust. A lust that might snare a man forever into marrying a goblin trickster.

The little witch.

I kept composed. I always kept composed. I broke into a cold sweat, my cock throbbing, every nerve in my body suddenly screaming to take her into my arms. She was even more flushed than before, her shoulders hunching slightly as the potion surged through her. I forced myself to remain still, although I felt the same.

She was never going to know how well it worked. She was certainly not going to catch me in her trap.

Chapter Eight

Ellara

I had no idea what was happening. I mean, objectively, it was magic. Definitely magic, and definitely it had something to do with the potion my aunt smeared on my hand. But I thought it was supposed to make him want to dance with me. Not—this.

An absolutely dizzying feeling was coursing through me. My breasts were tingling and I don’t even know what was going on between my legs. I was throbbing down there as if he had physically touched me with one of those beautiful hands of his. And now I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I needed him to actually touch me with one of those hands.

I could hardly breathe.

“Wait for me on the ballroom floor,” he said, in a voice that had suddenly turned to cold anger.

I was too bewildered to do more than nod. Had the enchantment hit me when it was supposed to hit him?

It must have, but he didn’t look as if he wanted me the way I wanted him.

The way my body wants him, thanks to a horrible spell, I corrected myself.

Well, Ellara, maybe he does feel it and he’s just upset at being manipulated, I thought, because I certainly was. My body was betraying me completely. The guard waved me on. I walked down the stairs, a little unsteady. My nether folds were so swollen that I could feel them rubbing against each other with every step. I had never been so…aware of myself. I wanted to look back at the prince so badly that it took every drop of willpower just to keep going.

I was very flushed and I didn’t want my stepsisters to see me. I saw tables arranged along one side of the room with towers of small confections and bowls of punch, and I found my way to the wall behind the tables. I could still see the prince from here, up on the balcony, but I was not visible to the dancers unless they came to get a drink.

I tried to collect myself. My body was in a state of feverish desire and my heart wouldn’t stop pounding. Had my aunt done this to me on purpose? The more I considered it, the more I thought she had known exactly what she was doing.

This was just terrible. Now the prince thought I had tricked him on purpose. And all I could think about was how much I wanted him to choose me. Choose me forever. Something deep inside my body said, Nothing and no one will ever satisfy you like that man.

“Shut up!” I hissed aloud to my inner thoughts.

A girl pouring herself a cup of punch shot a look at me, sitting behind the table. I had not even been aware of her. “Well, excuse me,” she said. “I wasn’t aware I’m not allowed to talk to myself.”

“No, not you. I’m talking to myself.”

“Oh. All right. Sorry. I’m just really nervous. You too, huh? The voices in our heads are always more cruel than real life.”

“Yeah.” Or more naughty. Way, way more naughty.

A drum began to pound, the dance music swelling into a theme of grandeur. The prince descended the stairs. I stood up so he could see me, almost against my will, like my movements were dictated by his. He approached me and held out his hand.

“Your majesty,” one of his attendants said. “Some of the other girls have been waiting a long time. This girl was one of the last to arrive.”

“I’m dancing with this one first,” he said. “Then, I will go in the proper order.”

“Very well, sir.”

I took his hand with apprehension. He looked at me with slightly lowered eyelids. I felt like I could sink into the darkness of his eyes—maybe not in a good way. He put a hand on the small of my back. His touch was like fire, every movement of his hands sending sparks to the core of my being. He pulled me against him, and I felt the hard length of his desire throbbing under his trousers and jacket. Gods. It was like Gwyn’s book, but it felt larger than I expected.

“What have you done?” he demanded into my ear. Merry dance music started up, and he tugged me forward.

“I didn’t mean to do anything. I—I don’t really know what’s happening.”

The other dancers had pulled away from us. Hundreds of eyes were staring at us. They were all appraising me, the first girl the prince had chosen for his dance. I heard whispers and was self-conscious about opening my mouth anymore, to show my fangs.

Besides that, the longer he touched me, the more responsive my body was to his presence. The spell had set something in motion that I didn’t know how to stop. My breasts ached. I felt like I could smell his skin. Little pulses of pleasure throbbed within me when his hands shifted. I felt his cock throb against the soft skin of my stomach, through my filmy dress, and I had some mad desire to stroke it.

I knew it wasn’t me. It was the spell. But it was swamping my senses so that I didn’t care about anything else. I wanted his mouth on me, his hands on me, his cock inside me. I felt like I was losing my virginity inside my mind, right here on the dance floor.

I could see him battling it, too. His hand lowered a little, to my tailbone. He kept me pressed close against him, dancing slowly.

“You don’t know how to dance, do you?”

“I’m—afraid not.”

“Of course you don’t…” His voice was a little husky. The sound of it in my ear made me feel as if I’d heard that voice a hundred times before. Like I knew him, and I knew everything he might do to me, and it was all I had ever wanted. I felt that hand of his, so close to my ass, and I wished he would reach deeper. Touch me, oh gods…

Not that I really wanted him to touch me in front of the whole court. But the thought of it…

The waves of pleasure were starting to come faster. They shimmered down my whole body and twisted in my core, and it felt so good I think my eyes rolled back a little. Wet heat trickled down my leg. I gripped his sleeve. “I’m scared. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“Are you—having an orgasm—from a dance?”

“I don’t know what that is. I’m—I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, I swear. My body is doing strange things. I feel like I’m going to explode.”

His cock throbbed against me again. It was too much. I clawed at his jacket, breathing strangely. The longer I stayed close to him, the more overstimulated I became, and I knew I should break away, but I couldn’t.

He put his hand on the back of my head and pressed my face against his jacket, hiding me from the crowd. I shut my eyes and for a moment I hardly knew where I was, except in his arms. I stumbled along where his steps led us, barely able to walk with the sensations coursing through me. It was torture to move; it only seemed to draw it out longer. “Ohh,” I breathed. I clung to him, my breath quick as the pulsing feeling quickly built. Then it passed through me in another moment, leaving me spent and yet unsatisfied. And definitely confused.

And really embarrassed.

My grip on his jacket loosened. I realized people were murmuring louder now. We must have looked very intimate. My cheeks burned.

And then I noticed my stepsisters, mouths hanging wide open. Their faces crackled with such fury that I would not have been surprised if they electrocuted anyone they touched, their hands clenched around folding fans. How had this looked from their perspective? I knew they must have seen the prince lead me to the dance floor before anyone else, seen the prince wrap his arms tight around me, seen him hold my head against his chest. Whatever the true circumstances, it must look like he had chosen me.

For that, it might have all been worth it.

“Are you quite done?” Ithrin asked.

“I—“

“You really don’t have any idea what that spell was, do you…? You’ve put me in a terrible position.”

“I’m sorry. If I could explain…”

“If you can explain, then you do know what you’ve done.”

“No, I really don’t. I mean, I have an inkling. That’s all. I never meant for that to happen.”

He frowned, and grabbed my wrist. “Stay close to me.”

Chapter Nine

Prince Ithrin

When I saw Ellara’s face flush and her eyes glaze like that, it was all I could do not to rip her clothes off right there in the center of the dance floor and fuck her in front of the entire court.

Which was definitely not a thought that came from my rational mind.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t have sexual desires, as Wrindel seemed to think. It was just that I didn’t advertise them to the entire court at all times, nor hand them out to any blushing young lady, bored widow, attractive housemaid, or convenient courtesan I could find.

I had to break this spell before I did anything else. Otherwise, I wasn’t going to be able to dance with the other girls or really, do much of anything. I hadn’t succumbed to the spell to the degree Ellara had, but—most likely that was only because I had experience exerting control over a spell. I wasn’t about to let this damned enchantment get any ideas. I knew how spells like this worked. In some kingdoms, they were used habitually with arranged marriages to ease apprehensions. If I had sex with this girl, it would all die down, but it would never go away. I needed an actual antidote.

Wrindel tried to catch my eye as I hauled Ellara off the dance floor. I ignored him. He was the last person I wanted to discuss this with.

I knew every secret passage and servants’ corridor in the place, so I rushed off toward the hall and immediately ducked through a hidden door, hopefully deterring anyone who might follow us. I ran down the hall, dragging her behind me, up the stairs. Even through the stone walls, I could faintly hear the waterfalls.

We emerged in my own bedroom. I locked every door.

Now she was panting from exertion, but she looked around with wide eyes, taking in the high ceilings, the bookshelf, the large table where I practiced my secretive spell work, strewn with more books and candles with wax dripping everywhere. “Is this—your room?”

“Yes.” I chose a spell book from the overstuffed shelf.

“You don’t have servants?” she asked, looking at the rumpled bedcovers.

“I don’t like the servants to come in here,” I said. I kept the door locked and kept the room tidy—such as it was—myself. “I’m a very private person. Just—have a seat. I need to find an antidote.”

“It must be hard to be a private person and a prince,” she said. “All those girls swooning over you today. I felt uncomfortable just thinking about it.”

“I don’t think anyone swooned harder than you,” I said.

“It wasn’t me. It was a spell.” She looked down at the ornate rugs, up to the guardian animal heads carved into the stone ceiling.

“I suppose you’ve never seen such a place,” I said.

“My house isn't too shabby either,” she fired back. “It’s only…my position in it that has changed.” She looked at me. “Please let me explain.”

“Yes. Feel free. I would love to know how on earth you thought this was a good idea, if you had an inkling.”

“I was being honest when we met,” she said. “I really am planning to go to Cabria. I don’t care about dancing with you, much less marrying you.”

“Forgive me if I find that hard to believe. Everyone wants to marry me.”

“I mean it,” she said. “I don’t want to live with high elves anymore. I’ve been treated so cruelly by my stepmother and stepsisters that I am very happy to say goodbye to Wyndyr forever. Any good memories I might have had of my father’s world have long since been stomped on in the years since his death. I want to start a new life. Maybe go to my mother’s people, eventually.”

“If that’s true, then…how did we get here?” I wasn’t looking at her, but was paging through the book quickly, struggling to fend off the magic that demanded I do anything to her but talk.

“So…first, my father’s old business partner came from Cabria to tell me I had an inheritance there. And I planned to leave with him tonight. But while I was waiting for his man to show, my goblin aunt turned up unexpectedly. She was the one who said I should go to the ball before I left. Not so I could marry you, but just so my stepsisters could see me looking beautiful and having a dance with you.”

“Your stepsisters,” I said. “You’re an orphan, then, I take it? And you don’t get along with your stepfamily.”

“No reasonable person could get along with my stepfamily! They’re the worst. My father was a very wealthy merchant, and as soon as he died they took everything from me. All the things he ever bought me, my bedroom, my bed itself. They treat me like the lowest of servants and I’m not even allowed to leave because they’re ashamed that I have goblin blood. Well, I don’t know if you care. I guess you probably don’t like goblins either.”

I looked up from the book. “They have a reputation.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said, crossing her arms.

“Except that your godmother cast a spell on the prince of the realm and ruined the entire ball,” I said. “Do you realize she could be hanged for such a thing?”

Her face went ashen. “Oh, no,” she said. “You wouldn’t do that, would you? It was an accident. Or—maybe it wasn’t, but…she meant well, I think.”

“I don’t think such a spell could possibly mean well. She wanted to force me into marrying you, a girl who offers me no sort of productive alliance.”

“Well, what about me? I’m being forced the same as you are.”

“But you’re getting a prince out of it.”

“And you’re getting an heiress.”

“How much are you worth?”

“Well—I’m not sure—yet. It’s complicated.” I think she realized she was in over her head, but was reluctant to admit it. I kept trying to look at the book but my eyes wanted to adhere themselves to her. She finally sat down, atop my bed mattress, only she didn’t so much sit as she lounged. Her dress was made of some slinky fabric that clung to her small body, giving her a very different air from all the stiff, primped women I had left behind in the ballroom.

I found myself staring at the way her collarbone led to the curve of her shoulder, with one messy dark curl falling across it. There was something insolent about her pose, slouching on my bed. My cock had been as hard as a rock from the moment we touched and it only seemed to get worse as time went on.

It’s only the magic.

But I’d been thinking about her even before the magic hit me. I think that made it worse.

Even if it wasn’t the magic, I couldn’t marry a girl like this. A goblin girl. She would be an embarrassment.

“You were joking, weren’t you?” she asked nervously.

“About the hanging? Probably. But it isn’t a joke. If I were to skip my own ball and indulge in congress with you instead, I would be bound to you forever. I am not the sort of man who sleeps around. So, it is out of the question. We have to lift the spell and forget this ever happened.”

“Fine with me. Have you found anything?”

“Not yet.”

After a moment, she slid off the bed, onto her feet, and padded over to peer at my book. “Is it true that you know dark magic?” she asked.

“We won’t get into that.”

“It is true…,” she murmured.

“I never said it was.”

“But you would deny it immediately, if it wasn’t true.” She paused. “Do you ever talk to the dead? Have seances?”

I shook my head. I could feel her presence, so close to mine. I had found a spell that might work to lift this compulsion. There was an illustration of two bodies standing, skin to skin, and I wished she wasn’t looking over my shoulder as I read the description.

“I suppose that’s not really how it works,” she said. “A prince wouldn’t really have a seance. Too dangerous, probably.”

“No, I have had seances before,” I said, despite my better judgment.

She had no idea what she was asking about. I knew I should never have tried to contact the dead. The feeling was as elusive as a drug. I always thought, This will be the last time, the time I have closure.

And I always came back again, drawing the curtains and lighting the candles, turning back the veil between worlds in the middle of the night when no one was the wiser. Why did I do it? I told myself it was always with the hope of hearing their voices again.

But I knew that it had become more than that, long ago.

I sighed. “It’s better not to dabble in those things.”

“But you’ve done it? Did you talk to the dead?”

“I have.”

She paused. “Do you think I could ever talk to my parents?”

“It isn’t wise.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I suppose I’m not a wise man.” I rubbed my fingers along the bridge of my nose. “Do you have a question for them? Or do you just miss them?”

“I do have a question,” she said. “I want to know if my stepmother poisoned my father, or if it was just a heart attack like the coroner said.”

“That is quite a question,” I said. “Is your stepmother that bad?”

“Every bit as bad, and worse.”

I clapped the book shut, releasing enough dust that I sneezed. “We’re lifting this spell,” I insisted.

“Do we need to stand together like that picture?” she asked. “So close?”

“Yes,” I said.

Her little tongue grazed along her fangs. I’m not sure she realized she had even made the gesture, but it made my cock throb painfully. It would have been so easy to give in. A part of me wanted that release far more than I wanted to retain my honor or hers. A tempting voice within me whispered, Who cares if it’s only a spell? Wouldn’t it be better to succumb to a spell, succumb to exquisite pleasure with an intriguing girl than marry a woman solely for her money?

I shoved my chair back and approached her.

Chapter Ten

Ellara

I looked up at him. I think he was taller than my father. It was hard to remember. All I knew was that it had been a very long time since I was so close to a man. I hadn’t realized how much I yearned for the comforting strength of a male presence, yearned to indulge in the dream that this prince cared about protecting me.

He put his hands to my waist and urged me closer, until our bodies were touching, my nose rubbing his jacket, my head tucked under his chin. He held out his arms, his palms facing mine, and found my fingers. He laced them with mine. My body was starting to respond to him as it had before, as if my fingers were more sensitive than they had ever been before. Just weaving them between his felt potent and exciting. I arched into him, pressing my stomach into his cock.

He made a sharp exhalation. He was starting to unwind for me, I thought. The spell was getting to him. And a part of me wanted it to get to him, wanted magic to crack him open for me. I wanted to know all the mysteries that went on between a man and a woman, and I wanted to know them with him.

I forced my thoughts away from the heady physical sensations and remembered the spice farm and Cabria. I had to leave this place. I didn’t want to stay in this land where I had known nothing but pain and ostracism for the past six years. What I felt now was just a lie.

He cleared his throat.

“I’m going to say the words to break the spell,” he said. “Repeat them after me. But the most important thing is our will to break the spell. If you married me, you would be the only goblin in court, and you would never fit in. We would both be miserable, I’m sure. Think of that, and ignore this feeling that is trying to trick us.”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I had the same thought. I’m ready.”

He started to speak the spell words, and I had never heard this sort of proper spell-work before. It was beautiful, like poetry with an edge of something dangerous. His voice edged louder, and I followed suit. Our skin was growing very hot.

“Aloora omor amorus!” he called, with finality, and I repeated after him. The heat was still building. He gripped my hands tight.

