The Goblin King (11 page)

“That’s the second time you’ve asked me that,” she retorted calmly. “What makes you think you have a right to know?”

He smiled. “Just curious.”

She sighed. “The truth is, it was just a little scuffle. And I can heal anyone but myself. It should come as no surprise. The world is a messed up, twisted-around place and no good deed goes unpunished.” She lifted the coffee cup, took a whiff, closed her eyes, and placed it to her lips as if it were a sacred chalice.

Damon was busy absorbing her words – and imagining himself ripping off the heads of whoever it was that had “scuffled” with her as she carefully pulled the hot
chocolaty liquid into her mouth and made a face of bliss.

“You know, t
he Vampire Queen is a big fan of coffee too,” he said, leaning forward across the table so that he wouldn’t be overheard by the other patrons in the coffee shop.

Diana swallowed her first sip and then lowered her cup, staring at him with a raised-brow and wide-eyed but calculated expression. “Vampire Queen?”

Damon smiled. “Evelynne D’Angelo, wife of Roman D’Angelo, the Vampire King. She’s a sweet girl. But sweeter after she’s had her daily dose of caffeine.”

“I thought vampires drank blood, not coffee,” said Diana. It was clear f
rom her tone that she was completely under the impression he was pulling her leg.

“They can eat or drink anything they like, really,” he told her. “They’re the offspring of Akyri and warlocks, so with the help of a bit of magic, they can enjoy a variety of foods and beverages.”

Now Diana’s expression changed. She’d been half-smiling before, but the smile melted, and a spark entered her silver-gray eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Damon took a sip of his own coffee. He watched her over the rim of his cup. She was searching his face for some sign of duplicity. She wouldn’t find any.

She swore softly. “
Vampires
.”

Damon noticed a tiny tremble in her shoulders. She was shaking
, just a little.

After
they’d accidentally touched in the alley and she’d fallen unconscious, he’d tried to lift her onto his lap, and her shirt had slid up. It had revealed a tempting and flat expanse of muscle and abdomen, but also a quickly bruising set of ribs. Then he’d noticed the swollen wrist and had instantly wondered whether she’d been in a fight.

Now he knew at least that much was true. Suddenly, it occurred
to him that her night might have already been a very, very long one – even before they’d met. And then she’d come face to face with a goblin and its king. And then she’d
healed
the goblin. And now she was sitting across from Damon and being told about the existence of vampires.

“Diana,”
he said. He spoke her name as a spell. As a fae, he had that ability. Upon speaking a being’s true name, a fae could turn that name into a spell. It was a sort of charm. The name could become an issue of calm, collected obedience. Or an order of death.

The former
was what Damon did now as he let the sweet syllables of her identity spill off his tongue.

Diana looked
up at him. Her shoulders seemed to relax a little. Her hands unclenched slightly where they’d wrapped around her coffee cup.

He took this as a sign that it had worked.

“I never thought I would be dumping the entirety of our universe on someone in a coffee shop,” he told her. “And I’m sorry that it has to be so fast.” But the truth was, now that he’d found his queen – she was in danger. There were forces at work who would do nearly anything to get their hands on the thirteen powerful women. Once a queen was found, she had to be protected.

It was something he hadn’t even considered until this very moment.

“What would you say to coming with me to see my kingdom?” he asked her, leaning forward even further as he became excited at the thought. “Take a tour of the castle – ”

Damon broke off
when Diana suddenly smiled and shook her head. He hadn’t been expecting that.

She
took another long drink of her coffee and then tilted her head to the side. “You’re too much.”

She chuckled softly, shaking her head again before she extracted yet more coffee from her quickly emptying paper cup. “You
live in a castle. I should have seen that coming.” She squinted one eye at him, screwing her face up a little. “Look…
Damon
,” she said, speaking his name aloud for the first time.

He held on to the sound. It gave him some comfort, even if it wasn’t his true name.

“If that
is
really your name,” she said, echoing his thought and clearly distrusting of him. “You’ve shown me a part of the world tonight that I had no idea existed and I honestly don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified.” She shook her head and leaned back. “I mean, if there are goblins, then… I suppose vampires might actually even be possible. And I suppose you would tell me there are werewolves and bansidhes and witches and ghosts and god only knows what else too.”

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and then exhaled. “And that’
s a lot to take in. Not that I haven’t always felt there was more out there than was immediately visible. I can
heal
people.” She shrugged a small shrug. “It’s a kind of magic. So magic obviously exists. And that opens the door to a whole new universe.”

It’s a kind of magic
, he repeated mentally. It was one of his favorite lines from the movie,
Highlander
. Damon was very quickly and very thoroughly falling for this girl that he’d only met forty minutes ago.

“But
if you think I’m going anywhere with you at all – much less to your ‘castle’, then you’re loony. I’m tired,” she admitted with a small sigh. “It’s been a long day, a longer night, and I can barely think straight. I need to go home.” She stood then, pushing out her chair and taking her coffee cup with her. “Thank you for the coffee.”

Damon pushed out his chair
. There was no way in hell he was letting her slip away that easily.

But even as he thought
about the spells he could cast and the glamour he could use on her, he noticed the dark circles under her eyes, remembered the sore ribs and sprained wrist, and felt a pang in his chest.

She turned to face him as he stood.

“At least let me walk you back,” he suggested softly, putting enough magic into the suggestion to get past her unnaturally strong defenses. He would make sure she was safe on the way, and then set up watch outside her house. There were about a thousand fae of different species that would only be so happy to lend a favor to one as powerful as the Goblin King.

