When the Woods Go Silent (Haret Chronicles: Dark Fae #1)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T ORRENCE

Ruby is a distraction I don’t need, a temptation I certainly don’t deserve.

Hiking deep into the forest, I rehash every mistake I’ve made with her, building a case against myself as incentive to never make them again.

I shouldn’t have gotten that close to the fairy ring, and I never should have stayed and talked to her. I’ve watched her too many times already as she explores the trees under the cover of midnight. Her lack of fear hooks me each time, her fierce curiosity so much like my sister’s once was.

Why isn’t Ruby afraid of the woods and the night, like other humans? She seems to relish the darkness, come alive in the velvet black of the forest.

What is she looking for?

And how the fuck did she see me this time, through my fae invisibility glamor? Am I somehow slipping in my power by spending too much time among gobbelins?

The words I overheard her say today run on a loop through my head: I’d embrace the magic and suck it in deep... I’ve never felt at home. Anywhere at all, besides maybe these woods...

I understand that feeling on a primal level, but I wonder if she’d feel the same about magic if she saw my powers. If she got a good look at my true form, the ruthless beast behind the pretty-boy glamor of the gobbelin magic. I wonder if she’d still feel at home in the woods if she knew they were always listening, taking in every word and storing it away in the rings of their trunks.

All those words, trapped in the rings, sliced paper-thin, and bound into the books she reads.

Humans have no idea what hidden magic they hold every day, every time they hold a book. Layers upon layers of words - spells, really. Secrets. Magic. And the only story they remember how to read is the topmost one.

What would this pretty little human do, if I showed her how to see beyond the inky surface?

The idea burrows into my mind as I make my way into the deepest parts of the trees, to a hidden, ice-crusted cave miles from Ruby’s shop. At the edge of the rocks, I kneel and dig my fingers into the moss, unleashing my ice magic and sinking under the ground as it opens like a mouth to swallow me whole.

The magic guides me down, following the frozen paths that Julianna built all those winters ago. Deeper and deeper I slide, pressing through the soil like a stake shoved into the heart of the forest.

Pungent black dirt crumbles around me as I drop into an open chamber, the pebbles and insects and pieces of broken roots chafing away with a flick of magic, leaving me clean and dry. There are gobbelins here to greet me, bowing low in respect and deference to my authority. I ignore them and keep moving, examining each of the blood chambers without a word.

The restaurant is a simple ruse - a honeyed trap for the weakest ones.

These ice-block chambers, filled with sleeping, dreaming humans, are the real reason I’m on Earth.

“The newest ones are settling in well.”

I turn at the gravelly voice and nod to Idris, my first in command. She wears her long black braids only on one side, the other side of her head shaved clean. She’s smaller than many of the other gobbelins, and twice as fierce because of it. Of all the gobbelins I’ve ever met, she’s the only one I’ve allowed myself to fully trust.

“No reactions to the sleeping potions?” I ask as usual, bending over a young human and peeling back the heavy furs to examine his body. The skin is pale and warm to the touch, his blood like a blue river underneath, driven in an endless, enticing loop by the steady beat of his heart.

“None. They continue to sleep well here. You were right not to let them be moved to Haret.”

I give her a knowing look, and she bites back a smirk. Julianna had lost hundreds before, trying to transport them home, and thousands more to undisciplined gobbelins. She never cared about the cost of life, of course, but things are different now. Humans speak to each other with the lightning speed of technology. They see things with cameras that they could never have seen before. Missing people don’t go easily unnoticed any longer, and my mother’s impatience was threatening the entire operation.

My solution works because it’s simple, and that’s how I sold it to Julianna. She doesn’t care that it also lets them live, with less pain under our magic than anything their doctors can access.

“Do you have the samples ready?” I ask, letting Idris cover the sleeping man again as I stride into the next cavern. Dozens more humans are here, and more in the next rooms. We have over three hundred now, hooked to the same plastic tubing they invented, each giving us half a liter of blood per day.

Julianna used to allow the gobbelins to feed at will, and dead humans were an everyday problem. Now, almost none die to violence, and our gobbelin army grows strong with their blood.

Idris hands me a tray of vials, each filled with a mouthful of ruby-colored blood. I unscrew the tops, inhaling the sweetness before drinking them one by one, tasting the quality of my hard work. They’ve been well-taken care of, and the magic bristles sharper and keener in my veins with each swallow, gifting me with the potent strength of human blood.

They’re fools to have forgotten their own power, but who am I to complain?

“When was she here last?” I ask, finishing the last vial. My heart beats like thunder in my ears, and I feel as though I could cut down dozens of fae without tiring.