I felt more aroused than ever.

He was quiet, looking into my eyes.

Then he craned his neck down toward me. His lips parted. My mouth opened eagerly to meet him.

I wanted to ask if we had managed to break the spell, but I quickly realized that this was my answer.

He led me backwards to the bed and pushed me down onto it as his tongue carefully dipped between my fangs, teasing my own tongue—and then, not just teasing, but shoving deeper, thrusting against mine as if in a preview of what else he might do. He tasted delicious. Whatever rational sense I might have had left was struggling to keep above water. I opened my legs to let his body come closer to mine. His weight settled on me a little heavier. My legs dangled off the bed.

Through my skirts, I felt his rigid manhood slide upward against my pelvis, stirring my senses, turning me to jelly. I moaned. He shoved up my skirts, finding bare skin underneath. The rod under his trousers, the rough wool fabric, slowly ground against my bare seam. My desire was rising quickly. His hand went to my hair—and met one of the horns concealed by my hairstyle.

He stopped kissing me, like this had snapped him back to reality. I went stiff beneath him now. Yes, that’s right, you’re still just a goblin.

“The antidote spell didn’t work,” he said.

“No…”

“Someone must have not really wanted it to work.”

I didn’t like his accusatory tone. “Well, it wasn’t me!” I said. “I was thinking about how much I wanted to escape this place, how I’m tired of being treated like dirt, just because my mother was a goblin.”

“It certainly wasn’t me,” he insisted.

“Are you completely sure?”

“Of course I am.”

“Who’s to say you’re not the one enjoying an excuse to escape from that ball?”

“You are very presumptuous to your future king,” he said, drawing out the words with royal entitlement.

Ohh. Maddeningly, the way he called himself ‘my future king’ made me wet. “You will not be my king,” I said. “I told you; I’m leaving Wyndyr. I think you’re the one who wants something forbidden tonight.”

“You know, I think my brother has already fucked half the kingdom,” he said. “Maybe I should just fuck you and damn the consequences, if that’s what you want.”

I had never actually said it was what I wanted, but…

I didn’t exactly correct him either.

He shoved the light, voluminous fabric of my skirts up higher across my chest and pushed my knees up toward my head, putting my wet sex on graceless display for him. That aroused me as much as the ‘my king’ business. I don’t know why. I should have been ashamed that the prince of the realm was getting a good look at my most intimate parts. I tried to master myself and then I wondered, was it so bad if I just gave in to this magic? But then what if I got pregnant? I didn’t even know how long it would take a ship to sail to Cabria, or how I would be treated when I got there, not as I was now, and certainly not if I had the elf prince’s bastard. It couldn’t possibly be a good idea.

What if Cabria is no better than here?

He looked at my legs and his expression softened. “What happened here? Your legs are covered in welts…”

“I forgot all about that. My stepmother was furious at me…”

“She beat you? This badly?”

“I told you she’s awful.”

“‘Awful’ is an understatement. It must hurt…” He sounded slightly impressed that I hadn’t mentioned it. He brushed a hand against my bottom, which had also felt the lash. “How far does this go? How often does she beat you like this?”

“This was a little worse than usual… I don’t really want to talk about it.” His grip slackened on my legs, and I lowered them again, pushing down my skirts. “Maybe I did ruin our attempt to lift the spell,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. Truly I didn’t. But…it was so nice to feel, for a moment, like I belonged to someone. Since my parents died, I’ve belonged to no one at all.”

He took my hand and pulled me up so I was sitting on the edge of the bed again. Then he cupped my face between his hands. “Ellara…”

Someone pounded on the door. Then the handle jiggled against the lock. “Ithrin! Are you in here? What are you doing? These girls are going to riot!”

“I’ll be there in a moment!” he called. He grimaced. “My brother. I knew I’d be interrupted before long. Ellara…I won’t harm you or your aunt. But we can’t go on like this.”

“N—no, I agree. Let’s try again.”

Now he drew me to my feet. I liked when he took my hands, and the way my skirts fluffed around me before settling down. I felt like a flower caught in the wind. I wasn’t used to feeling delicate and pretty anymore, although I dimly remembered being pleased with pretty dresses as a child. We stood together again, and recited the spell words.

I felt something knock my breath out of my chest for a moment, as if a hand had smacked against my breastbone. He clearly felt it too. We both stepped back. It was over quickly, leaving a faint ringing in my ears.

“Oh,” I gasped. “That must be it. We did it.”

He rubbed his hands. “Yes.” His dark eyes had turned unreadable. I don’t know what he was thinking.

“I am really sorry about this whole thing. But—it’s good we didn’t do anything we’d regret. And you can get back to your dances. I know you have a lot to do. All those girls. I don’t envy you, that’s for sure. You’ll have to waltz in double-time to get them all done.” I laughed faintly. I was babbling now. I knew the spell must have worked, but…I can’t say I really felt that different about him. I had thought he was beautiful even before the spell. Once my body had been awakened for him, I don’t know if it could be put to bed. But the intense, magically induced arousal had made me bold. Now that this was gone, I was nervous and flustered but just as attracted to him as ever. It made me want to push him away.

“Good night, Ellara. Tell your aunt to never use magic on any member of the high elf court again.” He left abruptly, leaving me standing in his bedroom all alone.

Chapter Eleven

Ellara

A moment later, another man peered in the doorway. He resembled Ithrin, but his face was more angular and lightly tanned, his eyes bright blue and alert. This must be Prince Wrindel, the playboy prince. Everyone gossiped about Wrindel. The brothers made me think of the moon and sun: one made for darkness and mystery, one for sunshine and pleasure.

“That was rude, wasn’t it?” Wrindel said, gesturing toward the hall where Ithrin must have just walked by. “Sorry, darling. He has no manners.” He took in the wrinkled state of my skirt. “Wait a minute…”

“We didn’t do anything,” I said. “It was actually my fault. My aunt cast a love spell on the two of us and we had to break the spell. Which we did. Easily.” I didn’t want to make any more trouble for Ithrin by stirring his brother to suspicion. I curtseyed, unsure what else to do. “So I’ll be going.”

Wrindel stuck to my side as I tried to leave. “A love spell on my brother? He must have been furious. He’s insistent that you can’t fall in love in one evening.”

“I’m sure he’s right…”

“You’re a goblin?”

“Half-goblin.”

“How did you end up here?”

“My mother married an elf. Pretty simple.”

He paused, catching my shoulder. “Can I see those teeth?”

“Why?”

“You’re right. That was rude,” he said. “Just not many goblins around here.”

I sort of grimaced at him briefly. I was pretty self-conscious of my teeth. Goblins didn’t even have neat little cat fangs. No, my teeth were all the same length like human or elf teeth, only sharp, and narrower, so that I had more of them.

“I know I’m not suitable for your court,” I said. “I never meant for anything to happen. I’ll be leaving now.”

“Oh, no need for that. Who said you’re not suitable for our court? Did Ithrin tell you that?”

“No, I don’t need anyone to tell me. I know how elves feel about goblins.”

“You know how some elves feel about goblins,” he said. “Come on.” He took my hand. “If we have a reputation for hostility against goblins, then we had better remedy it now.”

Wrindel gave me some champagne—which I had never tasted before—and managed to coerce me into a dance. He was very persuasive. Almost too persuasive, I thought. I could see how he had such a reputation for charm, and I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it for very long. After all, my stepmother had been fairly charming when my father first brought her home. However, I thought my stepsisters would lose their minds to see me dancing with yet another prince, although I couldn’t spot them in the crowd.

My eyes still kept roving toward Ithrin. There he was, brushing by one moment, dancing with another girl, looking as cold as ever. He was much more graceful when he danced with girls who actually knew how to dance, but there was no joy in it, or so I told myself.

He looked back at me. I felt like I’d been caught, and stumbled on Prince Wrindel’s feet.

“He’s awfully grim, isn’t he?” Wrindel sounded like he relished his brother’s discomfort during this event. “Every beautiful woman in the realm is here and he could have his pick.”

“Perhaps beauty isn’t everything, after all…,” I said.

Something I had never known was how my parents met, why my mother gave up everything to be with him, and why my father brought a goblin girl home to his own land. On one hand, people did say my mother was beautiful…but there was still a caveat to their voice. She was beautiful, but she was a goblin. And perhaps I was beautiful too, but I had inherited all of her goblin-ness. I wondered how she felt, stepping onto these shores. Did she feel regret? Did Father’s friends accept her right away? Was she terrified as she died of the black fever, far from her native land?

Truth be told, I had never liked to think about it.

“Beauty isn’t everything?” He laughed. “Only ugly people have to say things like that. And you might be a little dangerous, but you’re far from ugly.”

“It really isn’t everything, though,” I said. “We’ll all grow old in the end, if we’re lucky. I know you elves get there a little slower, but…”

He smirked. “You might be right for Ithrin after all.”

I didn’t lack for dancing partners, after both princes had graced me with their favor, but I couldn’t stop looking at Ithrin all night. And I don’t think he could stop looking at me either, though whenever I caught him, we both looked away.

The spell might have broken, but our encounter still felt unfinished.

Chapter Twelve

Prince Ithrin

When I returned to the ball, all the wealthy girls who were so desperate to marry into royalty swarmed me, voicing their displeasure in a din. Wealthy girls were spoiled, and spoiled girls were quick to complain. It was hard to imagine spending my life beside any of these women, but I danced with them dutifully.

Damned if I didn’t keep glancing at Ellara.

Damned if I didn’t keep thinking about those welts on her legs, and how I would like to have words with her stepmother… Here I was, dancing with Mindara Laforel of the Laforel Shipping Company, who had never known hardship in her life, and she was looking disgruntled that I had taken so long to dance with her. Ellara, meanwhile, had been bruised and beaten this entire time and not said a word about it.

That was all this feeling was, I thought. Some compassion for a girl who has been mistreated. But I also kept thinking about the taste of her. The languid, nimble way she moved. The strange pairing of graceful elven features and high cheekbones with her vivid golden eyes and mouth full of vicious teeth. Her conversation, candid and curious. I couldn’t help but think she would be different from the others.

This is it, isn’t it? That thing Wrindel calls ‘love at first sight’. Seeing a girl and thinking you know and like everything about her. But it’s an illusion. I’ll forget all about this tomorrow.

I noticed every person Ellara danced with. Count Mafy—hmph, no. He was known as a womanizer. He’d better not pull her aside and try anything. But she went straight from him to Ethrel Jorrin, a human boy who was the heir to some diamond mines. I didn’t really like that either. He was closer to her age. If she started to talk to him about spice farms, he might be interested.

“Prince Ithrin?” The girl I was dancing with called my attention back to her. She was sleek blonde elven perfection, with a musical voice, and I couldn’t even remember her name. “Are you all right?”

No, my heart wasn’t in this at all.

There was no way I could announce my engagement to any of these women. Except—

At that moment, I saw young Mr. Jorrin holding his pocket watch, and Ellara backing away. She must have asked him for the time, and was telling him she had to go. She gathered her skirts in her hands and rushed to the door.

In that moment, I knew I couldn’t let her leave.

“I’m sorry,” I told the fair girl, in the middle of our dance, releasing her from my grasp. Murmurs followed in my wake as people realized I was fleeing the room, and I ducked under a tray of food, trying to outrun anyone who might attempt to follow.

Ellara was running down the empty hall. The hall was now vast and hollow, everyone crammed into the ballroom. The gate was lifted, leading to the exit. I pounded after her. Her glass slippers made a strange dull click on the stone floors as she reached the passageway that led out over the moat. She glanced back and saw me.

“I have to go,” she panted.

“No—wait.” I took her arm and pulled her through a door leading to a guard station that was no longer used for anything but storage. I shut the door behind us and pushed her against it. I saw a flicker of hope in her eyes as her chest heaved from running.

“I really—must,” she said.

“Not yet.” I took her hand in mine. Her fingers wrapped around my palm. Then I kissed her.

Our second kiss was even better than the first. Her mouth opened with an eager little sound, as if she couldn’t help her anticipation. I met her tongue with mine as my other hand slid down her throat and then back up to her jaw, feeling the little muscles there work as she opened her mouth wider for me. Yes, wider, I thought, dragging on her lower lip. I slid my tongue around hers, sucked on the tip, grazed her teeth. That wicked little mouth; the more I looked at it, the more it turned me on.

I pulled the ribbons and combs from her hair and let it fall across her shoulders, so I could properly see her horns. They were sharp and straight, a polished dark color I couldn’t quite see in the dim room. And yet, somehow rather dainty at the same time, like little alert ears. I drank in the sight of her and wondered if my people would care if I married a goblin, and then I thought that I didn’t care what people thought.

She looked apprehensive, her eyes bright in the shadows. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I don’t know what’s happened,” I said. “I know we broke that spell. But it seems I am wildly attracted to you, goblin bits and all. Goblin bits especially.”

“Well…my goblin bits are pretty attracted to you, too.” She glanced furtively toward the door handle. “But I really must go.”

“Not yet.” I pulled at the neckline of her gown. It was wide enough that I could slide it down, baring her breasts. I lowered myself to one knee and put my hand to her back, drawing her close, taking her nipple in my mouth.

The response was gratifying: a breathy “ohh” and weakened knees. Maybe I was starting to understand why Wrindel did this all the time. Her nipples were hard. I caught the little nub between my teeth and flicked my tongue over it, as my other hand found the hem of her dress and pushed underneath it, seeking her sweet center. I knew she would be as wet as before, and when my hand found those slick, swollen lips, we both made a little sound of pleasure at once.

“If I must choose a princess tonight out of a sea of strangers,” I said, “I want it to be you, and only you.”

Chapter Thirteen

Ellara

“Yes,” I breathed. In that moment, damn the consequences. Ithrin’s hands and mouth had mastery over me and I never wanted it to end. I thought I wanted to escape this place where my stepfamily had been so cruel to me, but maybe there was another side of Wyndyr. One that would accept me.

And what better revenge on them all than to be their future queen? When I considered that the prince himself was on his knees before me, giving my body pleasure, while my stepsisters had not even been allowed to dance with him?

I moaned.

“I don’t think I can wait for the wedding night,” he said, gently stroking my wet slit with his fingertips until I was shivering. “I want you now.”

“Nor can I…oh, certainly not when you touch me like that! But…” I hesitated, because the only model I had for a marriage was my father and stepmother, and I felt sure she had tricked him.

“You want assurances?” he said. “You certainly have reason to trust me. You confessed to me that your aunt tried to tamper with my feelings and rig the engagement. I could have sent the guards off to seize her then and there.” He slid an ornate ring off his finger and put it on my own. “That is the ring of my house. It’s priceless. Hold it until I can give you a proper engagement ring. I vow to you, Ellara…you will be my bride.”

“I—I need to confess something. I don’t really know how much the saffron farms are worth, or what my stake in them is.”

He laughed. “I don’t give a damn about saffron farms.”

“But the crown needs money, doesn’t it? I’ve heard—”

“My father wanted me to marry the woman who makes me happy,” he said. “We’ll find a way to manage the rest.”

“I hope you’re not being irresponsible with the whole kingdom just because you want to have me tonight.”

“No. I wouldn’t be so irresponsible just for that. I’m being irresponsible because I want to have you every night.” He clutched me close. “That was a joke.”

“Or was it?”

“It’s more than that,” he said, serious now. “I can’t explain it, whether I want to rescue you, or whether I think you might…” He shook his head and stood up again, kissing me more gently as he slid his hands down to my breasts, grazing both my nipples with his thumbs while he cupped my small mounds. Then he lifted my skirts.

I poked my finger past the waistband of his trousers and pulled him closer to me. I slipped my hand under his clothes until I found his bare skin. I started unfastening his buttons until I freed his manhood, stroking its length. I didn’t know much about sex but I presumed he would tell me to stop if I did something wrong.

In some ways, he seemed intensely strong—so much taller than me that I had to crane my neck up to see his face, and his cock was so long and hard that I shuddered a little to think of it inside me. But at the same time, elves seemed more fragile than goblins. He didn’t have all the sharp edges I had. If he let my claws grow back in…

I ran my blunted fingernails down the length of him, and he made a little gruff sound. But he liked it. He didn’t stop me.

He pushed up my skirts again, his breath urgent. He slid his hands up my thighs and hoisted me up so I could wrap my arms around his neck. “You are beautiful,” he said. “So very beautiful…even before you touched me with that spell, you stood out from the others.”

