The Goblin And The Dancer: A Retelling Of The Steadfast Tin Soldier (A Villain's Ever After) by Allison Tebo

Author:Allison Tebo [Tebo, Allison]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2021-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

They were alone again, with no sound but the scuff of their feet and boots and the gurgle of water somewhere in the dark.

Grik scuttled closer to Paul, but when the soldier shot him a cool look, he sidled away, ashamed.

Paul seemed quite different now. His eyes were brighter, and he didn’t seem to be limping as much—or he was simply doing a better job of hiding it. He looked so supremely confident that Grik felt his hope rise a fraction.

“Maybe it will be easy,” he said timidly.

Paul shook his head. “If this were easy, they wouldn’t have sent us.” Despite his words, he didn’t act that concerned.

Grik tried not to whimper. He didn’t want to be eaten by some monster. He wanted to be back in La Caen, living the life of a simple janitor, where the greatest danger he had ever had to navigate was falling off a ladder. Maybe his life hadn’t been so bad after all. If he could have started all over again, he would have snatched at the chance.

Did that mean he was willing to forget Rosanna? No! He couldn’t forget Rosanna. Even if he were back in the Metropolitan Dance Hall, seeing Rosanna for the first time as he walked by the open door of one of its practice studios, he knew he could not have stopped his soul from reaching out to her.

If she had looked away, perhaps it would have been different.

But she had not looked away.

Standing there at the barre, examining her technique in the mirror, she had turned, as quick as a blossom spinning in the breeze, as she caught sight of his reflection. And then she had smiled at him and raised a hand in greeting, as if she too were reaching out.

No, he could not go back. No matter how hard he tried, he could not have silenced the longing for beauty, the desperate need to edge towards something better than him—if not to bask in her light, then to at least hide in her shadow.

He loved her. And now she had hugged him. It was worth being in the dark.

But was it worth the horrible deed of what had brought him here?

That he could not answer.

Something scuttled over Grik’s foot, rearranging his thoughts into a single thread of terror as he clutched instinctively at Paul.

“Rats,” Paul remarked. “We must be closer to the surface than we believed. That’s good to know!”

Grik nodded, trying to steady his racing heart and get his goblin thinking straight to figure out a route for egress once this whole miserable business was over.

“What are we going to do when we get back?” Grik whispered. He preferred to think that they would survive this, and planning their subsequent movements helped make it seem a bit more real.

Paul shrugged. “There’s no good worrying about that now; we have enough problems.”

Grik managed a distressed sound in the back of his throat to indicate his disagreement. Paul either didn’t hear or chose to ignore him, because he walked confidently on.

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