"Your kingdom? What are you, insane? I, for one, am in England at the moment, and, last time I checked there was a….huh, what was it again? Oh, yeah—a queen!" I spat out, and spared a quick look to my surroundings. Smooth stone walls, with a door leading to an unseen corridor and a smooth, soft whispering behind me. I looked behind me. Bad idea. I must still be tired…because there couldn't possibly be such a thing, standing upright. A wall of solid water.

I sat up, taking deep breaths and tucked my head between my knees. Creeper #1 laughed, and knelt down beside me.

"Yes, it's real." He whispered into my ear. "But, I suppose, maybe I should have stopped you from looking at that. It can be…overwhelming, I guess. And your human minds can just be so, so fragile." I peeked up at him as he shook his head despairingly, and then swiftly stood and took a step or two back.

"Now, shall we go?" He offered a hand. "The woman will be waiting, they're so excited! And we must hurry this up, the people have been pushing me to find a queen for a while....I'm sure now that they'll be happy." The young man seemed to be lost in thought for a bit, and then looked once again at me. "Well?"

I stood up slowly, shakily. "Will you run that by me again? I didn't catch much…only that you said nothing about taking me home after a nice bout of ransom notes and all of that."

He threw back his head and laughed again. "Oh, Kate, you do make me laugh." He slipped his hand into mine and pulled me out of the room, into the hallway. He threw a remark back over his shoulder, almost non-chalantly. "Don't you understand? This is your new home. You're to become my new queen. The Queen of the goblins.

I was prodded, smashed and pulled. I was told to stand up, sit down, and spin around. I was painted, shoved into an audacious dress, and made to parade in front of a crowd full of screaming creatures that I could only barely recognize as even vaguely humanoid. A drink was shoved down my throat, and both of my palms were slashed brutally open. A snake got tattooed around my neck, without my ever having felt any pain. And to top it all off, not a one spoke my language besides the premier creeper. I was going mad. That could be only way to explain my state of queen in this goblin nation. I had finally lost it, and this was all in my mind. Oh, joy.

Knock, knock.

"Kate, are you in there? Kate? You have to come out sometime, you know. Kate?" It was Marak. He was back, trying to get me to come out of the lavish room that had been my self-imposed prison for the past two days and nights. After the wedding-thing, he had brought me here and wished me a good night, smiling face leaning in for a quick sneak kiss. I had slammed the door in his face and pushed the heavy bureau up against it. There were no locks on any of the doors in this suite, and so I had deal the best that I could.

The past forty-eight hours or so I had spent pacing around the room, feeling caged but not willing to risk stepping foot outside. I had come to the conclusion that I was not, in fact, mad—because this was all too real to be anything but truth. And I had begun to realize that the crazy-looking people and…animals…were not, in fact, in costumes. And so, naturally, I had set my mind on the possibility of escape.

The great majority of windows in my suite (for that was what it was—bathroom, bedroom, and living room-type thing) faced out onto small courtyards, or public places where I frequently saw people passing by on the ground below. Every time one of them had caught me looking out, I heard exclamations of surprise, and soon enough there was a crowd gathered, waving and calling to me in that garbled tongue they seemed to all speak here. I didn't look out the windows anymore.

But at the moment I half in, half out of the remaining window. It was within stretching distance of a rock wall that I felt confident I could scale until I reached one of the many balconies just barely out of my immediate reach. From there, I was prepared with the plainest dress that I had found in the wardrobe (creepily, it fit perfectly) to simply hide from the rest of the population here and sneak out. Simple. I thought.

"Kate!" Marak called again. "Let me in! Or come out! You can't stay in those three rooms forever! I'll stop sending food, and then you'll be forced to come out!" I could hear the triumph in his voice. He really though he had me, there. Idiot. He'd been coming here at least once an hour, by my estimation, pleading and threatening in turn to try and get me to come out. He hadn't tried to force the door yet, but I felt that that wasn't far off.

"Go away!" I answered him. "I'm not coming out until I can go home! This is kidnapping, and imprisonment, and….a whole bunch of other really bad things! You are so in for it!" Of course, I didn't really plan to take this to the courts. I didn't exactly want to spend the rest of my life in a nice, comfy, white jacket…even if it did let me hug myself twenty-four seven.

"Kate." A small, whispery voice informed me, close to my ear. "I must inform you that you are endangering yourself as King's Wife. You must stop now."

"Bite me." I muttered. Okay, so, I still found the snake a bit weird, but we had gotten to talking over the last few days. I didn't jump anymore when he just started speaking and weaving himself in front of my face, which I thought was a huge accomplishment in itself.

