Page 36 of A Darkness So Sweet

He didn’t want to bring her to his people looking like this. The tattered clothes on her back and the earrings in her ears that weren’t even remotely the ones he should have given to her. But it would have to do, for now.

Daring to touch her, he brushed his fingertips over those piercings. The tiny hoops didn’t move when he nudged them. Likely because they had been traveling in dirt and earth, making it hard for her body to properly heal them. Sighing, he gave her a small nudge of his magic to speed along the process before turning his back to her.

“Climb up,” he said. “And I will introduce to you to Trollveggen.”

She sucked in a deep breath, and then she clambered onto his back. He hooked his hands underneath her knees, and then they were off. It would be a long day. Traveling without the war band meant he had to travel faster so they could get to food and water at the end. He didn’t have that with him, and his human was likely thirsty. She hadn’t drunk in nearly a day, and he wanted to make sure she would survive.

So he went straight up the mountain, rather than heading toward the passes that were safer, but slower. He’d thought she would be terrified and make that little squeaking sound she often did. His fire hair rarely complained, though. She merely tightened her arms around his neck and clamped her legs tighter at his waist, and held on.

It took hours of grueling labor. Even he was breathing hard by the time the sun had reached its peak on the horizon. He paused to breathe and stared out at the beauty of his realm. The clouds were close above their heads and he could see for miles.

Her arm appeared over his shoulder. Her finger pointed to the right toward two rocky fingers reaching up toward the clouds. “We call those two peaks the watchers. It’s said they see everything the humans do and mark all of our activities so that the trolls know everything about our movements.”

The two peaks were well known to his people. They stood close together, thin as needles in the sky. They were nearly unclimbable, even to the mountain goats that lived in this region. The sharp peaks did not grow any trees at all, merely a few patches of pale green and yellow lichen that were difficult to see without being right on top of them.

But it was funny that the humans had thought up such a gruesome story for the twin peaks. He reached back and hitched her a little higher up his back before turning his attention to the climb again. “We call them Bruda and Brudgommen.”

“What does that mean?”

“It is an old human tongue. When the trolls were first made, we took on your language before creating one of our own. The old words mean the bride and groom.” He felt her arms spasm around his neck, and it made him grin. “Our legends say those were the first two trolls to be made. They did not wish to fall into line as the elves wanted them, so instead, they stood on the mountain range to provide safety for all trolls. They are our guardians, in a sense. So I suppose the watchers are not all that wrong, either.”

“The bride and groom,” she murmured.

He glanced over his shoulder to see her looking back at the twin peaks. The breeze played with her red hair, sliding tendrils over her wind burned skin. Those green eyes never stopped looking at the mountains, though. Not even when her hair blew in front of her sight. And for some reason, he suddenly realized she could be beautiful.

A wild creature, she was. Elegant and free in this moment, unlike she’d ever been in her life, he would guess. This was what he could give her. This was what he could offer to the human who had walked into his life and commanded far more of his attention than he’d thought she would.

Ragnar continued to climb. He pushed them harder as he moved throughout the mountains. And though he would have loved to bring her to above the clouds, the sun was already on the opposite side of the horizon and he wanted to get home.

Traveling was always an adventure, but he’d grown tired of adventure at his age. He wanted a warm hearth, a mug of hot mead, and a quiet bed to rest his head for the night. A familiar place—that was all he asked for.

So when he got to the fork in the mountain, worn down by countless years of troll feet, he felt some knot inside of him release. He was so close to being able to let down his guard and finally feel safe.

“You said something earlier,” Maia murmured, her voice almost impossible to hear. “Might I ask a question?”

“You don’t have to ask permission to ask a question, fire hair.”

She tightened her arms around his neck and then slowly released them. “Perhaps I could walk for this?”

He didn’t see why not. They were so close to his home that soon she would have to, anyway. Although he did worry she would get too cold when she wasn’t pressed up against his much warmer skin. “For a few moments,” he relented, releasing his hold on her legs and letting her slide down to the ground.

She stomped her feet a few times, and he had to wonder if she’d lost feeling in them. “When you were talking about the spires, you said the trolls were created. That’s not my understanding of your people. The humans assume trolls have always been here. I remember my father talking with some of his clients, saying that the trolls were angry at us because this mountain has always been yours and we built too close to it.”

“You did build too close to it.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.” Those big eyes stared up at him, and he hated that it softened something inside his chest. “The trolls were created? By who?”

He didn’t have time for this explanation, but then again, he supposed she deserved to know the answer. It was, after all, a good question.

“It’s not common knowledge that the trolls were made. Elves created us out of mud and stone and fur. They wanted slaves. We did not wish to be slaves. Because of that creation, though, the elves gifted us the smallest bit of their magic.” He reached out and touched a stone that loomed over their heads. The granite created a small bridge where trolls would walk earlier in the day toward another cavern. They ducked beneath it, toward the shadows beyond. “In the early days, trolls were little more than animals. The fur and scales and wings that were used to create us were all that we knew. But that spark of elven magic gave us a hope that someday we would be more. The first troll who mated a human with a spark of elven blood, they were the ones who created more magic. That troll born, the one who’d been gifted elven blood, he would go on to become our first king.”

He looked down at her, seeing her eyes grow even larger than before. She watched him with a slightly open mouth, rapt attention never moving from his lips.

“So that’s why you wanted an elven bride? A woman with more elven blood than me.” She blinked a few times, then looked away from him. “You’re all seeking to become... elves?”

“We were born of mud and ash. We will never become elves.” They approached the mouth of the cavern that led to his home. It was a crack in the very realm, it seemed. He loved it. Staring into the pitch black of something that was so eerie and terrifying reminded him that he was very, very small.

Moss hung from the top of the cavern in tendrils that reached toward their heads. A faint breeze always tunneled through it, toying with the ends of his long hair and making the shaved sides of his head even more obvious to him. It was hard to focus on words when he could smell the loam in the cave and the slight mildew scent that always reminded him of home.

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