The Goblin Bride (Beneath Sands Book 1) Emma Hamm (best books under 200 pages .txt) 📖

had survived as a child. There was no pain, only the uncomfortable heat that betrayed in a moment there would be pain. She could see the fire. She knew the pain would follow it.

Unbidden, her body started to struggle. Fear motivated her. It ran through her veins like lava as it curled around her heart and squeezed hard. She was going to die here, but there was someone she needed to get to. Someone important to her that she couldn’t leave without.

“Ruric!”

She snapped awake as though someone had slapped her. The word hung heavy in the darkness around her. Even in her sleep she called out for him. The knowledge made her uncomfortable. She had only been here for a month, but somehow he had managed to wiggle underneath her skin.

Her arm was asleep. That would be why she had experienced such strange dreams. It was wedged underneath Ruric, no small wonder that the blood had been incapable of getting to it.

When she placed her palm against his chest to leverage herself, she realized that the heat from her dream had actually come from him. His breathing was extremely shallow, the skin of his body feeling far too hot.

“Ruric?” She asked quietly, nervous that he had not responded to her panicked cry. She should have woken him when she jolted out of sleep.

He did not reply to her. His form remained still.

“Ruric wake up.” Worried now, she shook his shoulder. Even that did not wake him, so like a child she prodded hard against one of his wounds. There was a soft moan, but he did not open his eyes.

Jane wasn’t sure what to do. She was no healer. Her family always said she was better at breaking things than fixing them. This was far out of her league.

She needed to find the healer. He would know what to do. But the darkness around her suddenly seemed cloying. She inhaled it when she breathed and it tasted of fear and doubt.

Without him, the caves suddenly seemed much bigger. Ruric was the one that knew the directions. He knew how to get her from place to place. She was quickly realizing that it would have been smarter for her to have paid more attention as he escorted her from cave to cave.

She held her hand over his mouth, reassuring herself that there was a least a small amount of air being blown against her palm. He wasn’t dead yet but the heat that was coming off of him was alarming. Humans didn’t get that hot. They sometimes had a fever. Willow had once gotten so ill that they had bathed in her cold water from other villagers, holding her so that the wind would force her body to cool.

She did not know what a goblin fever would feel like.

She got out of bed gently and tried not to disturb him. Her breath caught when he instinctively stretched his hand out for her. In his sleep he reached out for her as well.

Blindly she walked towards the side of the cave where she knew the globes were stored. It was always so damned dark here. In her fear she grew angry. This place was nothing more than a kinder version of Above. It was still deadly, people still died, and she was completely helpless here.

Her pride stung at the realization. At least Above she could do something for her family and for herself. She had known how to survive and how to help others do the same. Here she was no better than a child. She had no claws to climb the walls, no teeth to protect herself. It was a world designed for much harsher creatures.

Her fingers bumped against the globe. She shook it hard, staring into the brightness of the light even though it burned against her eyes.

This place was too dangerous for her to ever feel safe. Helpless and alone was not how she had desired to spend the rest of her life. Her stories to Ruric had reminded her how much she missed Above. How much she missed her family.

Her feet carried her to the mouth of the cave, the silence beyond it alerting her that it was what the goblins would consider nighttime. They all seemed to sleep at the same time. Their schedules were rigidly upheld in that way.

The chasm in between the two walls that held the goblin homes opened before her. Even her toes curled to avoid the edge. It was a long way down. She remembered very clearly the beauty that was hidden down there. The bright light of the secret cave Ruric had brought her too. That cave would forever be imprinted in her mind.

And though some dark and terrible fear was wiggling in her breast, it could not grow for love of beauty and adventure. She followed the wall, crossed to one of the ladders that she thought was the right one, and made her way towards the healer.

It was a random guess which cave was the right one. She seemed to remember a particular symbol above the home he lived in but she could not remember what it looked like.

The one she chose looked similar. The curves and angles she knew she had seen before, though if it were the sign for healing or one of the other goblins they had visited, she did not know.

“Hello?” She called into the opening, hoping that someone was at least there.

The language barrier was an issue she had not considered yet. Even if the healer was home, how was she going to explain to him that Ruric had taken to fever? What if it wasn’t a fever at all, but something much worse? Goblin anatomy and reaction to wounds were not things she would know.

There was a rustling from deep within the darkness. It created an instant reaction in her. A wide stretching fear of knowing something moved that she could not see. Feeling like a fly caught in a web, she stared