I knew my mother met my father while he was in town for business. And then she ran away with him. They must not have known each other very long. I wondered if it was like this. Maybe it was strange to even think of my mother when I was about to make love, but my mother didn’t feel like a mother to me. She was too far away. I was almost as old now as she was when she died.

I shut my eyes, sinking into the feeling of clinging to him, of his fair, fine hair brushing against my fingers and his strong hands holding me up. His cock nudged against my entrance. I could already tell how tight it was going to be inside me, but my body wanted him so badly.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“I’ve been hurt a thousand times,” I said. “This isn’t hurt.”

“Are you sure? You seem…so small.”

“Pain be damned, we’d better do this,” I said.

I clutched his neck. His hands shifted position around my legs and I angled my hips, trying to find the best way to take him. I felt the rough wood of the door against my back, anchoring me as he pushed, hard and wide, into me.

I dug my fingers into his back and whimpered.

“Are you all right?” he asked, concerned.

“Yes. Yes. This is pain that feels…rather wonderful.”

I had never really liked pain, before then, but this was different. I hardly had words for the way it felt as he slowly took me, inch by inch, my body forced open, my nerves activated in ways they had never known. I tugged on his hair. I gripped him tight as he took my maidenhood. My body already felt so ready for him, despite the pain of it. I guess I had been beaten so many times by my cruel stepmother and sisters, that it meant nothing to me now. All that mattered was his intention. The way he looked in my eyes. He filled an ache inside me, a deep need. He was so hard inside me, but his eyes were gentle.

“Words fail me,” he said. “You feel…”

“It’s okay. Words fail me too,” I said.

Embarrassingly, tears started coming to my eyes. But not for the reason he feared, not because it hurt. I felt like I might cry in his arms.

“Is it too much?” he asked.

“No. It’s the opposite.” I had stopped thinking about what it meant to be loved, a long time ago. How much I craved kindness and warmth and concern. And then I laughed. “The prince,” I said. “For the past six years I’ve been scrubbing floors and fixing my sister’s hair while they talk about going to parties and meeting fancy people, trying to make me jealous. And now I’m losing my virginity to the prince. And I swear to all the gods, I don’t even care that you’re a prince. But they would.”

“I shall have to meet these stepsisters of yours.” His voice held a rumble of menace that was wonderful. “And when I do, they will know that you belong to me. They will know that I have chosen you and no one else, and your stepmother will regret every blow she’s ever given you.”

His words stimulated me almost as much as his body did. This felt like a dream. I let out a moan, all pretense of control slipping out the window.

He started to fuck me in earnest and what I felt on the dance floor seemed just a preview for what was rolling through me now. “I’d like to dress you in a gold and a fine silk gown and a cloak trimmed in fur.” My back bumped against the door. “And take you in my carriage back to your house to gather your things.”

“They sold most of my things,” I panted.

“Then they ought to pay you in interest.” He spoke into my ear. “Someday, I will be king, Ellara. And if there is one thing I value, it’s fairness. My father, gods bless him, lets people get away with too much. And Wrindel takes after him. I might not be fun, but I am fair. I will see that justice is done.”

“Oh yes…” I probably shouldn’t be getting off on the idea of making my stepsisters pay for their crimes, but…after six years, a girl deserves something, doesn’t she? I was enjoying every moment of this, having a fantasy of seizing back hair ornaments, books, decorative boxes…even as I was getting pinned against a door, the royal cock thrusting deep into me, claiming me with every stroke.

I never wanted a prince…until I actually had one.

After a little bit, I started to realize it felt even better if I worked with him. I squeezed my thighs around him, moving slightly with his thrusts, tightening my inner muscles around his shaft.

“You’re stronger than you look,” he said.

“Scrubbing floors will do that.” It felt so good that I was grinning and when he saw me, his serious expression cracked into a faint smile.

I made a little hum of pleasure, seeing it, and I kissed him again, nibbling on his lip, as if that smile was something I could taste. I’m not sure how long we were like that before I felt myself starting to tip into that deep well of pleasure again, much more intensely than before. Thank goodness. It would have been deeply humiliating if I had started moaning on the ball room floor. Now I moaned against his mouth, his cheek. I pulled back a little, to look at his face, and I realized what all of this really meant.

The prince. The bloody prince. He was going to make me his future queen.

I didn’t know the first thing about being a princess or a queen, but in that moment, I didn’t care either. If I could figure out how to fall from a pampered only daughter to a beaten-down housemaid, I could figure out how to rise to serve the people of this land.

He drove into me as my body convulsed around him, warm pleasure shuddering through me until I was drowning in it. He held me up as I went limp and he kept fucking me for another moment until he reached the same pleasure. The room felt close around me, too warm, thick with the scent of desire. His hot seed mingled with my own juices. Gods, but this was a messier business than I expected—and I liked it. I felt marked by him.

“Ellara…” He whispered. “Ellara…Ellara…you’re mine and no one will ever hurt you again.”

I was starting to think my goblin godmother was pretty smart after all.

Then, I heard the clock chiming outside, its bells low and ominous.

“Oh gods—I have to go!”

“Go? Why?”

“Because—my clothes—my carriage—I don’t want to be seen like this.” I couldn’t bear such a wonderful moment ending in my transformation back to a wretched thing clad in rags. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain. I’ll come back tomorrow.” I sort of scrambled off of his cock, which was just as awkward as it sounds, and shoved the door open. Luckily I was already so close to the bridge across the moat. My feet flew. One of my glass slippers went sailing off.

The carriage was waiting for me, one of my spider coachmen already waiting at the door. I was relieved to see them; I feared I might lose them at the palace if they transformed before I reached them. I hopped inside and it was already starting to travel, with the other spider at the reins. The second one sprang up as it was in motion. The horses charged down the streets, which were empty because everyone was still at the ball.

I hugged myself. My legs still felt weak, fresh pain aching inside my inner sheath. I hadn’t noticed it as much in the moment.

The chimes finished their slow toll. The carriage jolted along the streets as if it was outrunning fate. Please, don’t fail me. Perhaps I could will the carriage to last until we reached home. At first, I thought perhaps the enchantment had succeeded, but then the whole thing jolted. I heard a strange crack and then a slithering. The carriage was shrinking in on me. I jumped out as it was turning back into a pumpkin, the wheels turning to vines. The coachmen shrunk back down into spiders, the horses into mice. And my dress—to tatters.

I was standing in the middle of a dark, quiet street with two spiders, six mice, and one slightly bruised pumpkin.

“Climb on,” I told my friends, motioning them toward the pumpkin. The mice and insects all scampered up around the stem, and I hauled the thing home the rest of the way, still missing one slipper. The one thing that didn’t change back was the glass slipper. Before I walked in the back door, I put the pumpkin back into the garden so my friends could make their own way into the house. I kicked the slipper into the bushes and slipped the prince’s ring into my pocket.

I saw a faint glow in the windows. I wondered if Aunt Kayska had taken care of my stepmother. I was a little nervous about what I’d find in there.

I pushed open the door, keeping my ears pricked. My bare feet padded across the cold floor, into the back hall near the kitchens. The cook was passed out on the ground, like a drunk in an alley.

Footsteps came down the staircase ahead. I immediately recognized my stepmother’s shoes and the hem of her dress. Uh-oh. “Kayska?” I shouted.

My stepmother moved faster, a lamp in her hand to illuminate the gloom of downstairs.

No answer from Kayska.

I tried to run.

“Going somewhere?” she asked. “Are you looking for the woman who invaded my home?”

I backed out the door, so I’d have a better chance of running away. “She’s my aunt. Where is she?”

“She’s gone back home.”

“What?”

“Yes. I came home and I found her asleep. A goblin woman, asleep in my chair! I put her in the carriage and brought her to the docks, and sold her unconscious body to a ship captain to keep his men amused. I wonder if they will wait for her to wake up?”

This story sounded so horrible and yet so preposterous that I wasn’t really sure how to respond. “I don’t believe it.”

“Well, you’ll have time to consider it while you wait for her to come back.” I tried to run, but suddenly my stepsisters sprang out from behind the walls that led to the alley.

“There you are, you little impostor!” Gwyn cried. They both looked uglier than ever, their faces twisted with jealousy. I panicked, unsure what to do.

What happened to the man Mr. Hassari was supposed to send? Where was Ravok?

My stepsisters grabbed me and shoved me toward my stepmother. She smacked me hard across the face. “You went to the ball,” she said. “You danced with the princes. I hope you enjoyed it, because you will never see daylight again.”

Chapter Fourteen

Ellara

“You thought you were special, dancing with the princes?” Gwyn kicked her slipper at me.

“You never deserved to be there!” Cerra was almost in tears. “Goblins don’t belong in the Palace of Waterfalls!”

“Goblins belong in dark hovels,” my stepmother said smugly. “Which is why you will be spending the rest of your life tied up in the basement with the spiders and mice where you belong. And we are leaving, so you might die there before you’re found.”

“You’re leaving?”

“We’re going to Cabria,” she said. “To reclaim my poor late husband’s saffron farm.”

I started to feel like maybe something really terrible had happened. Somehow, she had out-schemed my aunt and Mr. Hassari both. What if it was all true? What if my aunt really had been sold to be a ship’s whore, and my stepmother really was going to tie me up down here to die?

I could think of no more terrifying fate, and the trouble was, the only people who knew I lived here were impoverished deliverymen. If no one answered the door, they would just move on. Maybe if Ithrin issued a decree looking for a goblin girl…but then, if all of this took a few days…

I was scrambling—and furious. I would have to take a risk.

“You don’t want to do that,” I said, anger flaring in my voice. “You think goblins don’t belong in the Palace of Waterfalls? Well, Prince Ithrin thinks otherwise. He has chosen me as his bride, and if I don’t return to him tomorrow morning, he’ll come for me. He knows where I live.”

My stepmother laughed. “Oh, of course he did. The prince.” She started talking to me like you would talk to a baby. Well, if you really hated the baby. “The prince wants to marry poor little goblin. I’m quite sure. He probably said that to get rid of you.”

“He didn’t.” I took the ring out of my pocket. “He gave me this as a promise.”

“Let me see that.” She wrested it out my hand and inspected the royal seal. “You probably stole this.”

“I stole a ring right off the prince’s hand? If I was that good at stealing valuables, do you think I’d still be here?”

Gwyn and Cerra looked at it with horrified expressions; they believed me right away. Of course, they had seen Prince Ithrin holding me so close at the ball.

“Hmm. All right. Change of plans. Girls, help me tie her up.”

At this point, there was nothing left to do but fight for my life. I whirled and hit Cerra right in the nose. She shrieked, but she also hit me back. One could give my stepsisters that. The girls could genuinely fight. When they were younger, occasionally they were sent home from school for fighting, in fact. Once they realized I was going to fight back, they plunged into it, tearing at my clothes, jabbing me with elbows and stomping on my bare feet. I got in a few satisfying retaliatory blows, kicking Gwyn hard and ripping the sash of my stepmother’s dress. But it was three against one, and I never really had a chance. As I was reeling from a blow to the head, hands suddenly seized mine, and the sash I had torn from my stepmother’s dress was now used to bind my hands behind my back.

“Help! Heeeelp!” I screamed, now hoping to attract the attention of a sympathetic neighbor. Gwyn shoved her lacy handkerchief in my mouth. I tried to bite her.

It was my last attempt at striking back. They collectively muscled me into the carriage, shoving me like they were trying to manhandle livestock. They seemed to be in a hurry. Once I was inside, they tied my feet.

“Come now, quickly, girls,” my stepmother said. “If this is true, we can’t dawdle.”

They climbed into the carriage. My arms were killing me from being twisted behind me as my stepsisters jammed into the carriage around me, on top of countless fresh bruises and scratches that marked my body. My stepmother had the front seat, taking the reins. I glared at them. “You’ll pay for this,” I tried to say. It came out, of course, as just an angry bunch of “mmfmm mmh!” that seemed to amuse my stepmother.

My stepsisters, I noticed, were looking pretty frightened by now.

“Now, Gwyn, when we reach the ship, you’re going to be Ellara,” my stepmother said.

Gwyn didn’t look at me anymore. “Why do I have to be Ellara?”

“Because you’re a better actress than Cerra.”

“But—I can’t be Ellara forever.”

“Of course you can. None of these people know who Ellara is. You can just be yourself, but you’ll be called Ellara, except you can occasionally mention Ellara’s life story.”

“I don’t want to be a goblin!”

“Oh, don’t worry! Everyone will forget all about your supposed goblin blood before long! Ellara’s father is an elf and you favor him, don’t you, dear? Anyway, listen carefully—you’ll have fun with this part. I am concerned Mr. Hassari may have told his crew that Ellara’s family wasn’t very nice to her. So I want you to act as if Cerra and I have not been very nice to you, only out of the goodness of your heart, you didn’t want to leave us behind.”

At this point I couldn’t resist another round of “Mmffmm mhm mm!?”

What in all the gods had happened? My stepmother was going to pass Gwyn off as me? But Mr. Hassari had met me!

“Oh, yes, Cinderella. I know what you are saying back there. You’re wondering how I will trick Mr. Hassari into taking us to Cabria instead of you? Well, Mr. Hassari is dead. Poor man. He had a heart attack. He did mention at the dinner party that his heart gave him trouble, and I suppose it caught up with him.”

My father had died of a heart attack, too.

A ‘heart attack’.

“You killed him?” I mhmphed.

She smiled at me with all the sweetness and charm that must have tricked my father once. She slipped the prince’s ring over her finger. “Lovely ring,” she said. “It is too bad I’ll have to pawn it. Far too conspicuous.”

In that terrible moment, it felt crystal clear. She really had married my father for his money, and killed him. After his death, she had done her best to scrub me out of existence. Why had I ever asked the prince about seances? I had known it was true from the day of his funeral. I just didn’t want to think I was left in the hands of his murderer.

Why had she even kept me? Was it for a moment like this, waiting for a fresh chunk of inheritance to come to light? Or was it simply to torment me? It hardly mattered. She had done it to me again. She had killed another innocent man in order to take my money.

“I’ll kill you,” I said behind my gag.

I think my stepsisters knew exactly what I meant. They both edged away from me.

My stepmother drove the poor horses fast, from our wealthy neighborhood to the rough side of town. It was astonishing how close the grand houses were to the shanties where the families of the fishermen lived. I smelled the ocean more strongly here. Wyndyr was a city that relied on the sea, and yet I had not seen the sea in six years. We were getting closer to the docks. But the carriage stopped in front of three stories of somber brick looming above a tall iron gate. It was guarded by a man with a sword, even in the middle of the night.

My stepmother jumped down to speak to him for a moment, and he unlocked the gates for her.

The horses came down the path. Moonlight shone on a grim, barren lawn with a stone well and a single tree that had already shed its autumn leaves. It was hard to believe that this was the same night the prince had made love to me.

My stepmother bade us to wait and she went inside the creaking wooden door of the building. Outside, it was very lonely and my stepsisters were shivering. For some reason, I wasn’t, even though my clothes had been torn up more than theirs. I felt like I was made of stone, and I wanted to cling to that feeling, at least until they left. I hadn’t broken for them in six years. I wouldn’t break now.

When my stepmother came back, she was accompanied by another woman holding a lantern who looked about as much a barrel of fun as you would expect, and behind her, two burly women wearing all black. They hauled me out of the carriage and untied my feet, only to force me along between them. The lantern light bobbed along dark walls that smelled of mildew and misery. It was all making me feel very sick and I wished I had not had so much rich food and champagne at the ball. They urged me through a doorway that said “Admittance Office”.

“Thank you for taking her at such an hour,” my stepmother said. “There has been an expected turn.”

“Oh?”

“The prince might be looking for her, if she is telling the truth.”

“Prince Ithrin?”

“Yes. She says he thinks to take a goblin for a queen!”

“Oh, no, no,” the woman said.

“You are not just the lady of this house of industry now,” my stepmother said. “You are the protector of the very realm itself. Of course, he might go to some lengths to find her, and offer great rewards. But don’t give in. You know they would be false promises.” She handed the woman a silver. “There will be much more sent along soon. The lost inheritance has fallen into my lap.”

The other woman smiled, although her smile seemed like it was broken. It was not really a smile, more of just a lip twist. “Good to hear. I will certainly keep her safe.”

It was pretty clear that this was going to be the worst definition of ‘safe’.

“Good bye, Cinderella,” my stepmother said.