Diana stood beside the table, holding her cup with both hands, and considered him in silence. Damon trapped her gaze in his and held his breath. He could have tried to force her to accept his company
, using a disgusting amount of magic to have his way. Vampires were not the only ones with those kinds of powers. But he had reservations, for so many reasons. It probably wouldn’t work with her anyway. Or worse, she would realize he was doing it and try to kick his ass.

And besides. This was his queen. Using any kin
d of force at all with her felt unacceptable.

Please
, he found himself thinking. Not in countless centuries had he mentally pleaded with fate. Diana Piper was scrambling everything he thought he knew.

“Okay,” she finally relented. Damon felt his spirit soar. “Why not? Never know when we’ll come across another goblin… or something.” Her voice trailed off a bit and her gaze slipped to his lips – and then his shoulders. She swallowed hard and Damon wanted to crow. Then her eyes were back on his – and he could only hope that his hadn’t begun to glow. He was pretty sure they hadn’t.

She smiled, bathing him in the sensation of stepping into the sun after a harsh winter. She became ethereal and vulnerable and positively stunning in the light of that smile.

Then she turned away, and it was all he could do to keep from grabbing her and spinning her around again just to bask once more in that smile.
“If we do run into some extra dimensional monster with pink bat wings and a three-pronged unicorn horn,” she said as they made their way to the doors, “it’ll be nice to be with someone in the know.”

He reached around her,
not at all minding when his arm brushed up against her shoulder as he pressed the metal bar to open the coffee shop door. He held it open as she gratefully passed through.

Chivalry was all but dead amongst human males in this day and age, but among the fae, it was not only tradition – it
was a fundamental covenant of social behavior. He would always hold the door for a lady. Always.

And h
is reward for doing so now was another genuine smile from the woman he would make his queen.

Damon Chroi
could have sworn that wings were unfurling inside him. As he followed the smiling woman out into the night, he realized that for the first time in his life, he didn’t feel an absence of hope.

Just the opposite.

Chapter Thirteen

“I know what he was trying to do and I refuse to let him win,” Evie told her husband in hushed tones. “
He wanted to drive a wedge between us with his wife’s death. So I want to hear it from
you
, Roman. What happened to Iliandra D’Angelo?”

They were seated beside the electric fire in the study of one of Roman’s safe houses. The night was deep and in its autumn beyond the windows.
A gentle breeze rustled through branches far overhead. Animals called in the darkness. The fake fire crackled warmly, cutting through an otherwise uncomfortable silence.

Roman sat across from her in a massive over-stuffed love seat. His tall, strong form dominated the piece of furniture, and his eyes reflected a fire not in the room.

Evie curled her legs under her and pulled the throw from the back of her own love seat to wrap it around her. She’d been cold ever since returning from her ordeal. It had been the second time someone who hated Roman D’Angelo had chosen to take it out on her.

“It was a long time ago,” Roman began softly. His gaze shifted from her to the fire and was lost there in memory. “
My brother and his new wife were in Kisilova, Serbia. I had just become king.”

Evie stared at her husband, lost in the deep charisma of his powerful voice. It dragged her from the study, from the safe house, from the warmth of the present and cast her into the past right along with him.

“The year was 1725. Iliandra was….” He stopped here and seemed to search for the right words. “She was a free spirit in all the wrong ways. I know now that she behaved as she did because she was filled with anger. Bitterness. And perhaps rightly so. Iliandra did not hesitate when my brother offered to make her a vampire. She jumped at the chance to inherit such magical power. She wanted to find out what those powers could do to satisfy her… darker tastes.”

Evie wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. When she wrote her novels, it was right about here that she braced herself because she knew she was about to divulge to her readers something
disturbing
.

“
A few years after she’d been turned, Iliandra and Rafael passed through the village of Kisilova during their travels. I can’t even recall where it was they were originally heading, but Rafael loved to travel. He enjoyed hearing stories of the past, as they reminded him of his youth. He wrote these stories down in leather bound journals that he kept in a vast and growing library. The history contained in those volumes was impressive and honorable. It was something I’d long encouraged in him, and it was the reason that upon my coronation, I’d made him the official historian for the Offspring nation.

“In Kisilova, s
ummer was in full swing, the harvest was about to be brought in, and the town was alive with festival planning. There was a young farm boy by the name of Peter Plogojowitz who lived on the outskirts of town. He was strong and handsome, and Iliandra had always had a wandering eye.”

Roman sighed heavily.
“She could have chosen anyone else from the village. She could have fed carefully, sparing precious life. But Peter was engaged to be married later that August. His intended’s name was Rose. Rose was the jewel of Kisilova, both beautiful and kind. And this was another reason Iliandra chose Peter. She loathed female beauty – any that was not her own.”

Here, Roman paused and looked down at his hand where his finger gently brushed a thread of gold in the tapestry of the love seat. “
It is exceedingly and painfully difficult for a woman who is highly attractive to one day find that she no longer turns eyes as she once did. That she is no longer called “miss” but “madam,” and that there are other, younger upstarts who are now so very eager and willing to fill her shoes. Iliandra was a very beautiful woman, a princess by human royalty. But she was the second of three daughters, destined to waste away in either a nunnery or as the trophy wife to a man with mistresses. The lives of the royalty are smiling masks to the world. There is no privacy, no sanctuary, and at every turn, there are expectations nearly impossible to meet.”