NIGHT by I. Rin (fantasy books to read .TXT) 📖

looked at herself critically.

“Of course, it is not a ball dress, but actually not bad… It will be as it is!” finally, she decided.

 

She did her long hair up and slowly went into the corridor. Seeing that no one was around, Lica walked towards the Goblins’ King’s room...

Swein had already taken off his jerkin and was reclining on his bed with a book. The girl on tiptoe came in and looked around the room. The stiletto was on the mantelshelf.

“Swein,” started Lica with a quiet voice. “I’m so lonely, Swein!” “Angelica! What are you doing here?” the Goblins’ King showed

 

surprise. “A young girl shouldn’t come into the man’s bedroom.”

 

“I thought that after all the adventures we had, we became friends,” said Lica in an offended tone.

“Everything has changed a bit. Now I’m in my own body, and you’re going to marry Edward.”

“I am not going to marry anybody yet,” honestly said Angelica.

She sat on the edge of the bed and said:

 

“Can I sit with you?”

 

“Actually, you’ve already sat,” Swein chuckled.

 

“What are you reading?” she asked, moving closer to the Goblins’ King.

“The Book of Destiny! I have to learn a lot in order to help my people.”

“I think your people can wait a little,” quietly said Angelica, taking the book from Swein.

She closed and threw it in to the opposite side of the bed. Then she leaned over the King, taking his long blonde hair back from his face and kissed him. Swein neither backed off nor moved to Angelica.

 

“Is he feeling nothing to me?” the girl thought.

 

She started back and looked into Swein’s cold eyes.

 

“Be careful, Angelica,” he said quietly. “I’m not made of iron, and Prince Edward is here.”

“You’re right, they can see us!” Lica agreed.

 

She rose and snuffed out almost all candles in the room. The last lit candle was on the mantelpiece, near the stiletto.

 

Angelica went there and easily snuffed it out too. Now the room was lit only by the firelight. The girl quietly took the stiletto and carried it in a fold of her dress sleeve. At that time, Swein came to her. He turned Angelica around and passionately kissed her.

 

“Wait, Swein, I think I can hear somebody in the corridor,” Lica whispered.

 

She slipped from Goblins’ Kings strong hands and ran out of the room.

 

“I’ll be back soon,” she said quietly for the last.

 

She quickly ran out of the cave, jumped on her horse and rode away. She was racing like a wind; for fear that Swein will catch her and take the stiletto away. Lica was distressed and calmed down only when she saw Prince Night’s castle in front.

 

Angelica left the horse in the stable and rushed to the castle. The Prince Night’ servant - Henry had been already meeting her halfway.

 

“Lica, is that you? I have heard a horse riding and went out to meet! What happened?”

 

“Henry, let’s go into the room with the old mirror. I’ll explain you everything by the way!”

 

The girl told the old man about all her adventures. She told him how she was looking for the Prince’s soul, about Margo’s ceremony, how Prince Edward and the Goblins’ King –Swein were returned to their bodies...

 

“God be thanked!” Henry was delighted. “All’s well that ends well! So tell me, why you are in a hurry now?!”

 

“Swein decided to take my stiletto, with which I can easily get into your kingdom, and I don’t need to wait for you to do that. I have stolen this stiletto and now I want to return home as I think the Goblins’ King has already realized that. Of course, he will try to catch me and take the knife away.”

 

“I see,” the servant Edward smiled.

 

They went into the room with an old mirror.

 

“Henry, I beg you, do not say anything about me neither Edward nor Swein,” said Angelica.

 

“About you? So I haven’t seen you here and had no idea where your horse came from!” the old man smiled.

 

“Thank you!” the girl was happy and hugged the kind servant. Then she put the stiletto between the mirror glass and wooden frames. A few minutes later the mirror got muddy, and then Lica  saw her own room. The girl climbed on the bedside table and took a step forward; not forgetting to take the knife with her.

 

Angelica jumped down. She looked back and waved to Henry, who smiled at her from the mirror. After that, his image disappeared...

 

“God, it is not my clothes again!” Lica cried in the hearts. “I must change clothes and hide the dress or my mother will get nervous.”

 

She quickly changed clothes, put the stiletto safely away, and joyfully went to bed.

 

“So many events!” Angelica thought. “But I ‘m so tired. So I will think about it tomorrow!”

 

And she fell asleep...

Part 6. Fortune-telling

 

It was the end of the year. Students were very busy, passing examinations. Lica also swirled, poring over books. For a time the Kingdom of Night fell by the wayside. In addition, she was very afraid of Swein’s stormy reaction on her extraordinary behavior - stiletto stealing. At first after she returned home, the girl would wait that the mirror in her room suddenly get muddy, and the angry Goblins’ King would jump out of the mirror. But the days passed, and Swein did not appear. Angelica little by little calmed down and lived her regular routine – training and revising for exams.

 

She did not notice how one month passed, the exams were left behind, and it was Christmas holidays.

