The Goblin Emperor (The Chronicles of Osreth, #1)

by Katherine Addison

Better to build new bridges, he thought, than to pine after what’s been washed away.

Weeds thronged the cracks between the paving stones of the walkway from gate to temple, and the grass in the graveyard had grown so tall that the tops of the gravestones appeared like small, barren islands in a tempestuous and brittle sea.

Compassion was all that he could hope for. He could not pray for love or forgiveness; both were out of reach. He could not forgive his father, and he could not love his brothers whom he had never met. But he could feel compassion for them, as he did for the other victims, and it was that he sought more than anything else: to mourn their deaths rather than holding on to his anger at their lives.

They were all very much of a type, tall and narrow-faced, eyes pale blue and pale green and pale gray, their features sharp but oddly empty—young men who had never been lonely or afraid or devastated by grief.

“Veklevezhek,” Min Vechin said. “It is a goblin word, and it means to decide what to do about a prisoner by staking him below the tideline while you argue.”

Ulis, he prayed, abandoning the set words, let my anger die with him. Let both of us be freed from the burden of his actions. Even if I cannot forgive him, help me not to hate him.