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She woke from another restless night filled with dreams of voices screaming warnings, interspersed with visions of a certain goblin Runemaster and his piercing eyes and firm hands.

Giggles surrounded her on all sides. It took her a moment to emerge from the tense realm of sleep and recognize that she was now awake.

Suppressing a yawn and the lure of going back to sleep, she peeked through her lashes at the faces crowding above her.

“She’s awake!” someone whispered.

“Shh!”

More giggles erupted when Anrid stretched and faked a long yawn that transformed into a longer, real one. “Who is in my bed?” she asked, as if she didn’t know.

Medda bounced up and down beside Anrid’s head, leaning over to cup her cheeks in her baby hands. “You wake up now?”

Anrid smiled at her and covered a tiny hand with her own. “I suppose I must, if you are all awake.”

Cheers filled the chamber as more goblin children tried to pile onto her mattress. They needn’t have bothered, though, since they had transformed the entire room into one large mattress. Trap and the goblin maids must have found every spare mattress in Imenborg to fill Anrid’s room so that the children had more comfortable places to sleep than the stone floor.

Although they hadn’t minded the night before.

She disentangled herself from the pile with some difficulty.

Her own clothes hung on a hook by the door: she’d rather missed her woolen underdress and heavy apron. The children hopped around her as she gathered her things and headed for the bathing chamber. Despite her best efforts to convince them to wait outside, they insisted on joining her. She left them climbing in and out of empty copper tubs and locked herself in one of the small necessary chambers to change.

As she hooked her broaches to her apron and strung the strands of beads between them, a place deep inside her sighed with contentment. This was familiar, a small reminder of home and the places and people she loved.

They descended on the kitchen next. Granger was ready for them this time, armed in his canvas apron and soup ladle. He slung a cast-iron pot from his arm and plunked large helpings of porridge into bowls. Anrid followed behind him and dropped nuts and dried berries on top of the steaming porridge. She wondered where they came by their food supplies here in the underground.

Yet one more unanswered question she’d developed over the past couple of days.

Neither of the goblin brothers or Trap had yet made an appearance, so Anrid lined up her charges and marched them to the playroom. She thought about trying to organize a group game of some sort, but the children descended into chaos the moment they stepped through the door. She allowed them the freedom to do as they pleased.

Everyone needed that from time to time.

Her heart clenched at this turn of thought. Everyone may need it but not everyone had the luxury of experiencing it. Her thoughts drifted to last night’s unfortunate encounter in the kitchen. Pushing the memory from her mind, she squared her shoulders and took up her post by the door to make sure no one escaped.

Fingers pinched the back of her arm. Startled, she twisted to see Kora looming in the doorway. “Little dears are already at it, are they?” His mouth quirked, but lines carved sharp angles in his face, hinting he was tired or carried a secret burden.

She sidestepped to put more respectable distance between them. “You missed breakfast.”

He covered his mouth. “Oh no! I missed out on the gruel, did I? Crying shame, that.”

Anrid couldn’t help but grin at him, caught up by his wry but infectious sense of humor. “They didn’t seem to mind. There wasn’t a bowl on the table that hadn’t been licked clean.”

This warranted a more genuine smile from him. It didn’t last long, though, and soon he was leaning a forearm against the doorjamb and watching her with that indolent look of his. She put her back to him and pretended to watch the children; he didn’t need a whit of encouragement to misbehave.

Nor did she, apparently. She’d already found herself in one compromising situation, and she needed to make sure it never happened again.

“How shall you occupy yourself today?” she asked after a lengthy pause.

He exhaled, teasing the hairs around her neck that had worked free of her braid. “I haven’t the foggiest. Jael made it clear I wasn’t to bother him today. I suspect something’s amiss, but he’s as strait-laced as an old maid’s corset.”

Anrid choked and earned a hearty back slapping from Kora. Most of the women in Haldor didn’t wear such things in the common circles, although they were popular enough among the upper class. Besides, it wasn’t his reference to the undergarment she objected to but more his allusion to the poor old maid.

“Not coming down with something, are you?”

She frowned, but he posed an innocent expression that reminded her too much of the children when they wanted to wheedle their own way. Bless his stone-cold goblin heart, but he wasn’t any better than the goblinborn he was supposed to be in charge of.

“Something is amiss,” she told him, steering the conversation to more appropriate topics. “The magic is acting up, you know.”