 

“Do you know anything about Christmas and Twelfth Day?” Lica was asked by her friend Sveta one day. “It is time for fortune-telling! My brother gifted me a wonderful crystal ball! What about trying it!”

 

“We’re not fortune tellers!” Lica grinned.

 

“Well, I think together we can read fortune or something like that!” her friend said confidentially. “Come on, come to me tomorrow night, we’ll try some spirit rapping!”

 

And Svetlana burst of laughing.

 

The next evening, Angelica came to Sveta’s house. They locked in the room, lit candles and placed them in the corners. They  moved the desk to the middle of the room, covered it with a bright tablecloth with fringe and put the crystal ball in the center. The ball was really wonderful! Lica never had seen such a large crystal ball before! It was a little smaller than a soccer ball.

 

“It’s not a ball!” Angelica noticed. “It rather looks like a small screen!”

 

“That’s good!” Sveta smiled. “I hope that this screen will show us something interesting today! By the way, my brother claimed that he had bought this ball not just in the simple gift shop but at the real witch.”

 

“Cool!” Lica admired.

 

The girls sat down opposite each other and began to look at the crystal surface.

 

“Can you see anything?” whispered Svetlana by some reason. “Not yet! Perhaps later.”

 

And the girls began to stare wide-eyed at the ball again.

 

Twenty minutes later Sveta gasped:

 

“That’s it for me, I can’t look anymore! It has made my eyes tear. Now I will not see anything. We’d better go to sleep now!”

 

“Let’s stay up a little bit more!” Lica tried to convince her friend.

 

But she refused.

 

“Okay, now we go to bed, but you will give me the ball for one day, won’t you?” Angelica asked Svetlana.

 

“If you think that you are a little witch, of course, I will! And now – bed time!”

 

The girls got into the sofa together, but still could not sleep for a long time. They chatted and laughed, remembering their last exams.

 

The next day, Sveta, as promised, gave Lica the crystal ball. The girl wrapped it in a scarf and went home, afraid to stumble and fall somewhere.

 

At home, she hid the ball under her table until the evening. “How was your fortune-telling?” Angelica’s Mom asked her. “Yeah, no way!” the girl shrugged her shoulders. “We were staring at it almost all night but could see nothing!”

 

“I think you didn’t stare enough!” her Mom joked. “You should have stayed up all night – if so you would see everything!”

 

“Are you putting me on!” waved Lica.

 

She got dressed and went to college to check the timetable for the new semester.

 

In the evening, when Angelica stayed alone, she placed can-dles as they did with Sveta and moved the table into the middle of the room. Then she took the crystal ball and put it in the center of the table.

 

“Well, that’s it!” satisfied she sat down opposite the ball.

 

She remembered Sveta’s words that you need to look at the center of the ball. Lica tried to do that and felt that her eyes were moving down somewhere to the bridge.

 

“My Mom was right about squinting,” she smiled.

 

Angelica looked to the far corner of the room at the candle, and when her eyes rested a bit, again began to look at the ball. An hour later, her Mom came to say her goodnight.

 

“How long are you going to practice obi?” she asked. “Just a little more!”

 

“Okay! Be careful with your eyes!” And her Mom went to bed.

 

Lica looked at the ball. All the objects in the room, reflected in it upside down. It seemed terribly funny, and she began to gig-gle quietly, trying not to attract the attention of her parents. She laughed until cry.

 

“A little witch!” Angelica told herself. “Laughed until cry!” She began to wipe her eyes, and then it seemed to her that the ball moved. Lica looked about... She immediately blinked and looked what was going on!

 

The ball dimmed as it once happened with her mirror, then the picture became clearer and she saw a familiar face. Angelica looked more and more closely and then exclaimed:

 

“Margo?!”

 

“I am, my dear! And who did you expect to see?” “Honestly, anyone else, but not you!”

 

“I hope you did not mean to hurt me,” the witch laughed.

 

“No, of course not! I just wanted to read my fortune ...” “Well, consider you did! I’ve been trying to contact you, but after your sudden disappearance, I have lost all the threads leading to you.”

 

“You know, it just happened...” the girl started to mumble. “I had to go back home.”

 

“So urgent that you could not even say goodbye? Edward and Swein then were riding for hours in the mountains, looking for you!”

 

“Yes; it was so urgent that I couldn’t wait a minute!” Lica said firmly.

 

“Well, well!” Margo smiled. “But we have not finished our conversation. I told Prince Edward everything what happened since he had given his soul for a potion for a princess. I told him that you and Swein had found the Book of Destiny, killed the sorcerer, who lived in the caves and released the evil!”

 

“But if we had not killed him, he would have killed us!” Angelica cried and looked with horror at the door of her room – been afraid that her mother could hear it?!

 

But it was silence.

 

“I see,” the witch nodded. “But, as it turned out, the sorcerer’s life was a kind of seal, closing the evil here - in our world! And having killed him, you broke that seal and opened the way to an-other world. At first I did not realized it and tried to fight using the usual magic to restrain the evil. For a few days, I succeeded, but then I understood that our forces are unequal. I