She had been my tormentor for the past six years. And all I had known. I knew what to expect from her and my stepsisters.

When she left, I began trembling all over.

“Well now, Ellara. Welcome to the Home for Industrious Ladies,” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Rennick. I’m glad you’re with us. You look quite industrious. I hope so.”

Chapter Fifteen

Prince Ithrin

Once Ellara left, I was useless for the rest of the night. I kept dancing, as I must, but at this point the girls were just plugging through it. They knew as well as I did that I would not choose any other girl on this night. Everyone had seen me dance with Ellara and run after her, and at the end of the evening, as dejected parties of girls abandoned the dance floor, leaving trampled handkerchiefs and flowers behind them, my father came up to me, with Wrindel next to him.

“It’s the goblin girl, isn’t it?” Father asked.

“I know it isn’t the most strategic alliance…”

“I have made it clear, I don’t want the most strategic alliance for you. I want to see you happy for once. And we might make some strategy out of it, in the end. After all, King Nyar is back on the throne and has a male heir already, and I’ve heard good things about the revival of the goblin kingdom. We might be able to ease some of the tense relations between the humans and the goblins in the north. But that’s all far down the road.”

“I’m not sure the people will be happy. Choosing a goblin over one of our own, and then we might have to raise taxes on top of it?”

“It’s all in how you present it,” Wrindel said.

“Yes,” Father said. “A beautiful wedding will brighten everyone’s mood, and she is not just a goblin princess. She’s an elf, too, isn’t she? She is a symbol of love conquering all, crossing barriers. Taxes? Taxes come later. Start of the next fiscal year. Everyone will have forgotten this by then.” He shrugged.

Father’s way of coping with the loss of his wife, eldest son and only daughter was to run the kingdom into debt. My way was communing with the dead. I’m not sure who was more sensible about it, but for once, I was finding his way hard to resist.

The whole thing made me wonder who I was anymore, what had happened. I went to my balcony and didn’t sleep, although by now it was three in the morning.

“Ithrin.” Wrindel came in, having entered my room without knocking, and clapped me on the back. “Just enjoy it for once. I told you, love at first sight. It’s as good a way to fall in love as any.”

“So you say. But you’ve never fallen in love. If you had, you’d stick around the morning after.”

He grinned. “You’re the oldest. I had to wait for you.” Which was of course, nonsense. He had never waited for me about anything.

“Jiriel was the oldest.” I looked at the moon. “I suppose it is time to let them go.”

“I can’t really say anything,” Wrindel said. For once he didn’t joke. “I never had them to begin with.”

“That’s worse,” I said.

“I don’t know. I think it might be easier, not to carry grief like that, the way you and Father have. I’ve always felt responsible for lightening the mood. It’s not a role I mind, really. But…” He trailed off, and I understood. He grew up into a family that was busy mourning the other half of the family, the one he would only know by their crypts. “So,” he said. “Did you fuck her?”

“I’m not answering that. Why not ask if we talked about our hopes and dreams?”

“So, you did.”

“Damn it, how come whenever I don’t want to answer a question everyone assumes the answer is yes?”

“Because that’s how it works.”

Someone pounded on my door. Wrindel and I exchanged a glance before I shoved my hands off the balcony. “At least someone knows how to knock,” I told him before answering.

It was a castle courier. “Your grace, there are two goblins at the gates who are pleading to speak to you. I would never have indulged them except for…um…the girl that you…spent part of the evening with.”

“I’ll come out to meet them.”

I moved quickly, hoping that Ellara was all right. Visitors in the dead of night rarely bore good news.

Downstairs, the goblins had not been allowed past the great Hall of Marble Pools. There was a woman with some resemblance to Ellara, unusually attractive for a middle-aged goblin, wearing a brown laced bodice and dark red skirt that bared her ankles and more, in the way of goblin women. Her face was frowning with concern, making me pick up my pace even more. Wrindel was still with me, although a few steps behind. The woman was accompanied by a goblin man with a military bearing, clad in light armor.

“Prince Ithrin,” she said. “I do appreciate you seeing me at this hour. I believe you know my niece Ellara.”

“Yes,” I said. “You must be the one who cast the spell on us. That was a pretty nasty trick, coming from someone whose own king suffered under a spell of aphrodisiac.”

“I get good ideas from my foes sometimes. But you must admit, Ellara is beautiful, with or without a spell.”

“Yes…but that is all the more reason why you shouldn’t have to resort to a spell.”

She seized on that answer. “So you do think so? It may interest you to know, she is in grave danger now.” Her facade of a troublemaking old witch slipped for a moment, and she said, “And it’s my fault. I was much too overconfident…”

“What happened?” I wasn’t sure I trusted this woman not to be pulling another scheme.

“After I sent Ellara to the ball, I waited for her in her stepmother’s house. I decided to poke around while I waited, to see what sort of people were keeping my beloved sister’s child. And what did I find in that house? Inside a locked cabinet, in unmarked bottles? I had to use a spell to confirm my suspicions. Poison,” she said. “And worse! Some forged documents that suggested to me that this wily bitch—“

“Pardon her, my lord,” the older goblin said.

“—who married my sister’s widower, was plotting to steal the remains of Ellara’s inheritance. The woman was out this evening, and didn’t come back for some time, and the man Ellara told me to wait for never arrived—well, it’s a long story, but in short, I would not be surprised if a man was poisoned tonight. A human spice merchant by the name of Mr. Hassari.”

“Where is Ellara?” I demanded. “She said she was going home!”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I pretended to be asleep when her stepmother got home. I am excellent at pretending to be asleep. I thought, well….I wanted to see what she would do with me. I was hoping she might reveal more of her plot to me and I’d be able to catch her red-handed, spring to life and ensnare her with a spell. At that point, Ellara was still at the ball and would be for a while yet. Ravok, here, trailed us. And what did that woman do? She took me to the docks and started offering men money to take me on their ship and sail far away! So, Ravok quickly stepped in and claimed to be a captain, taking her coin.”

“You don’t know where Ellara is, do you?”

“No,” she said, looking ever so slightly annoyed that I didn’t want the details. “We rushed after her, back to the house, but she had a head start. When we arrived, they were all gone. It was a little after midnight. Ellara’s mice and spiders were frantic.”

“Mice and spiders?”

“She has her mother’s gift of communicating her will to animals.”

“That’s useful,” Wrindel said, still trying to sell me on her, I think.

“I tried to give chase—we went back to the docks in case she tried to put her on a ship—”

I’d heard enough. I held up a hand. To Wrindel, I said, “No ships can leave the harbor unless they have been thoroughly searched. The same with every carriage on the roads. I want every spare man to fan out into the city and look for her, and we also must see if we can find this Mr. Hassari.”

“Of course,” Wrindel said. This sort of thing invigorated him. “I’ll go to the docks myself, in fact. Some of the captains won’t like this at all, but I’ll bring a wine barrel down there. They can drink a good vintage while they wait for the search…”

“It’s all in how you present it, huh?” I told him.

But the jest barely concealed my concern.

I realized why I had never wanted to fall in love.

Love meant the potential for loss.

I thought I would never recover from losing Mother, Jiriel and Seldana. But now, all the long nights keeping watch outside their sick rooms, waiting for the worst, came rushing back to me across the years.

I could not lose Ellara.

Chapter Sixteen

Ellara

Mrs. Rennick and the two burly women who accompanied her—guards, I suppose, although I was not used to seeing women in that role—seemed positively gleeful to drag me around, now into what looked like an infirmary. A few low beds lined the wall, and there was a chair like one might see at the barber. They probably pulled out rotten teeth here or something.

Oh, goodness, pulling out teeth was a bad thought. Mrs. Rennick was muttering about me. “Goblins,” she said. “Too many built-in weapons.” She pinched one of my horns and then put her hand around it and shook it. “There’s no feeling in horns, isn’t that right?”

I’m not sure if she was asking me or her guards, and I wasn’t sure what to say, either.

“So we can just saw them off, then,” she said. “Can’t we?”

“I believe so,” one of the women said. “Deer lose their horns…don’t they?”

I started thrashing and trying to make noise. They seemed indifferent to my panic. Was there feeling in horns? I had never tried to saw one off before. Obviously. But I didn’t want to lose them. I would fight to the death, I thought. I was trying to be brave.

But fighting to the death was not really an option. They held me down easily, tying my arms and legs to the chair. Despite my inner will to fight, I was still not fully recovered from the blow to the head I had taken earlier. They had no trouble tightening the ropes around me. Mrs. Rennick went and got some other woman out of some fresh den of evil. This woman opened a cabinet and took out a saw, like the sort you might amputate a limb with.

“Mmmph!” I cried. Please! Please!

I felt a hand grip one of my horns and yank my head back, and a moment later, the saw bit into me. I didn’t feel pain, but I might as well have. Every drag of the serrated teeth across my horns dug straight into my heart. I felt the vibration through my skull, heard the rough grinding sound of it. At the end, there was a little snap and it was gone.

Six years of torment, and I had not broken. Now I was sobbing. I cried and cried as the woman ground through the next one.

The woman handed them to Mrs. Rennick, who held my horns in her hands, examining them like specimens. “I might use them for paperweights,” she said. “And now you look much more suitable for this establishment, don’t you?” She took the gag off me.

“You’re going to suffer for this!” I spat. “The prince will come looking for me!”

“We shall see.”

“I hope you rot in hell!”

“How princessly of you,” she said sarcastically. “I wonder if he’ll even recognize you if he saw you? Emala, why don’t you cut her hair?” She tilted her head at me. “It cuts down on the lice.”

I screamed at her, jerking in the chair, wanting to battle my way out of my bonds and fly at her neck.

“Scream all you like. No one will care. All the women here are well used to the sound of screaming. They don’t even hear it anymore.” She put her fingers to my jaw. “But those teeth! What do we do about them?”

“Muzzle her,” Emala said, taking shears to my curls and hacking at them without concern. “Until she has shown she can behave.”

Mrs. Rennick smiled. Sadistic bitch. No wonder my stepmother seemed well acquainted with her. By now I was starting to think that my shouting and struggling only made this more enjoyable for her.

“A good idea,” she said. “If anyone is looking for a goblin girl, they might glance right past you, with your elven face, and never know…”

I went silent, watching my hair fall around me in clumps. Hair would grow back. But I didn’t think my horns would. Tears fell silently from my eyes as Mrs. Rennick took out a leather muzzle and fitted it around my mouth and jaw. Straps on either side of my ears came together in the back with a tiny lock. It had just a little bit of give, so I could flex my jaw but not open it. I could speak in a muffled way, but I couldn’t even eat or drink until they allowed me to do so.

“I know you are upset. It’s nothing personal,” Mrs. Rennick said, answering the golden glare of my eyes. “You can’t help that you are of the low races. But if you show that you can work hard and are obedient, things will get better for you.”

I was untied from the chair, and got to my feet reluctantly.

“Follow me,” Mrs. Rennick said, picking up her lantern. “You can get a little sleep before the work day begins. You too,” she told her attendants.

I was a bit numb as I followed her down a cold stone hall. I was still barefoot, the chill seeping into my skin from my toes upward. The narrow hall led to a narrow stair, and to another narrow hall with a single window at the end. The window had bars on it. I wondered if it was because someone had tried to jump out. I heard snoring behind open doors, and a good bit of coughing and sniffing. Girls slept on straw-stuffed mattresses on the floor. Well, that was no worse than home.

This was a place for the poorest of the poor, the sort of women who would otherwise be on the street, and would be told they were lucky to have a bed at all. I knew every city had such places, but I had never seen with my own eyes how terrible conditions could be.

“Here you are,” Mrs. Rennick said, showing me to one of the doors. “This bed, here.” She pointed at a bed with a girl already in it. Many of the girls were shivering together two to a bed. My new bed mate was sleeping through all of this. She had long black hair—so much for lice—and a sharp face, her nose and chin both rather pointed. She had a silver collar around her neck and silver cuffs at her wrists. I wondered what that was about, but I couldn’t ask, and didn’t want to make conversation with Mrs. Rennick anyway.

I sat down on the mattress. Mrs. Rennick walked out. As soon as she was gone, I went to the window, which also had bars, but even a barred window was a portal to the same sky. I looked at the moon and then at the barren landscape hemmed in by tall stone walls and the iron gate. In the distance I could see the masts of the ships in the harbor.

My heart felt like it was falling out the window at the sight of this terrible place. I couldn’t even bear to touch what remained of my horns. Even Prince Ithrin could not make everything all right again, but…he would save me. Wouldn’t he? He had promised me. I just had to wait.

I finally climbed into bed. My feet were still cold. The muzzle around my jaw made me feel claustrophobic and on the verge of a panic attack. My bed mate slept soundly, occasionally making a low whimpering sound in her sleep, and I am not sure I slept at all.

Chapter Seventeen

Ithrin

In the wee hours of the morning, a messenger brought me a note from Wrindel.

A ship had just left the harbor before I came to give the order, and whose ship was it? The one that came from Cabria. We shall chase it down. I’m asking for aid from the merfolk. We’ll find her. Still looking for Mr. Hassari. —W.

I crumpled the note in my hand. I already had men fanned out around the city, searching every work house, brothel and orphanage where dirty dealings might be afoot, and posting signs offering a reward for a goblin girl.

But it wasn’t enough. I would have no rest until I found her. And there was something I could do that no one else would dare.

I drew the curtains and locked the doors, and cleared the cloth and flowers off the table where the servants brought my breakfast. I set it with the tools of my art: candles, a tin of candy to serve as an offering to the gods, and a scrying bowl.

I was twelve the first time I actually tried to summon the dead. It didn’t go very well. Nothing happened for the longest time, and then, finally, I heard a low, strange, male voice, saying, You could be close to them forever… I blew out the candles quickly and said the words to close the portal, shaken. I thought I might have summoned a demon.

Most boys would have been smart enough to quit there.

I, on the other hand, kept reading about spell work and sorcerers of old, smuggling books from the libraries of the palace mages, buying them in black markets in the city, passing coin under the dubious cover of a hooded cloak. Father must have known what I was up to, but he didn’t stop me. He was still pretty lost in drink and spending coin, dealing with his own loss, while Wrindel ran around the palace and even down to the ocean like a little hoodlum.

I learned how to focus, and connect with the spirits I wanted to speak to and not the darker shades of the underworld, although I could not entirely safeguard against their tempting voices. I felt the spirits of my lost loved ones, and sometimes I heard echoes of their voices.

Once, my mother’s face appeared in the scrying bowl. She told me to stop opening the channels, that it was time to move on.

But it was too late for me. I was no longer trying to speak to her one last time. Turning back the veil between the living and the dead was everything to me. It soothed my grief, but it also intrigued me and made me feel powerful.

“I must keep going,” I told her then. “But don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

Now, I looked at the reflection of the candles on the water, and spoke the words that I knew by heart. The water rippled.

“Where is she?” I asked the spirits. “Where is Ellara?”

The candles flickered. This was normal. It took time to get answers. Sometimes I had to try different questions.

“Is the spirit of Mr. Hassari there?”

Nothing.

“Mr. Hassari, if you can hear me…I want to see justice done for your murder.”

The tin of candies tipped over. My skin rippled into goosebumps as the temperature dropped. The familiar sense of excitement and trepidation stirred my senses.

Ellara… To my surprise, I heard a voice that sounded female. Ellara!

“Who is there?” I asked.

I want to help protect her. I felt cold wind brush my arms.

Offers of power were suspicious, but…this spirit knew Ellara. “State your name,” I said. “How do you know Ellara?”

I am Elka. I am her mother. I have long watched over her, but I am not of your world any more, and there is only so much I can do beyond the veil. I could not protect her from its cruelties. Lend me your hands, young man, and I will use you as a channel to help Ellara. I beg you, on behalf of her father and myself, to help me save my daughter.

I saw a face in the water. The faces that appeared were never clear. The reflection rippled, the vision always elusive. Everything I could see and hear of the world beyond was never enough. It came in glimpses, blurs, shadows, whispers, distant cries.

But the face I saw looked just like Ellara herself.

Every spell book I had ever read said I should never accept an offer from a spirit.

This time, it seemed different.

I held out my hands, my palms open. “I swore I would do anything to protect Ellara. And I will.”

My hands went as cold as ice. The cold spread upward, all the way to my shoulders, and it was like plunging my arms into snow. At first, I felt very little, and then I felt pain. Needles of ice, barbs of cold—the magic rushed through my skin and I could not shake it off. I doubled over, clutching my hands together.

