Beauty and the Goblin King (Fairy Tale Heat #1)
Lidiya Foxglove
Chapter One
I was a girl when the goblin king first sent out his messages. Any young, unmarried woman willing to come to his castle would receive one gold piece for every night she spent there.
Everyone whispered about him. What did he want with them? Why was he asking for human girls?
The goblin king was a young man, who used to come to town sometimes, flashy with gold, riding a black horse, accompanied by his friends. They were ugly, noisy tricksters, everyone said. Dangerous.
But there was the matter of the gold.
After his message, he never came to town again. Neither did any of his subjects. They didn’t even trade for the most necessary items, like salt. It was as if all the goblins had vanished.
He was there, though. Desperate women traveled to him from every town and village within several days’ journey, and they got their gold pieces. Sometimes one, sometimes a week’s worth. A single gold coin was a substantial sum, about the cost of a horse, or a wardrobe suitable for attracting a wealthy husband—enough to change a peasant’s stars.
Not that I knew anyone who had been to see him, personally, but the stories went around. The girls who went to see him never said much about the experience, except that he wanted exactly what you might expect him to want, but they didn’t complain either. It was one of the great mysteries of the region. Why had the young goblin king become a recluse, willing to rut any unmarried girl who comes to his doorstep, even if she isn’t much of a catch herself?
To me, there was an air of intrigue about the king. By the time I was a young woman myself, his situation had not changed. People used to speak about the goblins as if they had died out in the region. Many years ago, they said, you could see their bonfires from the road at night, hear their songs. The goblin maidens used to ride into town astride, they said, as naughty as the menfolk.
Maybe I liked the idea of them because I was always given to fancy, always lost in books.
Just around the corner from the large stone house where I lived with my father and three older sisters was the town’s subscription library, and I spent so much time there that I was frequently teased about it.
I was seventeen years old when I was browsing—Local Legends, the book was called. I came across an etching of the goblin king. He had a grinning mouth full of fangs, a mane of untamed dark hair, and two little horns on the top of his head.
Goblins live in small “kingdoms” which are more like what we would call clans, but they are usually very prosperous, due to their skill at sensing out gold and gems within the earth. In the later years of King Stephen’s rein, the goblin king of the Green Hollows disappeared into his cavernous realm, and as of this writing has not been seen since. The only visitors he accepts are young, unmarried human women. It is suspected that he is under a curse, and he and his subjects are barred from leaving the cavern, but perhaps we shall never know what the curse is. Men have made attempts to approach his cavern, but the entrance has vanished. Only a woman traveling alone can find it, and when she returns, her memory always seems a bit hazy.
I stared at the picture of the king for a long time.
It gave me a strange feeling somewhere in my stomach, a sort of twist that was not unpleasant. I was supposed to think he was ugly, but there was something about that grinning, fanged mouth that made me wish I could see him, just once.
“What are you doing?”
My oldest sister Clara snuck up on me that day, and grabbed the book from my hand. “Is that the goblin king? Respectable girls should keep their noses out of that naughty business.”
I grabbed the book back, shut it, and shelved it. “And you shouldn’t be looking over people’s shoulders when they're reading,” I said, but my cheeks were flushed. My fair cheeks had a way of betraying me at inconvenient times.
Ever since my mother died when were young, Clara had become the boss, but she was ten times bossier than Mother ever was. She looked at me like she had caught me getting fucked by our stableboy. “All this reading isn’t good for you,” she declared. “You’re starting to get ideas.”
“It was just a book, Clara. You’re ridiculous.”
“You ought to be out and about, finding yourself a husband, not locked up in here with books.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed my cloak off the back of a nearby chair, resigned to coming home.
Clara led the way, her back as straight as a post, her hood always pointed straight ahead. Clara was never curious about anything.
I’d never tell anyone, but way deep down in my soul, sometimes I wondered what would happen if I took the long walk over the green hills to the door of his cave and knocked.
That is, until my father lost all his money, and my wonderings came true.
At first it just seemed like a bad year. When you’re a merchant, bad years come and go. Some of the grain in the storehouse spoiled. A ship was lost at sea. My father had to borrow from one of the lenders down on Crow Alley, which he hated to do because they charged higher interest. But this had happened a couple of times before when I was a wee thing.
The trouble was, my mother had been alive back then, and all my older sisters were wee things too. Now, they were young women. The twins were looking for husbands. Clara was settling in to be a proud old maid, intending to take care of Father and probably to inherit the house. They were horrified at the idea of looking poor and losing their prospects. They kept spending as if nothing had happened. Appearances must be maintained. Father hardly protested.
Then, came the fire. It started in the night, and swept through all the storehouses on the west side of the river. By morning, all was ashes. All of the goods waiting to be shipped south were lost.
Those months were a whirlwind of denial. My sisters couldn’t believe that we wouldn’t make it out of this. Father had insurance, didn’t he? The insurance company collapsed, unable to make all the payments. The lenders were at our door and soon they were sending very aggressive men to pound on our windows in the middle of the night.
We had to start pawning our things. All of the silver was sold off. The better sets of bedclothes. A few items of furniture. A few pieces of Mother’s jewelry that was not so much in style now—but that was especially painful, because it was associated with memories.