Beast & Crown #2 by Joel Ross

Author:Joel Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

16

JI WOKE INSIDE one of the stone cells that lined the bowl, his head aching from getting bashed with a stone club. He groaned and rolled onto his side.

“Here,” someone said, and gave him a damp cloth. “This will help.”

“Thanks,” Ji said.

“Than-ka you for than-ka-ing me,” the voice said.

A goblin! A goblin was bending over him—and getting ready to smash the rest of his head in!

“Hey!” Ji scrambled to his feet. “Get away from me!”

“I am sorry to say that I ka-annot,” the goblin chuffed, gesturing with a belly-arm. “I am a prisoner too, I beg pardon.”

“Oh.” Ji unballed his fists. “What did you do?”

The goblin showed his chipped teeth nervously. “Gave you a wet rag? Perhaps too wet? Not wet enough?”

“No, I mean, why are you locked up? Did—” Ji stopped and scanned the cell. “Where are my friends?”

Dozens of goblins huddled on the ground and dozens more hunched in neighboring cells. To Ji’s relief, a furry heap of hobgoblin snored in his own cell. Chibo lay beside Sally, while Roz slumped unconscious in a section of the cell with heavier bars, a metal chest on the ground near her.

“Sally!” Ji trotted closer. “Roz! Are you okay?”

“They are alive, I am happy to say,” the chip-toothed goblin told him, following along. “But, I am less happy to say, they are only alive be-ka-ause the White Worm—”

“Mighty worm, powerful worm,” the other goblins murmured.

“—plans to hand you over to the ka-ween’s soldiers.”

“Well, he won’t,” Ji said, kneeling beside Sally. She was breathing steadily, and when he prodded one of her ears, it twitched.

The goblin cocked its head. “I beg your pardon?”

“We’ll stop him.”

“The White Worm—”

“His Deepness, His Brutality,” the other goblins murmured.

“—always gets what he wants.”

Chibo was shivering, so Ji asked the goblins for a blanket to cover him, then checked on Roz. Ji dimly remembered that she’d knocked a dozen goblin guards aside before the White Worm joined the fray. When he turned white, he was even stronger than a troll.

“Roz?” Ji asked, fear squeezing his chest. “Are you okay?”

She took a shuddering breath in her cell-within-a-cell.

“Roz, say something!”

“Muh,” she moaned, raising her head. “Ji?”

“Hush,” he told her. “Go back to sleep. You rest. I’ve got this.”

“Yuh,” she said, lowering her head.

Ji watched her and wanted to cry. From anger, from helplessness. From coming so far and ending up in a cell. They’d escaped knights and kumiho—and a stupid pink potato-shaped goblin caught them? Why did the White Worm obey the Summer Queen anyway? Didn’t he know she enslaved goblins? And where was Nin?

Ji wiped his face and knocked on the metal chest. “Nin? Are you in there?”

Sneakyji! Are you in there?

“What? No. I’m right here.”

We’re right here too! Where is here?

“You’re locked in a chest inside a goblin prison. Are you okay?”

We are snug as a skunk in a trunk. Also, we are tremblescared and terrified.

“Me, too,” Ji said. “I’d wet my widdershins, if I knew what that meant.”

You will find a way out.

“There are bars so thick that even Roz can’t smash them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.