It will soon pass! The voice echoed in my ears.

Light flashed behind my eyes for a moment, and then the candles snuffed out and the room went briefly pitch black. I heard something that sounded like beating wings, and instinctively I covered my hands as I felt wind brush my face.

I heard a final whisper. Wait for me, daughter…

The darkness started to clear.

The room was bright now. Bright as day.

I rubbed my head in confusion. The sun was up. I must have passed out. The pain in my arms had receded. They felt a little numb now, and my skin was very pale. I had never felt magic so strong.

The tin of candies was empty now.

A sense of calm descended upon the room. It was over, everything normal again. But my hands were still ice cold, and almost completely white.

I stood up and pulled on a pair of gloves in a futile attempt to warm my hands. At least it hid how pale they were, like all the blood had drained out of me.

I walked downstairs to the main hall. The court was milling about now, whispering. Ellara had not yet been found.

Her aunt approached me with a strange expression. She walked up to me cautiously and her eyes looked up and down. “Prince Ithrin,” she said. “What do I sense?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Elka’s magic…? She works through you. I sense it.”

When I didn’t answer, she said, “What have you done? You spoke to her?”

“I believe so,” I admitted. “Sometimes I communicate with the spirits, but it is rare that one comes to me with such a clear message. I know that common wisdon says one should never accept help from the dead, but I couldn’t refuse Ellara’s mother.”

“No,” Kayska said. “I am glad you didn’t refuse her.” She kept looking at me, with a look of deliberation that put me on edge. “You do have some skill at the shadowed arts, don’t you? How interesting.”

Suddenly a guard entered the hall in a rush. “I’ve just spotted Prince Wrindel coming back,” he said. “And he’s riding fast.”

Chapter Eighteen

Ellara

By the time morning came, I had cried myself out.

I was ready to do something drastic. For six years I had messed around with mice and spiders, trying to bring my stepfamily little moments of suffering.

Enough of that. I could not wait for Ithrin to rescue me. I was going to find a way out of this horrid place no matter what, and then I was going to find my stepmother and make her sorry she ever messed with me.

My bedmate seemed a little surprised to find me beside her, sitting bolt upright and glowering. “A new girl,” she said, wiping her eyes. “They’ve muzzled you. What a fucking pain. They did it to me in the beginning.” She quickly grinned, flashing her own fangs. “What are you?”

“A goblin,” I managed. The muzzle marred some of my consonants but she seemed to understand. “And you?”

“Wolvenfolk,” she said, in a voice that seemed dead of emotion, and a thick accent. “The elf bastards picked a fight with my mother’s clan. Said it was their territory, but it wasn’t. All the elders were killed, but they spared me because I was young. They brought the younger ones to an orphanage, brought me here. The collar and cuffs keep me from changing. I’ve been here three years. The work isn’t so bad, but Mrs. Rennick’s the biggest bitch who’s walked the earth.”

“So I’ve seen…”

I glanced around at the other girls—six of them, none probably older than twenty-five, and all of them as miserable as anyone I’d ever seen. A few humans and a faery, no elves to be seen, but maybe they stuck all of us who weren’t natives of Wyndyr in the same room. They started tucking the blankets around the mattresses and half-heartedly fluffing pillow that were beyond help. They all looked resigned. It was not a sight to muster my courage.

“What’s your story, goblin?” the wolfkin girl asked me. “Are you pregnant?”

“Goodness, no,” I said.

“A lot of girls are sent here because they’re pregnant,” she said. “By the wrong man.”

“If I’m pregnant, it’s by the right man,” I said, grinning briefly behind the muzzle.

She laughed. “Well, well. Is he gonna come looking for you?”

“I hope.”

The wolfkin girl sighed. “We never see men in here, except the ones who make deliveries. Some of them are right handsome. What I’d give…”

“Wolvenfolk have a…mating season, don’t they?” I asked, curious. I’d never met any of the wolvenfolk before; they were not especially welcome in the elven cities.

“Aye, we do, and when it comes on me I’m about ready to jump the fence.” Then she added, “I need to get the fuck out of here.”

I wasn’t used to women speaking like sailors, but I thought the wolfkin girl was certainly intriguing female company. “Can you ever leave? I mean, slavery isn’t legal here in Wyndyr, is it?”

“How do I know what’s legal? I lived in the northern woods, free as they come. They brought me here and ever since, I’ve seen nothing but this shithole. But no one cares about legal when it comes to girls who are best shoved out of sight. Come on—” She finished tucking in the blanket. “Now we wash up. It’s your last chance to use the privy for a while.”

We went down stairs to a washroom, which was clean but very old and worn-down, with a row of washstands and a few buckets of clean water. Privies were off through another door. The other girls washed their faces but I couldn’t even really do that, with the muzzle covering half my face. I waited in the hall to see if anyone would set me free, but that didn’t come until we shuffled into a dining hall. Mrs. Rennick was standing by the door, and she pulled me aside, holding up the key.

“Be a good girl,” she said. “Today is your first test. Eat politely without gossiping and work hard, and maybe you won’t have to wear it for long.”

She unlocked the muzzle from my jaw. I flexed my cramped muscles. My skin was sweaty underneath. I battled off another brief wave of sorrow, and joined my room mates at the table. No one talked much, except in furtive whispers. Conversation was quickly squelched by the tall guard-women patrolling the length of the tables. Most of the women were elves after all, and even now they retained some elegance, but they looked withered. A few were pregnant, like the wolfkin girl described. It was like being in prison, I imagined. I had always thought work houses were places that women came willingly when they had nothing else. Why would we need to be guarded?

They are prisoners, aren’t they? All of them…

This was so much worse even than being “Cinderella”.

“I always heard goblins are good at getting out of scrapes,” the wolf girl said.

“I don’t know.”

“You have that look in your eyes. I knew another girl like you, and she made it out.”

“How?”

“If I knew, you think I’d be here?” After a moment, she added, “My father’s family lives in a little town up north. If I could get out of here, I’d go find him. If you ever manage to get out of here, I’d be grateful to you forever if you got a letter to the town of Pennarick, in Mardoon, and told them Fersa is alive.”

“You mean, your father doesn’t even know you’re here?”

“No. I tried to pay a man to get a message to him, but I can’t read nor write myself, and I don’t have much to offer as a bribe. No luck.”

“If I get out of here,” I said, “I’ll make sure you get to him.” No sooner had I picked up my spoon to try and eat a little of the brown soup placed before me than there was a commotion outside. I heard deep male voices. Mrs. Rennick pointed one of the female guards to me. “Put her out of sight somewhere. I’ll talk to them.”

I stood up, clutching my bowl, as two women holding clubs approached me. “Come with me and you won’t be hurt,” one said.

“Ithrin!” I screamed.

I can’t say I didn’t expect the blow across my face. The pain was brutal after I’d already been struck last night, blows on top of bruises. A few of the girls winced, but no one reacted beyond that. I heard the voices outside grow closer. The guards grabbed my arms and hustled me toward a side door. I was still clutching my breakfast. They dragged me down a hall, hastily shoved me into a stairwell, and shut the door behind me.

It seemed like I was at the bottom of a tower. I could see sunlight above my head.

I started rushing up the steps, hoping I could spot Ithrin or his men. I reached the top of the tower, which was open to the air. It was cold up here. A good dozen crows were perched around a railing, cawing at me irritably. I still didn’t have shoes, so I picked my way carefully to the edge. From here, I could see the whole harbor in the distance. This tower must have been built for keeping watch of what ships came and went. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any horses or men. If that was—as I hoped—Ithrin’s search party, I was on the wrong side of the building to spot them.

A crow hopped toward me, looking at my bread.

I held it out to him. “Here,” I said. “Would you like some?” When the crow hesitated, I tore off a piece and put it on the railing.

The crows weren’t very nervous around me. I treated them just as I would have spoken to my little friends back home. I tore my bread into enough pieces that every crow could have one. “Share them, though,” I said.

One of the crows squawked at me and hopped, like it was excited. It actually made me laugh. “Are you hungry?” I asked. “Or just greedy? Well, I don’t mind. You’re good company.”

The crow fluttered onto my arm and studied me.

“Oh—hello,” I said. “You’re a handsome fellow. Or miss. I really don’t know how to tell…”

The crow cawed like it was speaking to me. I wasn’t used to talking to animals that seemed so interactive. Crows were smarter than mice.

Suddenly they all flew off. I turned to the stairwell. Someone must be coming.

No…the stairs were still empty.

“Why did you leave?” I called, unexpectedly bereft. “I’m sorry—did I do something wrong?”

I waited a moment. They had eaten all the bread. Maybe they didn’t care about anything else.

But then, they all came back, in a flurry of black wings, making quite a bit of noise. Two of them were carrying dark objects in their beaks. I recognized them right away, and my heart skipped a beat.

“My horns…” I held out my hands. The crows put my poor severed horns into my palms. Mrs. Rennick must have left her window open. At least they weren’t paperweights anymore. “How did you know?”

One crow pointed his beak at the top of my head like he was saying, Obviously, I noticed they were missing.

I put them in my pocket. “I am so grateful to you, I—I hope you know how much.”

Another crow, who had given me a horn, looked at my soup and then at me.

“Did you want this too?” At this point, I would have given them what little I could. They might be the key to escape.

The crow squawked. I could swear he was telling me I should eat something. So I did.

“You’re lovely,” I said. “I wish I knew how to thank you.” I paused. I had grown accustomed to asking favors of the spiders and mice, but I had also saved them from destruction many times. “I hate to ask a favor of someone I’ve just met, but I wonder if you would help me escape?”

The crows shifted closer, ruffling their wings. They seemed eager.

I heard the door open downstairs. The crows made little muttering squawks.

“You don’t like them either, do you?” I whispered.

“Goblin? Come down here!” a woman called.

The crows flew off the tower and landed a short distance away. They were watching me. I felt like they were waiting for further instruction.

The last thing I wanted to do was go back down those stairs, but for now, there seemed no other option.

Mrs. Rennick was waiting. “They’re gone,” she said. “They were looking for you. But they won’t find you. They will never find you. You will never marry the prince. Do you understand that?”

“No. He will find me.”

Her hand flashed out at me without hesitation. “Finished your soup? Very good. It’s the muzzle again for you.”

The muzzle smelled a little sour from my sweat, and I tried to twist away, knowing it was useless. Once again, the leather was tightened around my jaw, pressing painfully against my bruises with every movement. They led me back into the dining hall where the girls were heading, presumably, to work.

“Follow along,” Mrs. Rennick said. “We’ll see how quickly you can work.”

We went into a large, very cold room with tall windows providing illumination. Nevertheless, the stone ceilings and floors seemed to swallow all the light. Huge bolts of cloth leaned against the wall. The wolfkin girl showed me what to do. I learned that the work house made sails for the ships, as well as flags. This was not just the business of making white squares. Many of the merchants had a color scheme or a pattern sewn onto their sails, which had to be carefully cut out and sewn on, the needles pushed through thick fabric. The girls were working on blue and white striped sails for a royal ship.

I wondered if Prince Ithrin knew who was making sails for his family.

I didn’t dare make much conversation, because I saw the guards beat five girls with a cane for talking during the next few hours and I didn’t think I could take much more.

Still, I could tell a lot about a person from expression, movement, and occasional words exchanged. The wolfkin girl, Fersa, was quick. Her eyes missed nothing, and I had the sense she was barely restraining herself at all times. She muttered curses a lot, and pricked herself with the needle. A blonde elven girl across from me was patient and seemed frail and tired. She coughed frequently. The human girl beside her with the blonde braids had a bit of spunk left in her and kept mouthing out a silent song.

I’m glad I came here, I thought. My motives had shifted a lot over the past few days. At first, I just wanted to flee. Then I wanted to make my stepfamily jealous. Then, I wanted Prince Ithrin.

But this was the first time I wanted to be the princess. I wanted to have power so I could do something about places like this. The thought spurred me onward, despite my fear, my aches and pains.

Late in the afternoon, we were allowed to go outside to get some fresh air and stretch. By that time, I had been working on the sails for hours.

The women immediately dispersed around the barren lawn. Rain had made patches of it muddy, while the cold was starting to kill the grass and turn it the brown of autumn. The crows were perched on the lone tree. They watched me.

I went over to Fersa. “If I could get your cuffs and collar off, and you could change, would you attempt escape?”

“Mrs. Rennick keeps the keys in her office,” she said. “The door is always locked solid.”

“But the window is open,” I said.

“Can you climb towers, goblin girl?”

“Not personally, but I have help.”

I looked at the crows. My stepmother said magic was about intention. I briefly shut my eyes and prayed with all my might that they would do as I willed them.

“Fly to Mrs. Rennick’s office and look for keys. It would surely be a small key, to fit in those tiny locks,” I said.

They all took flight.

Fersa’s eyes bugged. “How did you get bloody crows to follow your commands? You’re a mage?”

“Not really. But I have that one trick. How about it? Are you in?”

“If we can get through that gate… Yeah, I’m in!”

I surveyed the situation. Everyone was very spread out right now. The stocky female guards were standing around the building, watching. One male guard watched the gate. If the crows found the key, we would need to move fast. We would need to act as if we had planned this, although we hadn’t.

“They’d better hurry,” Fersa said. “They only let us out here for fifteen minutes.” She nudged her head toward the building. One of the guards had her eye on us. “We should stop talking,” she said.

She turned a few cartwheels, which I had not seen anyone do since my father took me to the carnival as a child. It was a wonderfully nonchalant gesture. Most of the other girls were strolling slowly around the grounds or touching their toes. I was in enough pain that I just leaned against the tree while my stomach knotted with tension. Moments ticked by. I watched the sky.

Just as I saw the crows flying back toward me, Mrs. Rennick stepped out and clapped her hands. “Time’s up, girls.”

The crows flew toward me and one of them dropped a ring of keys in my hand. Fersa rushed toward me. “Yes! That’s the one,” she said, picking out a tiny silver one. “I think.” Then, “Nevermind, just put them in your pocket. We don’t have time today.”

“What do you have there?” Mrs. Rennick called from a distance.

“We do have time,” I ground out, my jaw battling against the muzzle. “We have to! She’s going to take them and do gods-know-what to us.” I put the key to the small lock on her cuffs.

“Stop that,” Mrs. Rennick said. She started striding toward us, waving at her guards. I freed Fersa of one of her cuffs.

“Hurry,” she snapped. “Oh, hurry…”

The crows wheeled toward Mrs. Rennick and her women, diving at their faces. I heard a chorus of screams as I popped off the next cuff. Now I just had to free her of the collar. The male guard at the gate started heading our way, drawing his sword.

It was really now or never, at this point, but we still needed the key to the gate.

Mrs. Rennick swatted her club at the crows attacking her, shrieking curses. I tried not to pay too much attention, but I heard the club make contact with something. A crow fell to the ground, landing limp, feet curled to the sky.

“No, no!” I cried. My spiders and mice had been willing to die for me, if it came to that, but…that was different. I had fed them, I saved them from my stepfamily. I felt we had an understanding that their lives were already perilous and I would give them many rewards for their kindness to me. I worried that my magic might have commanded the crows and pushed them into danger.

But I couldn’t think of that now. I bit my lip, feeling pain, but pushing myself onward. I unlocked Fersa’s collar.

She immediately started changing, her hands reducing to paws, arms shifting to legs, black-gray fur sprouting everywhere. It was a fluid motion and as soon as her four feet hit the ground, she rushed the guard.

I followed just behind her. The crows followed me, sweeping toward the guard, their harsh cries filling the air. He tried to swing at them and Fersa leapt up and bit his sword arm. She grabbed it between her jaws, shaking him.

“I’ll unlock it, I’ll unlock it!” he cried, holding his other arm up to fend off the crows who tried to peck at his face. “I just work here!”

Fersa dropped back, growling, her teeth red with his blood.

Mrs. Rennick was running toward us. “You think you can just run out of here? Run home to your prince? You don’t belong in this city.”

“Who are you to tell the prince what to do?” I cried.

The guard was fumbling with the keys, blood trickling from his wounded hand. Fersa was staying close to him. The crows’ wings beat back toward Mrs. Rennick, but she was swinging her club at them again.

“No, no, crows!” I cried. “Stay away from her!”

I took one of my horns from my pocket and launched at her, clutching it so the point jutted out of my fist, beating her arm with it. When she swung the club toward me instead, I punched her face. The horn gashed her cheek. She swung wildly, as I darted back. In this moment, she had done me a favor—I couldn’t do nearly as much damage with my horns attached to my head.

