Page 11 of A Darkness So Sweet

The princess planted her hands on his back and shoved herself upright. “Why would I throw up?”

She’d figure it out on her own. He was certain of that.

As he picked up his pace, feeling her jolting on his shoulder, he could admit he admired her spunk. Every jolt of his body rammed his shoulder into her stomach and likely stole the air from her lungs. She didn’t complain, she just wheezed and tightened her stomach muscles. Those strong arms helped prop her up a bit until he really started running.

“But wait–”

She almost slid off his shoulder twice before he planted his hand on her bottom. He could hold her in place like this, but he was surprised to find how plush her ass was. Soft enough to be tempting, and he’d never thought that about a human woman.

He was losing his mind already. He wasn’t tempted by a human. He pitied her. Because the moment he looked at her face again, all he would see was a disgusting creature that, somehow, he would have to fuck.

ChapterFive

MAIA

What the actual fuck was happening to her?

Maia had always had a problem saying no. It was why she’d gotten herself into the whole situation with her father in the first place. He’d been an ailing man, begging her not to let his life’s work die, and frankly, she enjoyed gardening. But did she really need to take it all on? Of course not. She could have married. She could have gone on a great adventure without the ties of an ailing father, who had taken up so much of her time.

Instead, she’d stayed. She’d continued his work even after his death. Which had led her to this moment, slung over the muscular shoulder of a troll who was significantly farther from the ground than she’d ever been before.

And what did he tell her? Not to puke on him.

Her mind whirled at the reasoning for that until all of a sudden, he started torun. Not just trot, not even a slight jog with the rest of them. No, the trolls turned as one and they bolted toward the forest with an unnatural speed.

She went from just being uncomfortably slung over his shoulder to having her stomach slammed down on his muscles, again and again. The repetitive strikes sent her meager breakfast up into her throat and it took every part of her to focus on not vomiting.

Which was probably a good thing. At least she was focused on not embarrassing herself rather than the way the world changed in front of her eyes. Everything familiar disappeared all at once. She barely managed to lift her head and stare at her entire world disappearing.

The castle faded into the distance. The rolling hills that had always framed her home like emerald swaths of fabric disappeared. They ran through waist high fields of wheat, likely shoulder height for her. Sunlight burned against her back until the world sank into darkness.

The stark difference of being in the forest was hard to ignore. The air was colder. Icy shadows lingered on her spine and danced down her legs until it was difficult to remember what warmth felt like. The sun disappeared, left only to be seen in the dappled marks on the ground through the leaves that soaked up all the heat from their rays. As she lifted her head again, pressing her hands against the small of the troll’s back so she could see what they passed by, all she could see were trees.

Maia had spent her entire life living in fields of golden wheat and verdant grass. She had never left the safety of the castle’s shadow, nor had she ever traveled. She’d seen the forest, of course. It surrounded large portions of her home, but it was always far away.

When she was young, other children used to talk about these woods. They whispered how dangerous they were, and how people died when they went into it. Monsters roamed among the trees. Not just trolls, but beings that were far older than that.

Slumped over this troll’s shoulder, she could see why children would believe those stories. So many of these trees were ancient. She couldn’t have fit her arms around them if she stretched herself. The bark was textured, some trees pale silver and others almost white. But the more she stared at them, the more it felt like something was looking back.

Her mind played tricks on her. She swore she could see movement in between the trunks, in the darkness that lingered between the silhouettes of straight lines. It was impossible. There was no one standing there, watching as a woman was taken from her home in the worst case of a miscommunication anyone had ever heard of. But she could still feel their eyes on her.

Swallowing hard, she flopped down when her arms gave out. Her biceps trembled and her stomach ached. Worse than all of it, she feared what the trolls would think once she told them the truth.

She wasn’t the princess. Obviously, they had made some kind of deal with the king, but what was she supposed to do about the deception? With a knife at her back and the king himself threatening her, there hadn’t been a choice. She’d had to do what the king had told her to do, or be stabbed in front of hundreds.

King James hadn’t wanted to give up his daughter, that much was certain. She could appreciate that. No one wanted to be married to a troll, and certainly not the most beautiful woman in the kingdom.

What would the trolls do to her when she told them the truth? They clearly thought she was the princess, and they had made a deal with her people. She hadn’t been thinking about any of this when the king had thrust her forward. All she’d thought at the time was that she wanted to stay alive. And if she was going to do that, then she had to do whatever that priest had said. Parrot the words back. Kiss the man in front of her. Marry, when she had promised herself she wouldn’t do that and risk everything she’d worked for.

Now, she regretted doing what she was told.

Bracing herself again once her arms had rested, she peered over the shoulder that still dug into her belly and looked at the creature who now believed he was her husband. A troll. He really was a troll.

She’d thought she was hallucinating when he’d pulled back the veil. How strange it was indeed to realize, without question, that the monster she’d seen was real. The dappled sunlight played across his pale lavender features, blending into the tattoos that marred his face. The white paint that had been spread across his eyes and torso had been smudged by his hands when he’d wiped his eyes.

He had tusks. Sharp teeth that curved up from his bottom lip and glinted in the meager sunlight. They were the first thing she’d noticed about the strange creature who had agreed to marry a human. His mouth was broader than her kind, his jaw wider to make room for such impressive teeth. His nose was broad as well, flatter than a human’s and more cat-like. But his eyes. Those eyes were as human as her own.

Maia’s first impression had been maybe he would be kind. He had the eyes of a kind man, and she’d easily read the thoughts that were filtering through them. It had almost appeared that he hadn’t wanted to be there either. The thought of marrying her had turned his stomach, and in that, they shared the same opinion.

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