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368 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2016
"If I stopped because I was in pain, I would have killed myself a long time ago," I said. "I'm a survivor."
"Things like that stay with you no matter how hard it is to forget them. It doesn't mean you haven't survived. It doesn't make you weak."
"And I don't want to force you into something that will make you unhappy. And if that means that I release you from your bind and you go back to the human world and find a man of your own, then I'll do it. Your happiness means more to me than anything in the world."
"I was chaos and darkness and balance and light"
He didn't even smile when he was killing things; as far as goblins went, that was a symptom of chronic depression.
I yanked myself away from his grip and suppressed the urge to wipe my hand on my tunic like a child wiping away cooties.
"Well," Seppo deadpanned, "he really wants to sleep with my mother."
* * *
"You just want to take me in the throes of passion," I deadpanned.
"You drive me mad, Janneke. Completely and utterly mad. I'm probably going to die in a few days, and all I can think of is you."
"I could be surrounded by unearthily[sic] beautiful, naked women, and I would prefer you as you are, fully clothed."
* * *
"You are so . . . unbelievable. Do you ever stop? You nearly died. Multiple times. Everyone else I know (...) would have lain down and quit weeks ago. And yet you're here, a human for the sake of the gods, running yourself into the ground and somehow continuing to stand. It's unbelievable."
The black eye was my fault. When Seppo came back (...), he noticed Soren and me as we'd been before I fell asleep. His laughter and declaration that he knew it would happen was enough to wake me up and make me charge him--completely naked--and give him a few bruises.
"(...) Since we went to the Erlking's palace, I was almost killed by Lydian for the second time, got into a fight inside the palace, threw a man over a ledge, killed a goblin at point-blank range, pounded Helka's corpse into pulp, almost burned my arms off in the Fire Bog, fought and fell of a gods-forsaken mountain, had a shitty dream quest with a svartelf, kissed you, killed a fucking dragon, held my breath for six minutes inside a whirlpool in order to sing a song to a senile nokken who almost drowned me so I could save your life, found out Lydian might end up destroying the world, and now we might be facing a mystery monster if the thrice-damned wolves don't get us first!"
From the beginning of time, humans had been stolen across the border of the Permafrost in raids along with many other types of plunder. Those brought across the border had the status of a thrall, expected to work and do the bidding of the lord that had stolen them.
Goblins could rip me apart so easily, torture me until my mind unraveled. Goblins stole humans for work the Permafrost wouldn't let them do themselves. So many of the things they had - their clothing, their agriculture, their buildings were because humans lived among the monsters doing the skills they couldn't. Humans created, goblins destroyed. It was known.
Of course something was wrong with me. I was sitting here next to the world's most deadly predator, hunting a sacred stag in the middle of the Permafrost, after one hundred years of servitude that should've left me dead. I was the epitome of wrongness.
Remember what they are. They aren't your friends or allies. They're cold-blooded killers who want to either turn you into one of their own or kill you. . . They're monsters, and I'm becoming one of them.
Be his. The thought scared me. The thought petrified me. But not int he way it should've. Not in the way a human should feel about having the love of an apex predator, a goblin, a cruel merciless monster. No, it scared me because for once I was walking out onto thin ice. But maybe he's worth the risk. 'Janneke,' he said softly, 'are you afraid?' 'No,' I said. 'Not of you.'