The gate creaked open behind me, keys jangling.

I ran out, with Fersa just ahead. She easily outpaced me, but then stopped and looked at me, and at her back.

I jumped onto her back, wrapped my arms around her fur, and held on tight as she started running.

Chapter Nineteen

Ellara

I had only been in that terrible place for less than a day. That quick escape should have seemed a triumph.

But what a mark it had left on me. I was bruised and battered, my horns taken from me. I hated that when the prince saw me now, he would not see the girl he had danced with, but the pathetic state I was in.

It was hard to shake the feeling that my stepmother had won, in the end. That I would always be broken, because of her. And if she had managed to escape…

Fersa dashed into an alley and changed back, now naked and a bit dirty. The crows had followed us, settling around on old boxes and crates stacked in the narrow lane.

Fersa was breathing hard. “Thank you, goblin,” she said. “Not a day’s gone by that I haven’t dreamed of getting out of there. But what now? If the elves see a wolfkin running down the street, they might beat me. I’m only safe in my human form but I don’t have any clothes. And you—I suppose you’re going to try and see the prince, but you look like hell.”

I tugged at the muzzle. “I need to get this off.”

She came over to me and investigated it. “I might be able to chew it off, but…I don’t know. We really need some shears…”

“Never mind. I don’t have time. Wait here. I can get to the prince. When this is all over, I’ll see that you are rewarded and can return home.”

She shivered. “I’m changing back to wolf form. I’ll stay here as long as I can. You’d better come back, goblin girl. I can’t leave this place naked and I can’t leave it furred.”

“I swear,” I assured her.

But it must be admitted, I was not in a good position. It was chilly outside, and all I had was a tattered dress. My bruised face must be a horror. I had no shoes. And of course, I was wearing a bloody muzzle and a flock of crows was following me around.

I knew I wasn’t that far from home, but it would be a wonder if I got home without being burned at the stake first, I thought wryly.

The harbor was behind me, the palace on the north side of the city. Even though I was never allowed to leave the house these days, I knew these landmarks. I simply needed to head toward the palace.

I had always heard the streets of Wyndyr were quite clean compared to other cities, and maybe this was true, but I’m not sure any city seemed clean when you didn’t have shoes on. I carefully navigated around piles of horse manure and suspicious puddles. Beautiful elf women cast me quick glances. Children pointed.

As I rounded a corner, I heard some murmuring behind me. I glanced back. Two city guards were picking up their pace, heading toward me.

Were they chasing me as a vagrant? Or were they looking for the prince’s goblin girl?

I hoped it was the second option. I couldn’t have fought them.

“Hey! Girl!” one of them said.

I stopped and held out my hands to them to show I was unarmed and then I took my horns from my pocket and put them against the nubs that remained, to demonstrate that I was a goblin. It was the first time I had touched the nubs, and it gave me a tremble of anger.

“Goblin? Wasn’t the crown prince looking for a goblin?”

“It couldn’t be this goblin. Look at her!”

“Well…someone’s beaten her up good, but she’s not ugly, for a goblin.”

Although it was neither here nor there, I really hated how elves spoke of goblins. “The prince is looking for me!” I said. “Please—I’m Ellara.”

“Oh, sure. You’ve seen the signs around, I suppose. You’re not Ellara. Where did you escape from? The women’s prison? You know you won’t trick anyone. The prince has a glass slipper that will only fit Ellara’s dainty foot. Your feet won’t do.”

“What? No—I am Ellara! These are Ellara’s dainty feet!” One of the crows fluttered onto my shoulder. I was a little startled by this.

“Is she a witch?” one of the guards asked, suspicious of my crows, as—in all fairness—any sensible city guard probably would be.

“You escaped from somewhere, all right,” the other one said. “Come here.”

No, I couldn’t trust them. They might take me to the prince, or they might take me straight to prison. I bolted. The crows rushed at the guards, providing me cover to dash away, although I put my foot right in a pile of horse manure in my mad dash for the nearest side street. I heard the ominous sound of crows cawing and squawking and beating their wings behind me.

I kept running, despite the manure smeared between my toes—really, could I have been any more of a mess? I came out on a busy street of food markets. I had never been here before. I couldn’t even see the palace over the crowded buildings and tents. Everything smelled of fish. I turned every which way, trying to get my bearings.

“Shove off, only paying customers,” snapped a woman behind me, and I realized I had almost bumped into a stall of apples.

I pressed on, unsure if I was going the right way anymore. Frustration, hunger, and thirst were starting to edge in on my perseverance.

I turned down another alley stacked with boxes full of rotting fruit. Some of the apples still had an unblemished half. Maybe I could—

For a moment, I had forgotten that I couldn’t use my mouth if I wanted to. There was a big, juicy apple right in front of me. Half was brown mush, but the other half still had a crisp skin. I was so hungry…

And I couldn’t eat.

I put my face in my hands.

The crows fluttered into the alley, their wings briefly blotting out the sun above me. They settled around me. One of them fluttered toward the other end of the alley, then hopped back like it wanted me to follow.

“Do you know the way? Why are you sticking with me?”

I followed them. Nothing I could do now but trust this curious circumstance.

When I emerged onto the next street, I saw a poster plastered on a building.

Missing From Last Night’s Ball: A girl, age approx. 18, named Ellara. She has elf and goblin blood, dark horns and fangs, black hair and golden eyes, and her foot must fit into a glass slipper as proof. Please come to the Palace of Waterfalls with any information. Reward Offered.

I hoped my stepsisters had seen these signs.

This gave me the strength to go on.

The crows led me to my own home. I was relieved to see it, despite trepidation. It seemed abandoned. I jostled the door handle, but it was locked. Cook was either gone or left unconscious inside. I felt something brush my foot and saw my little friends gathered at my feet. I crouched, stroking the heads of the little mice. If only you could turn into horses now…

Still, I had come this far. I went to the well and drew up a bucket of water, washing my feet, hands, and face. I was careful, thanks to all my bruises.

Then I checked the bush where I had tossed the glass slipper last night.

It was still there. This would prove I was the girl Prince Ithrin had chosen.

I only hoped he wouldn’t change his mind when he saw me in this state. I imagined him going to sleep, laying awake, thinking about the love spell and my goblin blood, questioning his decision. And then—my poor bedraggled self approaching the palace, confirming all his fears that I wasn’t suitable to be a princess.

I’ve had enough of being humiliated. Maybe I can’t turn rags into ball gowns, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to present myself to Prince Ithrin barefoot and bedraggled.

I knew my stepmother and stepsisters hadn’t taken all their many, many clothes and accessories with them when they left. At the risk of one of the neighbors alerting the guards, I picked up a brick used to edge one of the garden beds, and threw it through the window of my house.

It was time to raid the place.

Chapter Twenty

Ithrin

Wrindel entered the hall with an older, dark-skinned man in disheveled but fine robes leaning on his arm. “Look what I found!” he called, looking as proud as a cat marching in with a mouse.

“Who is this?” I asked, as Kayska and my father gathered closer.

“Ebo Hassari, your grace,” the man said. He sounded weak.

“Mr. Hassari! Ellara told me about you. Are you all right?”

“I found him being tended to by an old fishwife at the docks,” Wrindel said.

“What happened?” I asked.

“My goodness, let me have a moment to gather myself,” Mr. Hassari said. “I am not feeling well, but at least I’ll live, thanks to the kindness of that old woman. Mrs. Lumin—Ellara’s stepmother—came to see me and asked me about my holdings. Already, I did not trust the woman, but I didn’t suspect she would attempt murder. She must have put poison in my drink.” He coughed. “The next thing I knew, I was being tended to by a stranger. She said I had been found, barely breathing, in my room at the tavern when the maid came to clean.”

“It’s nice to know they do clean the rooms at the taverns,” Wrindel said. “That has always been a subject of speculation. Glad you’ve made it through, sir.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But where is…Mrs. Lumin?”

“The ship that left is the one Mr. Hassari came on,” Wrindel said. “I’ve sent our fastest ship after them and the merfolk will attempt to hold them up.”

“Your ship would leave without you?”

“It was not my own ship,” Mr. Hassari said. “I have not traded here in many years. I booked passage on the North Wind simply to find Ellara. So I suppose it wasn’t hard for her to take the ticket for my cabin and make up a story…” He shook his head. “Although it certainly was shameless.”

“Well, maybe we can renegotiate trade here,” I said. “Saffron farms, is it?”

“Yes, sir. The best saffron in the world if I do say so. And half of the holdings belong to Ellara. They will only grow in the years to come.”

“Really.” I was trying not to sound too interested. I didn’t like the timing of this. If Ellara returned, I didn’t want her to think I was happy to see her because I’d learned she had an inheritance after all.

My father chuckled, like he had known all along that it would work out.

“Ellara’s father was a dear, dear friend of mine,” Mr. Hassari went on. “Back when we bought the land, we didn’t know if it would ever become profitable, but I am pleased to say it has, and I have wanted to tell Ellara for these past few years, but I knew I had to come in person. A letter would not do. That woman who dug her claws into him…well, my concerns were proven true, weren’t they?”

“Tenfold, I would say…and when her stepmother returns to our soil, she will pay dearly for her crimes.” I tried to remind myself that I was a prince and I had to uphold the law. I couldn’t just punch out a middle-aged woman.

“We haven’t found Ellara yet. I’m starting to think I’d better look for her myself,” I said.

“Do you have any idea where to look?” my father asked. “We have every spare man in the entire city looking for her. Isn’t it better if you’re here for her the moment she returns?”

“I don’t know if I can stand waiting around. Saddle my horse,” I told the nearest servant. “I’m getting dressed into something more suitable for riding through town.” I had dressed in an elegant gold-trimmed surcoat in the hopes of greeting Ellara in style, but to ride into the city I would rather stick to my nondescript black.

I went to my room, flinging open my wardrobe and grabbing a sturdy jacket and cloak. Then, I thought of Ellara herself, what state she could be in. She might be cold.

I am not sure what possessed me, but I left my room and turned down the corridor in a direction I never traveled. The room down the hall from mine. I opened the door for the first time in…how many years? I came in here once to gather a few of my sister’s books. Never again. It caused me too much pain.

When she died, she was thirteen and I was six. She was so grown-up to me then. Now, she seemed to be only a girl. She had dolls on her bed. I opened the wardrobe to the clothes of a girl who was just beginning to wear the long, elegant gowns of a lady, but still had some short frocks for wading in the castle pools and running down to the shore as well. My sister had been tall for her age, I think. Ellara was small. The clothes were a little dated, but they seemed like the right size. I ran my hand down Seldana’s favorite cloak, a rich blue with silver claps.

For the first time in eighteen years, the cloak saw the light. It was the cloak of a princess, and soon, I would draw the hood over the face of my princess.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ellara

When I approached the palace gates, I could see the guards staring me down at a distance, but when I showed them the slipper, they hastened to change their tune. They brought out the other slipper and bade me to put them both on my feet. Once they fit, they led me into the hall, where Prince Wrindel and Aunt Kayska and Ravok and—Mr. Hassari!—and King Borel himself were gathered around, as if they had already been in the midst of discussion. It all stopped dead at the sight of me.

I knew how horrible I looked. I had glimpsed myself in the mirror. My glass slippers were the only part of me worthy of these halls. I had a black eye and one of my cheeks was red and swollen. My hair was cropped to nothing. And of course, the black leather trapping my jaw made me look especially frightful. I was wearing one of Gwyn’s old gowns and it didn’t quite fit me.

The crows wanted to follow me in, on top of that, but I insisted they stay outside. One stubborn crow followed me anyway.

I caught Wrindel’s appalled face before he masked it, and my eyes plunged downward with shame.

Aunt Kayska rushed toward me and threw her arms around me. “My child! What happened? Where have you been? How do we get this thing off of you?” Her voice was getting angrier with every sentence. “Who did this to you? And when can I kill them?”

The crow fluttered onto her shoulder, and she gave it a little smile like they were old friends.

The king ordered servants to find something to cut the muzzle with. Someone brought a pair of sharp clippers and cut me free from the horrible muzzle, and I was very glad to see Mr. Hassari alive, so I was starting to feel better.

But mainly, I noticed an absence. “Where is Ithrin?”

“He just went to change clothes, to go look for you,” the king said. “You had better go and see him.”

“Maybe we should clean her up with some healing potion first,” Wrindel said.

King Borel turned to his younger son, shaking his head. “You’re the one who kept going on to your brother about love at first sight. Well, love can’t just be about that, and now is the perfect time for him to see if his feelings are true.”

Maybe there was something to be said for this sentiment, but I said, “I—I might rather have the healing potion.”

“Nonsense,” the king said. “Go on. I believe you know where his room is.” He pointed toward the stairs.

I wasn’t about to defy the orders of the king, so I headed that way, but I was growing more nervous with every step. It was glaringly clear to me now that I didn’t know Ithrin well enough to trust him with my true self. He had seen the perfect version of me my goblin godmother had created for the dance. Now I was as broken as I’d ever been. The crow settled on my shoulder and nipped my ear when I tried to shoo it away. My skirt and draping sleeves dragged on the ground because I wasn’t tall enough for Gwyn's dress.

I peered in Ithrin’s room, but it was empty. It was the next room where I heard footsteps, and a cabinet opening.

The door was open. It was a darling room, girlish, with the stone walls painted white and hung with bright tapestries. It looked airy, but smelled stuffy. I stopped in the door.

I was struck again by just how beautiful he was. Tall and graceful, broad shoulders and slim waist in a black jacket tailored to perfection. It was hard to believe that he had been making love to me, just last night. I felt like a different person now. Stronger than before, but I would bear the scars of it forever. I was no longer the same girl he had loved last night.

“Prince Ithrin,” I said.

He turned, and I saw a glimpse of joy and relief on his face before it shifted to horror. “Ellara—Ellara, what happened?” He rushed toward me and put his beautiful hands on my bruised face. I shut my eyes. His lips brushed my forehead, and his thumb traced the line of my lower lip.

“I should never have gone home last night,” I said. “My dress was going to turn back to rags at midnight. I was afraid for you to see me like that. I always disdained my stepsisters for their vanity and in the end, I was vain too. I should have stayed and let you see the real me.” I hung my head. “And now it’s far worse. When I went home…my stepmother was waiting. She took me to a work house where the girls are basically prisoners…they cut off my horns…and my stepmother took your priceless ring.” I bit my lip. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Sorry?” His hands slid to my shoulders. “You should not be sorry. Look what they’ve done to you! You tell me the name of this work house, and I will make sure every last person responsible for its existence is punished. And if we find your stepmother, well, I curse that I am a prince and my actions are under scrutiny, but we have proof that she attempted murder on Mr. Hassari—and the strong suspicion that she did murder your father and steal your inheritance, and by the law of the realm, that is a crime for which she should be locked in the dungeons for the rest of her life.”

I looked at him, hardly breathing.

He paused, loosening his grip on my shoulder—I had not realized how tight he was holding me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got heated. Maybe that isn’t what you want to hear. Maybe you think I should go easier on her—“

I saw my stepmother in my memories, insulting me at every turn, telling me I was an ugly goblin, gloating when I was left to eat food left behind on her plate, and when the slightest error in housekeeping was an excuse for a beating. And her satisfaction at selling me to the work house—wishing for me to suffer until the last.

“No,” I said. “You are the prince. Uphold the law. That is all I ask.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ellara

Ithrin was holding a beautiful blue cloak. He wrapped it around my shoulders. “You look terrible,” he said.

“Oh.” I bristled.

“I mean your condition. Not you.”

“Well, I know that. Prince Wrindel said I should take healing potion before I saw you.”

“No. I’m glad you waited. I want to see what we’re up against.” He took my hand and started leading me to the door. He paused before he left. “This is my sister’s room,” he said. “It has been empty since her death. But when our first daughter is born, it will belong to her.”

“Princes shouldn’t wish for daughters; isn’t that what they say?” I said. Sons were more valued as heirs.

He smiled with a hint of dismissal. “I very much hope for as many daughters as sons. Our family has been nothing but men.”

“Well, my family has been nothing but women. Horrid women.”

“We are already starting to correct the balance, then.”

