Kiss of the Goblin Prince Read Online Free PDF

failed him when he needed her, and it was a bitter reminder she couldn’t save everyone.
    ***
     
    His lungs burned as he struggled for breath. Blood pounded in is ears. The only sound in the barren, gray landscape was coming from his exhausted body as he ran. Dai stumbled and fell. The gray dust of the Shadowlands clung to his skin and stained like it was trying to reclaim him. He couldn’t go on. Beneath him, the ground shook with the footsteps of the goblin army as they chased him. Hunted him. A human in the Shadowlands was a delicious target. The goblins would strip his flesh and use his bones to make weapons.
    Dai forced himself up. He had to keep running. Running where?
    There was nowhere to hide in the Shadowlands. This barren land was the birthplace of nightmares. They would burst free of his mind and become killing flesh. Every horror brought back for endless torment, a permanent reminder of what he’d done. He spun, searching for the rock spire that had been home for too many centuries. Created by Roan, it had been the fortress that had kept the goblins out and the gold in. There he’d be safe if only for a moment. He’d spent all his life on the edge of being safe, and cutting himself most times in failure.
    The gray dust plains stretched on forever, broken only by stunted twisted trees and the oily river that slithered like a snake over the ground confusing anyone who used it for guidance. In the distance, the castle rose like a needle and pierced the sky. He’d never make it. The goblins would be upon him. He’d spent two thousand years surviving—part human, part goblin—banished and cursed.
    But that was over.
    He ran on, kicking up puffs of dust. He didn’t belong back here. He was human and back where he belonged in the Fixed Realm. How did he get back to the Shadowlands? What happened? Why was he back in the hell he’d escaped?
    His leaden legs buckled. He put his hands out as he fell. Cold seeped from the ground into his skin, into his bones. The dust on his skin made it gray as if he was goblin again. He couldn’t go back. He was never going back. He was free.
    As he stared, the joints on his hands swelled and his flesh lost all pink and faded to gray. He touched his face, but it wasn’t his. It was the goblin’s face he’d worn for two millennia.
    The curse wasn’t broken.
    A rasping cry left his fleshy lips.
    He was goblin.
    ***
     
    Dai jerked awake and sat up in bed. His body rigid. His heart racing like he’d been running for his life. The darkness closed in around him. He slowed his breathing and blinked, calling on the magical sight. Even in the dark, the web of strings that made up reality appeared. With a tug, the lights in the study came on—all of them, desk and ceiling. He squinted against the brightness, but his hands were pink, not goblin gray.
    And he wasn’t in the Shadowlands. He was in the room filled with unused law books. The best room in the house was always filled with books, and in Eliza’s house, that room was unused for years until he took it over. He lay back down on the makeshift bed that was squeezed in between shelves and the desk and chairs, and scrubbed his hands over his face. It was his face. Not the disfigured, bulging eyes, wide mouth, and hooked nose he had been cursed to bear. A man in the Shadowlands, a goblin in the Fixed Realm and belonging nowhere.
    Slowly, his pulse settled, but he kept the lights on. The nightmare that visited him every night for the week he’d been back in the world of men was still too fresh and too close to the reality he only just escaped. What a goblin would do to a human in the Shadowlands was enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life…even without the ones that haunted his sleep. He pushed aside the old memories. He had too many and had lived for too long. Longer than any man should.
    He stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep with the lights on, and he couldn’t turn them off in case the shadows crept