“Your mother has been in Haret since your visit two weeks ago,” Idris claims, but I know Julianna was sneaking around Clearwater just this week. She has her own methods of coming and going that Idris has no way to see.

“And you’re happy enough here?”

It’s a question I ask her from time to time, but I’m not asking Idris if she’s content living underground in the blood mines. She nods, her black eyes glinting with the promise of violence.

One day - hopefully very soon - the two of us will catch Julianna unaware. Her obsession with fighting the fae costs our people too much. Idris and I don’t care if the fae princes keep Aralia, as long as they let the gobbelins have the Sans Cerre Mountains in Haret, and the deep forests of Earth.

“Long live Magriel,” Idris answers softly, giving the right answer to my coded question. Magriel no longer exists - when the vampires evolved from gobbelins and then the werewolves evolved from them, our homeland of Magriel was crushed and crumbled into oblivion. Gobbelins disappeared, and Haret believed we were extinct.

It was better that way. Easier to survive hidden in the mountains and ice caves if we were nothing more than bedtime stories. Easier to grow strong while nobody was hunting us.

I may agree with my mother that it’s time for the gobbelin race to return to power, but I don’t agree with her methods. She’s too desperate to take over an existing queendom. She failed at combining forces with the rogue vampires in their own cities last summer, and she’ll fail at overtaking the fae this year.

And with every failed attempt, more gobbelins die for nothing more than her greed. More gobbelins grow resigned to this pattern, believing their lives are worth nothing more than an honorable death. I may have fae blood in my veins, but what happened to Rinna will keep gobbelins in my heart.

“Long live Magriel,” I repeat, as though by speaking the name, we could speak the place into existence again. A beat of silence seems to seal the hope between us.

“I would speak freely,” Idris murmurs, stepping deeper into a corner of the room, although nobody is here to see us. I nod for her to continue. “You have been distracted these last few visits. Are there problems I need to hear?”

“No,” I say reflexively, but the scowl she flashes reminds me that we’ve agreed to trust each other with everything, in order to further our secret plans. Her eyes narrow as she leans closer, breathing in pointedly.

“I can scent the human on your clothing, and it isn’t one of my slaves.”

I glare down at her, fae pride asking me to hide and deny, but Idris knows me too well. She nods in the straightforward manner typical of full-blooded gobbelins, factual and free from judgment or manipulation.

“It’s nothing to fuck a human, to drink their blood. But do not be fooled. You are gobbelin enough to be snared by one. Like magnets, we can be drawn together.”

“Good and evil,” I mutter, all too familiar with the human view of the world.

Idris shakes her head, eyes on the door a moment before continuing. “Humans destroy what they fear, especially when it is buried in their hearts. In that way, they are more like your fae than any gobbelin could be.”

She steps away, straightening as a gobbelin miner passes the doorway and giving me a moment to soak in what she’s said. Gobbelins are indeed simple creatures. They feed, they fuck, they fight. There is almost never subterfuge or scheming among them. What you see on the surface is what they hold in their hearts, and they barely know fear, only survival.

Humans, like fae, are duplicitous.

Idris is right. It hasn’t occurred to me that while Ruby is physically no more threatening than a kitten, she could easily distract me from my true goals here. I’ve been indulging my curiosity because she reminds me of Rinna, but that is exactly why she could be so dangerous. I have to keep focused.

“I’ll think on it. Thank you,” I add, giving a nod to my commander.

“Then there is one other matter to discuss,” Idris says, her mouth stretching into a bloodthirsty smile as her tone changes. “We’ve had a death in the family.”

Adrenaline rushes through me, hot on the edges of the fresh blood I’ve consumed, and I feel my fingers itching with ice magic. I follow Idris into the common area, where many of the gobbelins who work the blood mines are already gathered. As I enter, I see half a dozen gobbelins dart out the doors in the back, trained to clear the mines and bring everyone together here any time I decide to speak to them.

I don’t need to wait long, and I smile at Idris. She’s an excellent commander, organized and precise. The gobbelins here obey her, but even more, they respect her authority in my absence.

“Come forward,” she calls, and the crowd separates as two guards drag a struggling gobbelin forward. His beady black eyes burn into mine, and I can tell he’s ready to die for his selfish crimes. Good. We do not honor cowards with a public death.

“Charges?” I ask, meeting his stare until he looks away.

“He withheld sleeping potions from a female human, forced himself on her, and then began to drain her. When another miner tried to intervene, he killed his brother, then ripped apart the human. Blood and flesh of both were consumed.”

I take in a deep breath, relishing the task before me, knowing it will reinforce the rules I’ve set for my people here.

