The Goblin Bride (Beneath Sands Book 1) by Emma Hamm (good short books TXT) 📕

  “I can’t let you do this Simon.” She said forcefully. “You leave peacefully or not at all.”

  “You?” He half turned towards her. His eyes glinted as the beam from her flashlight touched him. “Are ye not coming with us, Jane?”

  As one of the miners skirted past the argument, she leaned forward to jerk his pickaxe out of his hand. He attempted to take it back, but was quick to back away when he saw how she brandished it. “No, I’m not.”

  Simon shook his head at her. “Ah lass, maybe they are right. Perhaps you have forgotten what it means to be human.”

  He nodded at something behind her. She should have known that he would attempt to trick her. He would stop at nothing to leave and she would stop at nothing to prevent harm from coming to the goblins. She whipped around with the pickaxe held high.

  What she did not expect was the empty space behind her.

  She knew immediately in that moment that he had bested her. Jane was not aware of the sharp strike against the back of her skull, or the moment when Simon caught her. Instead, all she would remember was darkness.

  Simon slung her over his shoulder, turning back towards the other men. “I think it’s time we give them back a taste of their own medicine, don’t you boys?”

  The mob of humans would be a force to be reckoned with. There were nearly forty of them in number. They were all strong men that spent much of their days breaking stone and rock. They sorely needed food and water but they were powered by rage and hatred.

  The first few goblins that came upon them were caught unawares. The miners were quick to break through them and left a trampled mess behind as they passed through.

  Eventually the goblins heard the sounds of fighting and reacted. They did not need the weapons that the miners carried. They fought with tooth and claw, ripped flesh from bone, and soon the caves ran slick with blood.

  Simon was not a foolish man. He cared for the other miners. They might be the usual rats that ended up in the mines, but they were courageous men. Simon had come from the City long ago. He was punished to toil in the mines because he had stepped too far and broken too many laws.

  The City was nothing like the miners thought it was. Clean yes, the land of the plenty. But it was also where people discovered that laws could never be broken. Whatever the City officials wanted, they got. Laws were changed constantly, sometimes so quickly that the regular citizens didn’t have time to understand what the new ones were before they were put into effect.

  It was one of these circumstances that had landed Simon in the mines. He had been fighting to get back to the City ever since. First for his revenge upon the people that had lowered him so far, and then because he had found a new species that would put him on the map once more.

  He tried to be a kind man. When he liked someone, he knew to be polite. Jane seemed to like him and that was something he appreciated. He had known the moment she started talking to him that she was a woman.

  No man would hand another a handkerchief because he coughed. They were more likely to pound the other man on the back and tell him to not die.

  She was too kind to be in a place like this. He had been horrified when he woke up, wondering where she was and what the goblins had done to her.

  He had been placed in a cave with other men and given rations for food that tasted strange. There was very little light here other than the strange globes that he refused to touch. Once they had healed his head, he was put to work.

  He shifted Jane in his grasp. Her dead weight was heavy against his shoulders. He had slipped away from the others. Let them do the fighting, and he would get out alive. It was every man for himself now. He sent a prayer for the other men.

  A group of goblins could be heard running down the corridor. Their strange shouts reached his ears before they arrived. He just managed to squeeze the two of them into a small crevice before they reached them.

  Jane’s head hit the stone hard once. Simon winced at the treatment, but hoped she would eventually forgive him. She was brainwashed into thinking these creatures were taking care of her. Somehow he severely doubted that.

  He held his breath as the goblins passed by, then launched into movement once more.

  He rounded another corner, fully intending on grabbing the next goblin he saw to tell him where to go. Surely they weren’t dumb enough to not understand him. The creatures seemed to be smart enough.

  But as soon as he reached for green skin he realized the beast in front of him was one he recognized.

  Ruric had heard the sounds of struggle, knew precisely what had happened as soon as he heard it. She was foolish, arrogant, pig headed and he was worried for her. He was going to throttle her for the terrible things she had said. But he knew what it meant if the humans were trying to get away.

  Of course she would try to help them. That was who she was. He understood that she felt loyalty to them. If he had been in her situation, he would have felt the same. Loyalty was not a feature he wanted her to lose. But her foolishness knew no bounds.

  His heart was in his throat as he followed the other goblins out of the cave they had been in. He had put the others down and he had