A servant was waiting in the hall. Ithrin said, “Bring me the healing balm for the lady’s skin. Knock on the door and let me know only if her stepfamily is found, but tell my father and brother I will do nothing until I have well tended to her wounds.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait,” I said. “There is something else, too. A wolfkin girl named Fersa helped me escape the work house. She’s waiting in an alley. She lost her clothes transforming so she had to stay in wolf form, and she’s trapped because she’s afraid of frightening people as a wolf and maybe being attacked for it. I told her I’d send for her as soon as I could.”

“Where is she?” Ithrin asked.

“Near the work house. The Home for Industrious Ladies. In an alley right off the road that leads to the place.”

“Tell the city guard to take some ladies clothes, find the wolfkin girl, and while they’re at it, seize the owners of the Home for Industrious Ladies.”

“Yes, sir. Right away.” The servant bowed and rushed off.

“Well,” I said. “Being a prince has its perks.”

“If you like bossing people around, you’ve come to the right place.”

“I really don’t…”

“You might come to enjoy it on occasion.” He suddenly scooped me up into his arms. I wasn’t expecting it, and in fact, it agitated my wounds, but I didn’t tell him that. He carried me into his bedroom and put me down on the bed. The crow tried to follow us, but he nudged it out and shut the door.

“It’s true, isn’t it? You make friends with animals.”

I shrugged. I could have told him they were the only friends I’d had for many years, but how pathetic did that sound?

“‘Well tended to my wounds’?” I inquired.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know what exactly you’ve endured since we parted—but no one should suffer like this. And you don’t even complain. Which says to me, more powerfully than anything you could tell me about your stepmother’s cruelties, that you know how to bear such treatment. All of that ends today. You will want for nothing. You will never suffer, if I can help it. I lost the two most important women in my life when I was a boy. You are so precious to me, Ellara…”

He climbed into bed beside me, leaning over me. My whole body itched to touch him, but I knew he meant to touch me instead, and I wanted to know how he would touch me, so I held myself back. My eyes drank him in, every inch of him. Being so close to him brought back vivid memories of last night, of the way he felt inside of me, and I was already growing wet for him. How quickly the work house seemed a distant memory! His hands moved to the laces of my bodice.

Then he paused.

“Do you think some of this is still…the after effect of the love spell?” I blurted.

I don’t know what on earth possessed me to question this moment.

“Maybe we’ll never know,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Do I seem like a stranger to you?”

“No,” I admitted. “Not at all.”

“I feel the same. But I also can’t help but think…you would not normally have chosen a goblin…”

“Ellara, you’re not a ‘goblin’ here. You’re a girl. Nor do I want to be a prince. Not when we’re alone. Just a boy and a girl…”

“ A boy? Hardly.”

He grinned and pushed my bodice off my shoulders. He tried to help me take my dress off. I winced.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Just stay still.” His hands gripped Gwyn’s filmy gown in two hands and tore the fabric. He ripped it all the way down to the hem, so now it hung off my shoulders like a robe, and my body was bare. I wet my lips.

His brows drew together as his eyes raked over the damage. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I had bruises absolutely everywhere from all my attempts to fight. My wrists and ankles were chafed from when I had struggled against being tied up while my horns were cut, and of course I still had all the welts from before.

He gently traced my bruises with a finger.

A servant knocked. “The healing potion, your majesty.”

He kissed me lightly, and said again, “Stay still.”

He sprung to his feet and opened the door a crack. Then he returned to me with a small amber bottle. He set it down on the nightstand and slowly pushed the dress off my arms the rest of the way. He had told me to stay still, so I didn’t help him. I was pretty happy not to move anymore. I knew he was going to take care of me now; that there was nothing left to fear, nothing left to do. I couldn’t remember when I had last experienced such a moment, knowing I would not be expected to clean any ashes, scrub any tubs, fix any hairstyles, tiptoe around anyone’s cruelty. It was the most blissful feeling I could imagine.

He tipped the bottle toward his palm, filling it with a bit of the oily liquid, and rubbed it between his palms.

Then he started to rub the potion down my aching arms. The healing potion was warm, and it seeped under my skin like the magic it was, soothing my pains. He dabbed just a bit on his fingertips and stroked my face. I shut my eyes, already feeling blissful. My arms still felt warm. The potion was invisible but felt like a protective coating, and smelled vaguely herbal.

He moved, then, to my legs, lifting each one to work the potion into the welts on the back of my legs. His hand moved up the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, quite near to my sex. His fingers explored down the hollows where my legs met my body, and then his fingers played with my nether lips, his touch light.

“Ithrin,” I whispered. “Oh, please—more than that. It’s ticklish—too light.”

“You are already so wet,” he said. “I had no idea women got aroused as easily as men do.” He sounded amused.

“We hide it better.”

“Not right now, you don’t,” he said. “All the more reason not to put too many clothes on you when we’re alone together. Hmph,” he added. “Listen to me. I sound as bad as Wrindel. You do things to me, Ellara. Love spells that can’t be broken? Love at first sight? Yesterday, I wouldn’t have believed in any of it. Today, all I know is that I feel reborn.” He gave my clit a little tug and I arched my back, already crying out with desire.

“Not yet,” he said. He spread my legs wider. “But let me see. I want to see just how wet I can make you before you come.”

I dug my fingers into the bed. “Oh, no,” I gasped, in a voice that meant quite the opposite.

He dribbled more potion into his hands and teased his fingers around my nipples in little circling motions until I was panting. Then he stopped and worked the potion into my stomach and chest, around the edges of my breasts. Oh, how I yearned for him to touch them! The moment seemed endless until he finally put his mouth to my nipple, licking and sucking at the tender tip until it was so tight I could hardly bear it. And then he moved on to the next. The rush of sensation that coursed through me was so wonderful that it seemed to make up for everything I had ever suffered, as if everything had been building to this moment.

He moved downward, to my parted legs. His tongue slid between my nether lips, parting them further, sliding up and down across my sex. I had never dreamed of such a thing! I whimpered as he set my sensitive skin alight. His tongue could explore me in such a way that a hand never could, slipping into every hidden place. The sensations this produced were the strongest I had ever felt, moreso than anything on our first encounter, and yet I was not sliding into that release. I just seemed to be getting more and more tender and helpless, agitated by the persistent caress of his tongue against that bud of intense pleasure.

He sucked on it and the sensations surged. I shrieked with the strength of it, and how quickly I suddenly slid into an orgasm. I groped for the pillows behind me, grabbing one against my chest.

“That was faster than I meant for it to be,” he said crossly.

“I can’t help it!” I cried.

“You taste so sweet, I don’t think I’m done with you,” he said, and he very lightly grazed the tip of his tongue over my swollen clit until I was outright screaming. I hoped these stone walls blocked the sound. Then he thrust his tongue inside my entrance. I pressed my thighs against his shoulders, shuddering, begging. “Please, Ithrin, please…”

“Please what?” He grinned. “I like this very much, seeing you like this.”

He got a little more healing potion dribbled onto the tips of his fingers and slipped them inside me. “What about here?” he asked. “Are you aching inside?”

I stiffened against the penetration. “A little.”

“Not too badly, though?”

“No.”

“Good.” He reached for his trousers.

I clutched his wrist. “Take off your clothes. I’ve want to feel your skin against mine. I want to feel all of you.”

I watched, mesmerized, as he unfastened the clasps of his jacket, unbuttoned his boots. His skin was as perfect as a statue, every muscle and line graceful and perfectly formed. His pale skin didn’t have a single freckle or blemish of any kind; it was almost unearthly. I am not sure he realized how beautiful he was as he impatiently wrestled his ankles out of his trousers with a little muttered, “Damn it—come on—there we go.” He acted like a man, imperfect—but he looked like a god. I knew we were about to make love again and yet, strangely, I was already anticipating the next time, and the next…all the ways we would get to know each other in months and years to come.

I smiled. “I can’t believe…I get to do this,” I said.

“I can’t believe that stupid ball actually worked out,” he said.

He climbed on top of me, dwarfing my little body beneath his long one…and that cock, to match. I’d already taken it once but I felt like I’d forgotten how deep and thick it was going to fill me. He ran his hands over my arms, lifting them above my head, tangling his fingers with mine.

“My little darling girl,” he said. “With those bright golden eyes. This is where you belong. Safe and sound.”

“Am I safe?” I teased. “I think I’m about to be impaled.”

“That you are.” The corners of his mouth lifted slightly and his eyes narrowed in a very satisfied way, and that was the last sensible thought I had before he took me with his mouth and his cock at once. My clit was still extremely sensitive, and that sensitivity seemed to soak all the way down inside me to where his manhood stroked and filled me. His tongue explored my mouth simultaneously, the taste of him sweet. His mouth muffled my helpless moans. I was overwhelmed with bliss, pounding toward another peak.

“Ahh…ahh…”

“You come so easily,” he said. “I wonder how many times I could get you there in an hour? There’s a goal we could keep striving to beat.”

I whimpered. He stopped driving into me and went still for a time, his hard cock resting inside me, plucking and rolling my nipples between his fingers, forcing me back into rapid arousal. I wasn’t sure I could bear it anymore, but I wanted to know how much I could withstand. I succumbed to his touch, his plundering tongue, his teasing fingers, whimpering with sweet agony.

Then he started fucking me again, and this time he was the one who came inside me first. I clenched around him, coming for a third time, hoping that he had already planted the seed of our first child. I knew we had both been lonely, and I could hardly wait for a whole pack of sons and daughters to fill the palace with joy.

There was a knock on the door. “Prince Ithrin; my lady. Mrs. Lumin and her daughters have been brought back to the palace.”

“Very good,” he called. “I’ll be there once I have finished tending to my betrothed’s wounds.”

“Should I do something about this crow in the hall, sir?”

“No, let it be!” he called. He shook his head at me, with a half-smile.

But I was seized with a sense of dread out of pure instinct. “They’re here…my stepfamily…”

“You don’t want them to see you as a princess?” He brushed a thumb across my face, smoothing back one of my curls, which were now so short. “The bruises are already looking a lot better.”

“I do, but…I suppose a part of me would rather not see them again. Ever. I keep thinking of the cruelty in their faces when they left me there at the work house.”

“I want them to see you,” he said. “And I want to see them. I want to look in the eyes of the people who hurt you.”

He turned me over. I was so spent by this time that I just flopped face first into the pillows before I was forced to turn my head to breathe. Now he was rubbing the potion on my back.

“I haven’t even gotten to properly enjoy this angle yet,” he said. He nudged my legs open again.

“You’re not going to…not again?”

“Not yet. But the hour isn’t up yet. I still want to see what I can do with you in an hour. Your stepfamily can wait and wonder how they will be judged. Every time I bring you to climax, you seem to glow a little brighter. I want you on fire by the time we leave this room.”

He started to work the potion into my tender backside. I could have stayed there forever. I felt like I was practically levitating at this point, with all the soothing potion working its way into my wounds, and the touch of his fingers marking every inch of me. Even when his hands left, it was like echoes of memory remained on my skin.

He shifted position behind me, sliding his hands beneath my stomach, down to my sex again. He slipped down, pushing two fingers inside me, and then three, before he started circling my center of pleasure with his thumb. His hand started fucking me, firm and hard. I was already three orgasms in and it was starting to feel like too much, and yet I couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop him. This combination of agony and satisfaction felt cleansing after all my trials.

My hips bucked. His pelvis pressed against my ass, keeping me from going much of anywhere. I struggled to push myself up onto my elbows but my whole body was trembling and quivering. He placed his knees on the inside of mine and shoved them open wider, so his fingers could fuck me even deeper. I couldn’t go anywhere now, except to scratch at the pillows.

“When your claws grow back in,” he said, “you’re going to have to be careful. The kingdom is on a budget. No money for new sheets.” He slid his tongue along the sensitive ridge of my ear. “If you hurry, we might be able to make it to five.”

“No,” I cried. “No, I can’t bear it!” But the very idea of it made me climax again, as his thumb made quick little strokes on my clit.

“Wrindel always told me that girls can be hard to please,” he said. “So far it seems like you’re the exception to the rule.”

“Maybe it’s the love potion…,” I said weakly.

“I think we’ve moved past the love potion. Stop thinking of it. I think you were meant for me. You were meant to break me out of the gloom I’ve been in, give me something to search for besides death. I want you to know that, Ellara. I don’t care if you have money. That isn’t why I chose you. You have given me something worth more than gold.”

“Good sex?”

“I was thinking something more like…”

As he searched for a lofty way of describing it, I repeated, “Good sex.” I laughed gently.

“Well, that too. But you’re my first, Ellara, so I don’t have much comparison.”

“Am I really? Wrindel never steered you into a courtesan’s room some drunken night?”

“I never get drunk,” he said, “for precisely that reason.”

“You’re pretty good at it yourself, considering that,” I said.

“I have an inspiring subject,” he said. “And—well—I’ve stolen plenty of reading material from Wrindel’s collection.” His cock nudged into me from behind now, his hands steering me back onto his shaft, and I am proud to say I made it to five before the High Court’s clock struck the hour.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ellara

I remained in bed while he found a smaller dress for me to wear. He tugged me out of bed and helped me dress in a simple but lovely gown of red silk with an inner lining of pale pink that showed in the sleeves and the panel of the bodice. Then he adorned me in gold, as he had promised before: gold bracelets, a gold necklace with rubies and pearls, and a gold circlet. Finally, he put the blue cloak over my shoulders, and led me to the mirror.

The bruises were not gone, but they had faded so they probably wouldn’t be the first thing anyone noticed when they looked at me anymore. My cropped hair didn’t look so bad with the circlet, although I still would be glad when it grew back. And indeed, I had a languid sort of glow. I could have just stayed in bed.

“Now, you look very much the pampered princess,” he said. “Ready to take care of business?”

“I guess I am,” I said. “It’s my stepsisters I’m worried about, more than anything.”

“Why? They have no power over you now.”

“Well, I know my stepmother murdered my father and attempted to murder Mr. Hassari. So she can get what she deserves under the law. My stepsisters? I don’t think they were complicit in murder, but they have tormented me on nearly an hourly basis for the past six years. I know they share all of my stepmother’s taste for viciousness. I know I shouldn’t fear seeing them now, but I do.”

“Ellara, my dear, you have all the power now. They will lose their mother and any money they have left is probably legally yours. I expect they’ll have to go to the work house. Aren’t they lucky I’m about to crack down on abusive conditions in work houses?”

I glanced down, clutching my arms into a shiver. I knew they would suffer now, and they deserved nothing less. I knew I would be their princess, and they would have to live with that bitterness all their lives. But I still felt a strange mix of fear and shame and absolute fury. They had gotten to me in ways I would never shake. They had stolen things from me I would never get back. And I had no recourse to get the revenge I really wanted. I had to be noble now.

“No,” he said. “Whatever you feel inside, don’t show it to them.”

My crow flew back onto my shoulder. Ithrin took my hand. I straightened up, clutching his fingers. He was right. I deserved this moment.

We returned to the hall. Luckily, I spotted Fersa before anyone else, and she ran toward me and hugged me like we were old friends. “Thank you,” she said.

“I couldn’t have escaped without you either,” I said.

“Pshaw.”

And then I saw them, standing in the back of the room. The flock of crows was gathered around them, the birds’ beady eyes glaring. The crows seemed unusually aware of my situation, I considered. When they saw me, they started muttering and squawking. My stepmother was clutching a shawl close around her, looking wary and annoyed. My stepsisters looked like they had already been crying furious tears, their eyes red and puffy and their mouths pursed.

Mr. Hassari gave me a small bow, like he was giving me permission to do something.

“You tried to murder Mr. Hassari,” I said to my stepmother. “And you murdered my father…didn’t you?”

“I did no such thing,” she said. “I am innocent on all counts! Perhaps Mr. Hassari and your father have indulged in the same rich foods. You are blaming me for a heart attack!”

“I found the poison in your house,” Aunt Kayska said.

“You’re—mistaken,” my stepmother stammered.

“And if you did not kill me, madam, then why did you steal my ticket home?” Mr. Hassari asked.

My stepmother opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She was completely cornered and she knew it. All right, I must admit, it was very enjoyable to see the moment that all of this dawned on her. A smile crept onto my face.

“You!” my stepmother screeched. “You wicked goblin! You and your aunt set all this up! Your majesty—“ She implored the king. “It’s a goblin trick. They have forced your son into falling in love with this wretched girl.” She was nearly spitting at me. “I pray that I do not see you take the throne of our beautiful elven kings and queens! You, with your mother’s dirty blood. It makes me sick.”

