The queen kept her hands on Kurag, but moved one hand to his side where I knew the other set of genitalia hung. Her maze of eyes glared at me, as her hands worked them. Kurag's breath came out in a rush from both mouths.
If we didn't hurry, we'd be here when the queen brought him, them, to a cl**ax. The goblins saw nothing wrong with public sex. It was a mark of prowess among the men to be brought many times at one banquet, and the woman that could do it was prized. Of course, the goblin male who could sustain a female's attentions for a lengthy time was prized among the females. If a goblin had any sex problems like premature ejaculation or impotency or, for a female, frigidness, then everyone knew it. Nothing was hidden.
Kurag's eyes went to Frost and the small goblin in the guard's grasp. For all the goblin king's attention, his queen might have been in another room.
"Why do you hold one of my men?"
"This is not a battlefield, and I am not carrion," I said.
Kurag blinked. The eye on his shoulder blinked a second or two later than the three main eyes. He turned to the little goblin. "What have you done?"
The little goblin babbled, "Nothing, nothing."
Kurag turned back to me. "Tell me, Merry. This one lies like he breathes."
"He drank my blood without my permission."
The eyes blinked again. "That is a grave charge."
"I want recompense for the stolen blood."
Kurag drew a large knife from his belt. "Do you want his blood?"
"He drank from a royal princess of the high court of the sidhe. Do you really think his lowly blood is a fair trade for that?"
Kurag looked down at me. "What would be a fair trade?" He sounded suspicious.
"Your blood for mine," I said.
Kurag pushed his queen's hands away from his body. She made a small cry, and he was forced to shove her hard enough for her to fall on her butt to the ground. He never looked at her to see how she had fallen, or if she was all right.
"Sharing blood means something among the goblins, Princess."
"I know what it means," I said.
Kurag stared at me with his yellow eyes. "I could simply wait until you have lost enough blood to be carrion," he said.
His queen crowded next to him. "I could speed the process along." She held up a knife that was longer than my forearm. The blade gleamed dully in the light.
Kurag turned on her with a snarl. "This is not your concern!"
"You would share blood with her, who is not a queen. It is my business!" She stabbed the knife straight up toward his body. The knife was a blur of silver, the movement almost too quick to follow with the eye.
Kurag had time only to sweep an arm in an effort to keep the blade from his body. The blade opened his arm in a splash of crimson. His other main arm hit her full in the face. There was a sharp crunch of breaking bone, and she sat down on her butt for a second time. Her nose had exploded like a ripe tomato. Two of the teeth between her fangs had broken off. If there was blood coming from her mouth, it was lost in the blood gushing from her nose. The eye nearest the nose had spilled from its cracked socket and lay on her cheek like a balloon on a string.
Kurag trapped her knife under his foot. He hit her again, and this time she fell over on her side and lay still. There had been more than one reason that I did not want to marry Kurag.
He bent over the fallen queen. His thick fingers checked to see that she was still breathing, that her heart still beat. He nodded to himself and scooped her up in his arms. He cradled her gently, tenderly. He barked out an order, and a huge goblin squeezed through the crowd.
"Take her back to our hill. See her wounds are tended. If she dies, I will have your head on a pike."
The goblin's eyes flashed up to the king's face, then down. But there had been that one moment of pure fear on the goblin's face. The king had beaten the queen, nearly killed her, but it would be the goblin guard's fault if she died. That way the king would be blameless and would be able to find a new queen all the quicker. If he had outright killed her in front of so many royal witnesses, he could have been forced to give up either his throne or his life. But she had been very much alive when he'd lifted her tenderly into the arms of the redcap. The king's hands were metaphorically clean if she died now.
Though it was doubtful the goblin queen would die. Goblins were a tough lot.
A second goblin guard, shorter and more barrel-chested than the first, took the queen's knife from Kurag and followed the first goblin guard back through the crowd. Kurag would be within his rights to have both of them killed if the queen died. One of the things that most royals learn early is how to spread the blame. Spread the blame and keep your head. It was like a complicated game with the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. Say the wrong thing, don't say the right thing, and it could be off with your head. Metaphorically speaking, or not so metaphorically speaking.
He held his arm out to me. Blood flowed down it in a thick red wash. The wound he offered in front of my face was deeper than it had looked, a red gaping thing like a third mouth.
"Your queen meant to kill you," I said.
He looked down at the wound, still grinning. "Aye, she did."
"You sound pleased," I said.
"And you, Princess, sound like you're delaying the moment when you must place that clean white mouth on my body."
"Sidhe blood may be sweet," Galen said, "but goblin blood is bitter." It was an old saying among us. It was also untrue.
"As long as the blood is red, it all tastes pretty much the same," I said. I lowered my mouth to the open wound. I couldn't come close to wrapping my mouth around Kurag's arm, as he had mine. But the taking of his blood had to be more than a mere kiss of my lips. To treat the blood-taking as less than the passionate sharing it was meant to be, the honor it was meant to be, was an insult.