“You have flesh of the family in your belly?” I roar, and the watching gobbelins scream back their outrage when he nods. “We are no longer cannibals who feed on each other, and you are no longer family. Humans do not rape their cattle, and we do not rape our blood slaves. The only regret I have is that you have only one life for me to take.”

The words echo above the cheering gobbelins as I raise my fist, forming a lethal ice blade with a twist of my magic. The guards hold him fast, and I slash open the criminal’s stomach sideways with the crystalline blade, spraying his black blood and the sludge of his intestines across the floor. He falls to his knees, a wail of pain ratcheting the crowd’s enthusiasm.

“When you take from the family, the family takes from you,” I call above their noise, before bending to slice him open further, from the base of his neck all the way to the split of his balls. He dies quickly, drowning in a river of stolen blood, and I breathe in deeply of the heady scent of spilled blood and contained power.

“Well done,” Idris murmurs at my side as the watching crowd files past, each one spitting on the remains of the dead gobbelin and taking the required look at his spilled blood. Each one resisting the temptation to taste him, both wary of sharing his fate and eager to prove they’ve evolved beyond his weaknesses.

“No need to flatter me, Id. Save your pandering for Julianna.”

She snickers. “It’s not flattery, prince. Just a bit of old-fashioned jealousy.”

“And don’t call me prince,” I add, knowing it won’t make a damn bit of difference. “Anything else to discuss before I return topside?”

“I have it all under control.”

“I would never doubt it,” I tell her, grateful that, against all odds, she’s on my side.

It’s a relief to leave the mines, even though the execution of an unworthy gobbelin was satisfying. I don’t love being a figurehead the way Julianna does. I have no need to conquer the fae, either. I don’t care about her bloody history with them, or the mixed blood in my own veins. The gobbelins would hate living in Aralia. We’re a people of ice and darkness, not flowery meadows and court finery.

As soon as I emerge from the soil into the forest again though, I scent him, as if in thinking about the fae, I’ve conjured one.

Stepping out of the shadows of the cave, I see through his glamor of invisibility easily enough.

“Ronan.”

“Hello, brother,” he says, enjoying the way I chafe under the title.

“Our blood is not that close,” I growl, though we do share a father. “How did you escape your palace duties this time?”

“Brigance has the usual bug up his ass about something, and Kier is traveling again. I only came to tell you that your whore of a mother has been snooping.”

“No surprise there. Why don’t you just catch and execute her?”

“And start the war we’ve worked so hard to avoid?” Ronan rolls his eyes and shakes back his dark hair. We both know we’ll be fighting each other one day soon, if we can’t find a different solution.

“And what has my desperate mother been hoping to find?”

“Exactly what Brigance was trying to hide from her. Evidence that the changeling is real.”

I suck in a breath at his wording. “So there is evidence?”

Ronan chuckles darkly, and I know he won’t answer further. Like all full-blooded fae, he prefers to play games with information. “I know why she chose this town for your little cafe. I can tell you that her instincts are as keen as ever. But if Brigance finds the changeling first, he’ll force a union and destroy every ice-grubber in Haret. If that happens, I’ll have no choice but to have Kier destroy your pet project here.”

I glare at the old slur for gobbelin, but I chose my side years ago, when I decided to play my mother’s game of shells instead of trying to survive under the chaotic cruelty of Ronan’s mother, Ignea. None of her sons were disappointed to see her die, even though it’s given Julianna the opportunity she’s waited a lifetime for.

We have a complicated family tree, and Ronan and I are hacking it apart at the roots to destroy what’s left.

“I’ll watch Julianna’s activity more closely, but I’ve scented nothing fae here. Except the stink you brought,” I add.

“You won’t scent a changeling. Not one hidden as well as this one. We’ve had hunters looking for her for two decades.”

I raise an eyebrow. “It’s a woman, then?” Julianna was right about that, too.

Ronan curses good-naturedly. “That was no secret, little play prince. Though it would be amusing to see Brigance try to mate a male instead. Maybe he’d be more pleasant with a fat cock up his ass.”

I can’t help my grin as Ronan flips me a rude gesture and disappears in a blur of glamor.

Ronan never misspeaks, and he’s made it clear that he only deals with me now because he expects me to choose the fae in the end. Julianna theorized long ago that the magic of these woods would draw the changeling to them eventually. Tonight, he wanted me to know Goblin Market is in the right place.

Sooner or later, the changeling will wander into Clearwater, and if the fae don’t catch her first, I’m expected to kill her myself to keep my mother from getting such a choice bargaining chip.