My stepsisters started crying again. “I can’t bear to see it,” Gwyn agreed. “Cinderella isn’t fit to be a princess. She talks to rats!”

“Mice,” I said.

“She puts mice in our bed!” Cerra chimed in. “She’s dirty and gross. Look at her! You must all be bewitched to think she should be a princess!”

It took everything in me not to shrink away, to hear such hatred spewing from their mouths. I knew I had not done anything to deserve it, but a part of me still took it to heart. I started to feel small, wondering if they were right in the end, and the people of Wyndyr would always see me as they saw me.

The crows suddenly stirred and started flying around my indignant stepfamily. The girls screamed, swatting at the black feathers that swept around them. My stepmother managed to grab a crow in the midst of the chaos.

“No!” I cried. “Please!”

That only made things worse. She held the crow by one wing and put it under her boot. “I’ve always wanted to do this to one of your little pets,” she said, before she crushed it to death.

I let out a ragged scream and launched at her. Sure, a princess probably shouldn’t be known for attacking her stepmother in the Hall of Marble Pools, but…

“I was a child.”

“A half breed child,” my stepmother said. “Always predisposed for trouble.”

I heard Fersa growl behind me. I felt the presence of Ithrin, Wrindel and King Borel, Mr. Hassari and my Aunt Kayska, all of them bristling. No one agreed with my stepmother. And if even the royal family didn’t agree with her, what did I have to fear?

I stared her down—or up, because she was taller than me, but my anger emboldened me. “I was a child who had lost her mother, but I had my dear father—and then you came along. Lovely and mannered on the outside, but I know what is in all of your hearts. You have savored every moment of tormenting me. I don’t know if you hate goblins, or me in particular— No, I know what it truly is. You hate yourselves. You know that it is no way to live, taking pleasure in tormenting a lonely girl. For six years you have blamed me for everything that has gone wrong in your lives. For not warming your bed on a cold night or tightening your corsets enough. Believe me, I wished I could tighten your corsets so well that your stomachs would pop out of your mouths.”

The crows started cawing, their feathers ruffled. They took flight, circling closer and closer to my stepfamily’s faces.

“Call them off!” my stepmother cried. “This is your doing!”

“I have given them no commands,” I said. But the crows knew. Somehow, they knew what I wanted.

I stepped back as my stepmother screamed.

The crows attacked my stepfamily. They had lost one of their own and now they were merciless. Sharp beaks pierced and jabbed at their eyes. The crow on my shoulder, which I had started to think was some sort of leader, merely watched. I watched, too. I watched as my stepfamily was assaulted by the crows, all three of them finally dropping to their knees, clutching their bleeding faces.

“Get a healer out here,” the king said to one of the guards, but his tone was more grim than urgent. I think he was on my side. My stepsister’s screams echoed through the hall as my stepmother wished we would all go to the depths of hell.

The crow on my shoulder flew down as I held out my hand. It perched itself there and bowed to me. It met my eyes in a strangely human gaze, and I understood. Wherever this crow had come from, it had always been meant to be my protector.

Then all of the crows flew toward Ithrin. For a moment, it looked like they were going to attack him next. My breath hitched. But as they reached him, their bodies started to melt away, and he absorbed them in a mass of formless shadows. The dead crow vanished as well.

“They said they prayed not to see you take the throne,” he said, in a strange voice that was not his own. His eyes went unfocused. “I merely granted their wish. All my love and blessings to you, Ellara and Prince Ithrin….for a long and happy reign. May you love each other as we love each other.”

Ithrin clutched his heart, gasping as he started to see me again.

“Ithrin, did you summon those crows?” I asked. “Who…who was speaking?”

“What did you do?” the king asked, more severely.

“Yes,” he said. “I did. I called for help to the realms of the dead. I wanted to speak to Mr. Hassari, thinking he had succumbed to the murder attempt. But the voice that came instead said she was…Ellara’s mother. She asked if I would open a channel for her from the world beyond.”

“And you agreed?” the king asked. “You agreed to open a channel for the dead?”

“Yes,” he said.

“The crows saved me…,” I said. “They were with me back in the work house. They helped me fight off Mrs. Rennick and the guards and get out of the gates. So you’re saying that was really…my mother? She was speaking of my father…’as we love each other’…” I clutched my forehead as my tears started falling. “They’re together, aren’t they? They’re together now…and she protected me.” She got my revenge, I thought. She attacked them as an elven princess could not…

Oh, my wicked goblin mother. You knew what my wicked goblin heart wanted.

“Thank you,” I whispered, as Ithrin put his arms around me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ellara

The next day, the next week…it was all a whirlwind.

My stepmother, blinded by the crows along with her daughters, went to prison, awaiting trial for murder, which would probably leave her locked up forever. She was sharing a cell with her old friend, Mrs. Rennick, who was going on trial for abusing and imprisoning the women of the work house.

My blind stepsisters could never fuss at their stupid mirrors again. They had no money, no other family to turn to. They told me, haughtily, that their friends would surely help them, and they would make me sorry someday. In a way, I had to give them; it takes a very special kind of personality to remain haughty after crows have pecked your eyes.

The very next day they shuffled back into the palace, singing a different tune, while I was discussing my father’s business with Mr. Hassari. “Ellara…we didn’t mean all of that, yesterday. We were just saying it because Mother told us to,” Gwyn pleaded. “You wouldn’t really leave your sisters to starve on the streets, would you?”

“You can go to the work house,” I said. “I’m sure you could sew sails.”

“The work house?” Cerra wailed.

“You were going to leave me there forever while you claimed my father’s spice farms and even my identity in Cabria.”

“That wasn’t us, it was Mother!”

“Do you really expect me to believe that you two would have taken any pity on me if your mother was out of the picture? You have taken every opportunity to belittle me and hit me, regardless of whether she was around.”

Mr. Hassari glanced at me. “You girls wished to go to Cabria? There is plenty of work on my farms.”

I picked up the quill we had been using to sign papers, and wrote a tiny note on one of the margins: Please take them with you. I will rest much easier knowing they are hundreds of miles away.

When I put down the quill, he picked it up and wrote, There is manure to be spread on the fields.

“Why should we go to Cabria now?” Gwyn asked.

“Because, here, if you ever leave the workhouse, you run the risk of your friends seeing you in this state,” I said. “What would Lisitha think? The neighbors?”

“Cabria is a cheap nation to live in,” Mr. Hassari said. “And the weather is very pleasant. You will have a better chance of finding a husband there.”

I knew my stepsisters’ vanity would win out. To them, nothing was worse than being seen by people they knew in a reduced state. When Mr. Hassari left for home, they accompanied him. He assured me that he would be back soon to discuss trade.

I went back to my house just once, to collect the things still left from the days Father and I had been happy, and gathered up the mice and spiders to give them a place to live in the palace—some out of the way nook where the servants wouldn’t kill them and I could bring them treats. Aunt Kayska came with me and I gave her a few things that belonged to Mother. Cook was still unconscious on the floor.

“I’ll take care of her,” Aunt Kayska said, waving me back to the carriage.

“You won’t—kill her? I mean…I don’t like her, but she is just the cook.”

“My dear, I’m not a murderess. I will do nothing to harm her. I just want her to remember me.”

Fersa stayed in the palace for a couple of weeks and we had a marvelous time exploring the place, like a couple of giddy children getting excited over every little waterfall and storeroom of armor. Wrindel made an unsuccessful attempt to seduce her.

“It’s a little flattering,” she said. “A handsome prince finally giving me a taste of love-making. But…Prince Wrindel? I damn sure won’t be his first…or second…or tenth.”

“You are wise to wait,” I said. “I’m sure when you get home, you’ll find the right sort of person who would make a good husband.”

“What a bloody sensible response. Easy for you to say when I know your future husband’s already fucking you good.” She looked wistful.

Fersa didn’t really have “palace manners”. I liked her, though. I had always tried to live up to the elven ideals my father taught me and never dared to say anything too out of step from what was expected.

She also had to leave before my wedding. I helped her write her father’s family, and read her the reply. They seemed pleased to hear from her, in a long and flowery letter that smelled like perfume and asked her what her dress size was, and suggested she would have a tutor to learn to read.

She wrinkled her nose. “They’re going to think I’m an animal.”

“You should probably try not to curse so much at least for the first few months…”

“They’re going to hate me, aren’t they?”

“Your aunt sounds pretty welcoming in the letter. Just because they have education and they want you to have an education too doesn’t mean they’ll hate you. But you’re also a grown woman, you know. If it’s absolutely terrible, come back to Wyndyr. You’ll always have a place in the palace.”

“Come back with my tail between my legs? Never.”

“I just want you to know that you can,” I said. “Either way, I hope you learn to read and write just so you can write me! I want to know how it goes. You could use me for practice. I don’t care if the letters aren’t perfect.”

“Good. Because they won’t be. I used to spend more than half my time as a wolf, not a girl…” She looked at her hands. “I suppose my new family won’t ever want me to be a wolf.”

“Maybe you should just see before you worry about it,” I said, crossing my fingers that they were as nice as they seemed in the letter. Fersa could have a hard road ahead, and I knew how difficult it was to fit in sometimes.

I sent her off, already dressed for a respectable reception, in a fine dress made of warm browns and golds, and a red cloak, a striking backdrop for her long black hair.

As some of my new friends departed, others arrived for my wedding, including King Nyar and Queen Sabela. I first saw them at the reception, on the night before I was to be wed. My eyes went wide at Queen Sabela’s beauty, while King Nyar had an undeniably attractive presence despite being a bit ugly to my eyes. (I wondered if I would think so, if I had grown up in the goblin kingdom.)

“Your majesties,” I said. “I am honored beyond words that you made this journey.” And I truly was. Their presence added legitimacy toward our wedding in the eyes of the people, promising new alliances for the kingdom. No goblin king had visited Wyndyr in over a century.

“It’s our pleasure,” King Nyar said. “It’s my hope that we are in a new age of peace. All across the land, races that were once at odds have been forging alliances with the bonds of marriage, and none makes me happier than to see a goblin marrying a high elf. Our ancestors have fought each other in numerous wars, but we are the custodians of a golden era.”

“I think you’re right,” King Borel said. “It’s up to us to give our descendants a better world than our ancestors, and we’re off to a good start.”

Later on, Sabela grinned at me and said, “I made him say that little speech about peace.”

“Did you?”

“Of course, Nyar agrees with the sentiment entirely, but he would have said it more bluntly. How he grumbled about it! I think part of the reason goblins haven’t gotten along with high elves is because they don’t know how to manage the flowery speeches.” She sipped her wine. “I hear you and I have a lot in common. Daughters of merchants turned royalty.”

“I didn’t know you were the daughter of a merchant, too. Was it hard to become a queen?”

“Not really. Goblins are very…casual. So you see, the hardest part is managing relations with other races. But at home, all is well, and that’s the most important part. I get a lot of chances to relax. You have a lot to manage, don’t you? Not just a princess, but owner of saffron farms? Will you go to Cabria to see them? More importantly, will you send us some as a gift of goodwill?” She laughed.

“Of course I’ll send you some! Maybe someday I’ll go. I have so much to learn about the court. I don’t want to leave…yet. We’re still investigating the work houses and I think I should probably visit them just to show the poor women there that I’m on their side, and there is so much more we could do about relations with the wolvenfolk and goblins, and…well, I hope to have children soon.”

“Remember—one day a time,” she said.

It was a poorly kept secret that Ithrin and I had already consummated our marriage many times over, but that night I slept apart from him, as custom demanded. I barely slept at all, in fact, but laid awake in wonder at how quickly my life had changed. And in the end, it was all thanks to my Aunt Kayska and her wicked little spell. I crept out of bed and looked at the moon and stars shining out my window, and made a wish that I would be worthy of the position in which I had found myself.

In the morning, my sleepless, giddy self was rushed through a round of pampering and primping that would have made my stepsisters very jealous. I sat in front of the mirror, trying not to fidget as they fastened tiny pearls in my hair. It all seemed a little silly…until Aunt Kayska entered, carrying a pillow with something odd on it…my horns, wrapped in a filigree of gold.

“What is this?” I asked.

“I’m going to put them back where they belong, my dear. I spoke to Ithrin about my idea. As the witch of my village, people come to me with every sort of problem. I have never known a goblin to lose their horns, but I have known people of all sorts to lose their teeth! Sometimes I can secure them with a fastening spell and metal wires. I thought the same thing might work for you. And you are a princess, so we want this to befit your station. Ithrin had the palace goldsmith make these little cages of gold. I’m going to fasten the wires to the nubs, and I don’t think they’ll be going anywhere.”

“Oh…auntie, thank you…they’re beautiful.”

“I will be going home before long, but remember, child…even though we have miles between us, you always have family that loves you. Some of these elves will snub you, I know it’s true. When they do, feel free to write to me, and I will always take your side.”

“Just promise me you won’t cast any enchantments.”

She squeezed my hand. “I told King Nyar I wouldn’t start any wars. I’ll make you the same promise.”

I supposed I could accept that.

A crown of small golden flowers went around my face, and ribbons in the colors of the royal house trailed down my back. My cheeks were dusted faintly with gold. My dress was like liquid cream, buttery and soft and silky, clinging to my small curves before it trailed behind me. I wore my glass slippers, too, as a symbol of the night we met. It was cold that day, and elven weddings were always held out of doors, but a white fur-trimmed cloak was placed on my shoulders. I was very glad my horns were restored, because otherwise I had never looked so much like an elf. I was equally proud of both sides of my heritage.

I walked a long path blanketed with autumn leaves, maidens carrying my train, and Ithrin waited for me at the end. He smiled, his dark eyes warmer than I had ever seen them, and wrapped his hands around mine. We said our solemn vows before the court, and he lifted me off my feet when we kissed. Then it was time to feast and dance the night away.

Ravok and Kayska danced together most of the night, the old goblin blushing as my godmother teased him. Sabela took off her shoes and showed me a goblin jig. Wrindel, now the most eligible bachelor in the land, had a parade of swooning ladies on his arm, but Ithrin observed that he seemed unusually restrained. “Dare I hope that you've met someone?” he asked.

“Possibly,” Wrindel said. “But I’ll have to forget about her. It would never work.”

“Why not?” Ithrin narrowed his eyes.

“She’s a mermaid,” Wrindel said. “She helped me track down Ellara’s stepmother. A beautiful, clever mermaid…and we have plenty of pools to keep her in. But what do you do with the lower half, then?”

Ithrin sighed in a pained way. “Yes, you’d better forget about that, all right.”

At another point, I spotted Lisitha. My stepsisters’ friend was scowling like anything. She must have been chewed up inside from jealousy. Later, she came up to me with a syrupy smile and said she was SO happy for me.

“I know,” I said, with a smile of my own. “I’m so happy for me too.”

It was quite delicious.

We were so tired after a long night of dancing and eating and a little too much drinking as well, that it was probably a good thing we’d already taken care of consummating the wedding. I collapsed into bed and didn’t stir until I heard the clock of the High Court chime noon.

Ithrin was awake before me. I found him packing away his spell books.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I don’t need them now,” he said. “I think I’m done with seances. I don’t need to speak to the dead anymore.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to do this because of me. If it’s important to you…”

“It’s not because of you. Well, it is, but—only because I see the future now. Not the past. Different things have become important, that’s all.” He put his arms around me. “It’s time to bury my dead, Ellara.”

“Yes…” I smiled at him. “We have a lot of living to do.”

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this book, I would be much obliged if you consider leaving a review. To make sure you don’t miss a release, follow me on Amazon and on Facebook, where I also post snippets of the next book from time to time! Is there a fairy tale you’d like to see? Drop me a line on Facebook or at lidiyafoxglove@lidiyafoxglove.com! Next up is The Little Mermaid, mixed with elements of mermaid and selkie bride tales from Ireland.

Fairy Tale Heat Series

Every book is standalone and can be read in any order, although some characters might pop up in later books!

Book One: Beauty and the Goblin King

Book Two: These Wicked Revels (A retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses)

Book Three: Rapunzel and the Dark Prince

Book Four: The Beggar Princess (A retelling of King Thrushbeard)

Book Five: The Goblin Cinderella

Book Six: The Mermaid Bride

About the Author

Lidiya Foxglove has always loved a good fairy tale, whether it’s sweet or steamy, and she likes to throw in a little of both. Sometimes she thinks she ought to do something other than reading and writing, but that would require doing more laundry. So…never mind.

lidiyafoxglove@lidiyafoxglove.com

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