Page 26 of The Goblin and The Dancer
Grik, Rosanna, and Paul all looked at one another, the moment of confidence disappearing like a flame snuffed out by sudden wind.
“Please be careful,” Rosanna whispered, her face pale.
“You be careful,” Paul told her, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek.
The elves and goblins watching in the room erupted in whistles and jeers, and Paul turned red with fury, but Rosanna didn’t seem to be paying attention to them.
She knelt in front of Grik and met his astonished eyes. “I’m counting on you,” she whispered. And then she bent forward and wrapped her arms around him.
Grik was only faintly aware of Paul’s mouth dropping open, but he was too happy to care about the soldier’s censure. Grik’s heart leaped, and, very carefully, hardly daring to breathe, he hugged Rosanna back.
The elves and goblins, who had mocked the tender demonstration from Paul, were strangely silent—the elves aghast and the goblins shocked. They had never seen an elf hug a goblin before.A goblin guarding Ratiga was beginning to cry openly.
Ratiga groaned. “I need new men. Stop crying this instant!”
The goblin responded by blowing his nose.
Ratiga clapped a hand to her face, glaring at Grik and Rosanna between her fingers as if it were their fault. “If you three have finally finished your little tête-à-tête, perhaps we can move forward with today’s itinerary. Get going!”
A goblin shoved the hastily-drawn map into Grik’s hands.
Ratiga snapped her fingers in a silent order. “You can take some lanterns with you.”
“How generous of you,” Paul grumbled, accepting the two-pronged stick that an elf offered to him, resting it against his shoulder and causing the two lamps on the end of the stick to sway.
Grik unhooked his glow stick from his belt. It was the one thing he had left that reminded him that there had been a life before this, and that there was a world above him, somewhere beyond the dark. In a way, it was the most important thing he had left in the world.
He turned quickly to Rosanna, trying to ignore Paul’s stare. “Will you keep this for me, Rosanna? Until I get back?” It was suddenly very hot in here. “I would like you to keep it.”
Rosanna was smiling at Grik, a slow, sweet look like a lamp turning up to greet someone they had been waiting for.
Grik, for once not thinking of his jagged teeth, his goggly eyes, his rough skin—thinking of nothing except her—smiled back.
Paul was watching them with a curious expression, looking at Rosanna as if she might be crazy. He looked as if he didn’t know whether to be jealous, angry, or disgusted, then an air of magnanimity settled over his face, and Grik knew instinctively what the elf was thinking.
He thought Rosanna was just being kind.Maybe he was right. Grik didn’t know. But all he allowed himself to think was that, for whatever reason, Rosanna had touched him before he died.If they didn’t make their way out of this alive, he could die happy.
“Don’t break the tube,” Grik managed to say as he was shoved away by a guard. “The ore is poisonous.”
Grik looked over his shoulder and caught one last glimpse of Rosanna’s worried face before he and Paul stepped into a tunnel at the far end of the cavern.
“Good luck, fools!” Ratiga called. “You’ll need it.”
Grik and Paul stepped into darkness and left the cavern behind them.
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. Ifhe could have started all over again, he would have snatched at the chance.
