Of Werewolves and Curses by Emma Hamm
Chapter 14
They tunneled deeper into the cliff until Eldridge found a room he thought was satisfactory. Freya noted how far that room was from where they had seen Cora, and where they had left Arrow.
The goblin dog was more than happy with the bright, sunny room painted with even more rays of sunlight. He’d laid down in a beam and said he was going to sleep until he forgot that adventure existed. Freya wasn’t so sure why he had become so dramatic lately, but having a little time with the Goblin King to herself sounded like a good idea.
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to run her hands over his shoulders and press her fingertips into him until he forgot all about Cora and her beauty. She still thought the jealousy was poisonous. Arrow was right in that.
But she couldn’t shake free.
Eldridge chose a room that was darker than the others. It might have been the last room before they had stopped tunneling into the cliff. The walls were painted with deep blues and scenes from the depths of the ocean. Brightly colored squid with glowing tendrils. Fish with lanterns on their heads. And sometimes, if she looked closer at the dark paint at the bottom, she could see there were shadows of sharks added into the depths.
Beautiful and deadly. Just like her Goblin King.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and lifted his arms over his head with a yawn. “I am exhausted, aren’t you?”
No. She wasn’t exhausted in the slightest. She had a thousand questions running through her head and a million worries that he needed to ease. Why would he even think about sleeping at a time like this?
“We should talk about Cora,” she said, approaching him with single-minded intent. “We should plan out everything that we intend to do. The Summer Lord won’t be easy to convince that he should come back to the isles. Let alone that he should take a bride.”
“I think we should get some rest and talk about it in the morning, when our minds are fresh.” But his eyes glittered the closer she got to him.
Eldridge reached for her when she straddled his waist. Freya sat in his lap, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and relaxed into the confident grip as he held her tight to his heart.
Maybe she didn’t need to brand him with her touch. She didn’t have to force him to be interested in her because of how many times she could pleasure his body. All she had to do was sit in his arms, listen to the beat of his heart, and shift her breathing to match his.
He rubbed her back with his hands, gently putting pressure on the tense muscles surrounding her spine. “You did good today,” he murmured against her neck.
“Did I?” She pressed a kiss to his shoulder, inching a little closer as she did so. “I feel like I wasn’t myself.”
“Oh, because you turned green the moment you realized Cora and I knew each other?” he chuckled. “I saw how frustrated you were getting, my hero. Did you think I would miss that detail?”
Yes. She had thought he would miss her reaction to the two of them. In fact, she had very much hoped he wouldn’t notice at all.
Pulling back from his grip, she stared down at her hands. “I’m not proud of it. I know you’re in love with me, and that you’d do anything to keep me in your life. There’s no reason for me to be so jealous.”
“No, there isn’t.” He reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “But I know that this still feels very novel to you. As if our story is a fairytale you were sucked into, and someday it’s going to spit you back out in your boring life by the forest. Isn’t that right?”
To her great embarrassment, tears burned in her eyes. Freya refused to let them fall because crying right now would be utterly ridiculous. She had nothing to cry about.
So instead of letting her emotions get the better of her, she nodded.
“Oh, Freya.” Eldridge stroked her jaw with a single finger, forcing her to look up at him. “I wish I could tell you in words how I burn for you. Every moment of every day I fall deeper in love with you. When you are at your worst and when you are at your best.”
This man made her melt. He never failed to ease all her worries and remind her how much she loved him. And she wanted to say it. She wanted to tell him that her heart beat for him and that no matter where she was, she always thought of him.
But she couldn’t. Not yet. Not when he knew how jealous she was of his relationship with Cora. If she said the words now, then he would think she was only saying them because there was the possible threat of another woman.
And that wasn’t how she wanted him to remember this moment. She wanted Eldridge to know that without a doubt in her mind, she loved him. A thousand times more than there were stars in the sky. Regardless of old flames.
She settled back into his arms and let him draw her into the bed with him. Eldridge tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder with a happy sigh. “You and me, Freya. We’re the same kind of creature, you know that? Adventurers at heart. We don’t stay in the same place for very long, and I’ve always admired that about you.”
What if she wanted to stay in the same place for a while, though? She hadn’t been this person before she met him, and Freya worried he’d get bored with her.
Eldridge’s breath evened out into the deep rhythm of sleep. But while the Goblin King found himself in the dreaming world, Freya couldn’t even consider sleeping. Her mind was racing with all the things that she needed to get done. To think about. To understand.
Cora was the personification of the sea in this equation. And she could understand that there was a connection between the land and the sea. They were two elements who were constantly touching, but never existed in the same plane. They were the perfect symbols for magic to grow and develop.
