“Are you okay?” Paris’s tone was cheeky, as if he knew he was affecting me and enjoying it.
“Just get these things off me,” I griped.
“Right this way,” the goblin said and hustled through another side door.
Once again, Paris stepped first. I followed, my gaze lingering on his broad back. He was strong; I already knew that from our run-in at Menelaus’s mansion. If his stories were to be believed, he was thousands of years old, making him one of the most powerful immortals I had ever come across.
I couldn’t stop my mind from humming with secret thoughts of what he could do to me—an utterly inappropriate topic. I tried to snap myself out of it by looking anywhere else, but my gaze returned, drawn back to the fall of golden hair that just brushed his stiff collar. I felt the urge to touch him—to reach out and run a hand along the powerful muscles of his back, as if it was second nature to me. All these thoughts were so out of place that I stopped walking, needing breathing room. I had never desired a male before, especially not one who was a known scoundrel. I even began to wonder if he’d enthralled me somehow, but I knew that couldn’t be the case. I was too powerful for vampire parlor tricks.
Paris continued ahead, surveying the room as he went. They entered an adjacent smithy shop with an enormous forge, its immense fire crackling and screeching up into a cylindrical chimney. Strange shapes twisted in the flames, dark faces and hands reaching out. They screamed in fear or pain, I couldn’t tell which, and goosebumps broke out along my arms. The walls were lined with newly forged weaponry, a couple still glowing with heat around the edges.
“Come, come. It’s all right.” The goblin fanned the flames with a whirring mechanism attached to the forge’s base, an orange glow lighting the room and the shrieks growing louder. “We need the fire of Hades to get those things off you.”
“Those are souls from Hades?” A chill rushed through me despite the overwhelming blast of heat. Hades maintained his dark kingdom in the depths of the Underworld where only the damned tarried. Even Olympians feared the dark reaches of such a cursed realm.
“Just their echoes. They’re still toasting in the fire down there, but their essence is in the flames here too.” The goblin continued, unaffected by the mournful sounds rising from the forge. “Those bracelets were created particularly for you, bound with a powerful magic. This is the only way to remove them.”
“How do you know they’re for me?”
“Whoever made them knew your magics, knew them intimately enough to create the perfect binding spell. Destructive magic is your forte, right? Got a thing for fire, though you can pull any element in one form or another. Extremely powerful?”
I nodded. But who could know my magics well enough to bind me so completely? I could think of no one. Not even my closest sister, Lilah, knew the full extent of the damage I could cause, the sheer power that made its home within my body.
The goblin put a finger into his ear and pulled out a giant ball of wax before flicking it into the fire. “Besides, they have your name on them. Helen, right?”
Chills ran through me at the goblin’s words, icing me inside and out. “I—”
“Her name is none of your concern. If you tell anyone you saw us, so help me, Cranfel, I will slice you up and feed you piece by piece to the screamers in the fire.” Paris’s voice boomed, cowing even the sounds of the flames. His fangs had lengthened again, lethal. He was a killer. One look at the death in his eyes proved it. The fireside tales about him were based in truth. I couldn’t tell if it frightened me or excited me.
Cranfel blanched. “I would never talk about my clients.”
The vampire loomed over the goblin, menace seeping from every pore.
Cranfel stopped digging in his ear. “Never, never,” he squeaked.
The goblin’s terror almost made me feel sorry for him. But not quite. Any creature who had no problem profiting from the fires of the damned would never be on the receiving end of my pity.
“Get on with it.” Paris rose to his full height again, crossing his arms over his chest.
The goblin, with a relieved sigh, reached for and found a set of tongs. They were spitting sparks into the air.
“If you hurt her—”
“I won’t, I won’t,” the goblin assured Paris with a wave of his twisted fingers. “This isn’t my first go-round with enchanted bracelets, you know.” Cranfel motioned me to come closer, waving his hairy green hands in the firelight.
Paris stood between them, eyeing the fire before turning to me.
“Trust me?” He held his hand out to me.