White Stag (PERMAFROST #1)

Chapter Four: Beginnings

"I'm able to be alone here. Your kind don't like the fast moving water. You can barely keep still, even now," I said.

He looked impressed. "Not many figure that out."

"I notice a lot."

His eyes were still on me and the curiosity in them had me squirming. "What else do you notice?"

I bit my lip. This could be some type of trap or game to cause me pain. The other goblins did it all the time. I looked back toward the river.

"What else do you notice?" he said again, urging me on.

I closed my eyes. "You say you're ambidextrous and fight with both hands, but you favor your left so you're most likely self-taught and biologically left handed. Whoever brings you your food always eats some of it first; I assume because of fear of assassination and that someone has tried to poison you before. Almost every slave claims that they've never had the nectar but almost every one of them is lying. The ones who are telling the truth ironically tend to last longer than the liars." I thought back to the barracks. They were all liars there; it made me bristle with rage. They looked down on me for openly being a part of the goblins' world but every chance they could they tried to gain favor with one of the creatures. At least I made clear my hatred was just that. Hatred.

Soren was still looking at me; I could feel it. "Anything else?"

I opened my eyes and met his gaze, trying not to tremble. "Your overseer wants to kill you." The memory of the crimson-eyed goblin was forever burnt into my brain. Besides Lydian, he was the cruelest I'd known and he made it a point to make sure I knew my place. But he talked like we weren't around him, like humans had no minds themselves, and therefore I'd heard him plotting.

Soren's eyebrows rose. "And how do you know this?"

"I heard him talking with another goblin. Some courier, I think. They were speaking of another goblin who used to rule here—Cÿrus—and how he should be avenged. That you were too young and inexperienced. That you would bring this place to ruin. The overseer said he would take care of it."

Soren's jaw tightened and I waited for his rage. He'd be angry with me, surely, for speaking ill of him—even if they weren't my words. I knew what happened to slaves who mentioned bad news. Why I felt compelled to tell him in the first place, I didn't know. Fire burned in his gaze and I prepared myself for the worse.

But he didn't hit me or even touch me. He just stopped, lips pursed, and started back to the manor. "Thank you for your insight, Janneke. Be sure to be back at the manor by sundown."

I watched him go, shaken.

A few days passed by after that and nothing noticeable happened. I followed Soren and did his bidding, the other slaves broke their backs with their labor, and the overseer cracked his whip and sneered at me with sharp teeth and a blood red gaze.

Then one day I noticed a new goblin with the whip. No one knew where the old one had gone; he'd simply just vanished. But when I went to my small room that night, on a low table besides the sleeping platform was a note in Soren's script.

There were only three words written.

You were right.

__

The memory dwindled away as I woke. It was so vivid, so lifelike, I was surprised when I woke swathed with furs on a sleeping platform softer than clouds. I shook myself; at least this time I dreamt of a good memory. When I got my bearings a bead of panic burst in my chest and I forced myself to quell it.