What she didn’t understand was how a person could be on an island by herself for over two hundred years and never realize how fast the time was passing. Freya would have been counting the days on the walls. Every room in this cliff side town would have been painted with tiny numbers as she waited for someone to come and get her. Wasn’t that the same feeling Cora must have had?
Two hundred years alone was a very, very long time.
And then there was the reasoning why the Summer Lord didn’t want to make her his Lady. After all, Cora seemed to be the perfect choice for such an illustrious position.
Mortals did this all the time. Nobles married people they weren’t in love with, but who were good political matches. They made it work. She was certain they didn’t exactly enjoy the company of each other. Most likely they focused on their own lives, and that was that. Why wouldn’t the faeries do the same thing?
Rolling over in bed, she planned to ask Eldridge what made the faeries so different from the mortals. But he was sleeping. His features were smooth as glass, relaxed as she hadn’t seen him in a very long time. She shouldn’t wake him when he had fallen into a deep sleep.
Freya inched herself closer and closer to freedom. She tried very hard not to jostle the bed with her movements, and made it out of the covers, then to the very edge of the room. She spared a single glance back to look at her handsome Goblin King one more time.
“I really do love you,” she whispered, letting the words float into the shadows and hopefully into his dreams. “And when the timing is perfect, I will tell you that with so much certainty that you will never question it again. My love. My life. My Goblin King.”
Slipping out into the hall beyond, she weaved through all the homes of the neighborhood. Freya understood Eldridge’s fear that she would get lost in the countless rooms and then no one would ever find her again. But she didn’t share the same concern.
Each home was distinctly different, but there were markings. The elves had gotten in and out of these cliff side homes with ease, and that wasn’t because they knew every single neighbor and where that neighbor lived. They had a pattern. A tool to getting out even while they marched through the living space of another.
She put her fingers to the frame of a door and thumbed the markings carved there. Three lines, each one distinct. One wavy, two straight but a little shorter than the other. Strange markings, but ones she was certain had to do with the direction to go in.
And she had all night to figure it out.
Freya strode through colorful rooms and made up stories in her head about the elves who used to live here. The ones who painted flowers on their walls missed living on the mainland, but they were happy here on the islands as well. The ones with dolphins were the funny family, the tricksters who always played pranks on their neighbors. Her favorite, though, were the ones who painted elves on their walls. Those were the artists she fell in love with. The elves who had stories to tell and didn’t want to forget them no matter what.
Eventually, she figured out what the lines meant. The waves were directional, telling someone to go left or right depending on the direction of the pointed crests. And the other two lines were how far to go. The top line was the distance to the sea. The bottom was the distance to the end of the neighborhood.
In very little time, Freya stood on a balcony overlooking the sea. A full moon illuminated the white sand beach, and the stars were so bright, it looked like the sea sparkled with a thousand glowing fish. Perhaps this was how Cora had stayed here all these years and never once questioned how long it had been. With a sight like this every evening, Freya didn’t think she’d want to leave either.
The shadows to her right shifted, and Cora appeared out of the darkness. This time, the lovely woman didn’t speak at all. She watched Freya with hope in her eyes, and a sense of oddness that could only come from a someone who had spent very little time in the presence of others.
“You and Eldridge share that ability, you know.” Freya smiled. “The two of you are always popping out of shadows and startling me.”
“Oh.” Cora looked behind her, and then a sheepish grin crossed her face. “I forget that mortals can’t see very well in the dark. I thought you knew I was here.”
She hadn’t, and the excuse was a foolish one. Freya used this chance to get to know the other woman, however awkward that might be. The more she knew about Cora, the easier to convince the Summer Lord to come to the isles.
Freya leaned against the railing of the balcony and crossed her arms over her chest. “Why do you want to marry the Summer Lord?”
The elf’s eyes widened in shock before she stammered, “Well... I... I...”
Yeah, Arrow was right. The woman was madly in love with the idiot, and Freya understood the fear that came with that realization. It was a bone deep need that never went away, no matter how hard they wanted to be their own person. Both Eldridge and Leo had wiggled into their very souls. The fiber of who they were.
Freya sighed and reached out to take the other woman’s hand. “Is there a kitchen where we can talk? I think I’d like a cup of tea, if you have any.”
“Oh, I have more than enough tea to satisfy both of us.” Cora squeezed Freya’s fingers with a radiant smile on her face. “Come on. We’ll have a chat. I’m afraid it’s been a very long time since I’ve had another woman to speak with.”
Freya suspected that was very much the truth.