"I don't think you know what you are saying. Now, please, back in the window."

"No." I replied snidely, trying to fit my dress through the window with me still sitting on the sill. Three things happened at once.

I dropped my spare dress, and it fluttered to the small pathway below. I heard small *pop*, saw Marak standing in the doorway of the sitting room triumphantly, with the bureau now shrunk to a doll's size. And Charm (I thought that this was a rather trivial name for one that acted so high and mighty) wound himself tightly around my arms and torso, causing me to lose my precarious balance and tumble back into the room.

Before attempting to wrangle the headstrong golden snake off of my, I had the pleasure of seeing Marak's face. It froze me in my tracks, and Charm simply slithered off of me and to Marak. He wasn't happy.

Sheepishly I got to my feet, but tried for a defiant look as I met Marak's smoldering gaze. He was not my keeper, my king, or my husband. I didn't care what anybody else said. I was seventeen, for god's sake!

"Kate!" He roared, and I took an involuntary step back. He had never yelled yet—he hadn't been mad at me before. And I wasn't sure if I should be scared or not. "Do you know how stupid that just was? Do you have any idea? Those cracks in the rock are not meant for climbing—they are for decoration! Even if you had made it to the wall safely—you would fallen to your death! And I would not have been able to save you!" That last one was the one that brought me out of my shell-shocked silence.

"You save me?!" I let out a short bark of a laugh. "You kidnapped me! That's as far away from saving as anything else is even possible! You've kept me here, not letting me call my friends or see the sun or moon, and yet you're worried that I might fall to my death? You are the most hypocritical man in the history of the world! And, you're still a creeper!"

His eyes were blazing now, but he gave a cursory glance to Charm as the snake slithered across the plush burgundy carpet over to Marak. "My king, the King's Wife had made an attempt on her life. I have not bitten her, but next time I may need to."

"Thank you, Charm." Marak sent a curt nod in the snake's direction, before Charm came back over to me and I offered him an arm to get to my neck. It didn't matter trying to keep him off—he had climbed up my dress, yesterday, because I had asked him to get off and then didn't want him back on. Marak gave his full attention back tome.

"Kate." He was not yelling now, but instead his voice was steel-cold. I almost found that scarier. "Kate, you are my wife, of course I care for my safety. As for your other accusations against me, I must say that yes, I did take you against your will…but I had no choice. It is how it has always been done. I tried to make friends with you first, Kate, I did, but you pushed me away. So I took you anyway. My people must have a King, and a King's Wife, and an heir. The feelings of one girl cannot matter in that regard. And I cannot let you out of this city—that is another rule, another traditions that I have no choice in keeping. I am not hypocritical. I am the Goblin King." His long-fingered hands clenched in fists, and released. Clenched, and released. He stayed standing there, meeting my gaze with his own—but I could no longer read his emotions. He had locked down a wall behind his eyes. As he just stayed there, I wondered what he was doing. And then I realized—he was waiting for a response.

"Marak. Please get out of my room." I wasn't ready to respond to any of that. I just wanted to be alone.

"No." He crossed his arms over his chest. "This is my room. I will not leave it again. I am sleeping in my own bed tonight."

"But—this is your—but I—" I couldn't go on. I had been sleeping in his bed this whole time, unknowing. I had been keeping a man out of his living quarters, even as I was being kept from mine. It might sound clichéd…but it was all too much. I slid down the jeweled wall and landed with a thump, hugging my knees to me, and I began to cry. Nothing loud, no heaving sobs, but the tears were there, and my nose started running. I am not one of those who look pretty when I cry, and I have to say that I wasn't exactly ecstatic to have this creepy man bearing witness.

Marak seemed to shrink as walked over to kneel in front of me, becoming softer and more the laughing person that I had known that first night at the club.

"Kate…don't cry." He murmured to me, pushing a strand of escaped hair back behind my ear. Don't worry…it will get better." I didn't even attempt to push him away. I was sinking down, down, into depression, and I couldn't stop crying, couldn't stop shaking. "Kate?" He questioned me. I could tell that, now, he was getting worried. "Kate?"

And then he kissed me.

Well, that brought me around. I stared up at him, eyes wide. He just kissed me.

Marak gave a sheepish smile. "Well, I knew that would get you out of it…"

I slapped him, straight across the face. It made a wondrous smack noise, and the red imprint of my hand was already clear on his face. The look on his face was one of shock---simply pure shock.

"Kate." He exclaimed. "You just hit me."

"Yes." I answered. "I just did." And then I went into the bedroom, and hid beneath the blankets. I wasn't ready to talk to him. I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted to go home.