Page 79 of A Darkness So Sweet

His heart flipped in his chest, squeezing painfully as she looked up at him and asked, “Who do we start with?”

Swallowing hard around the sudden emotions and lump in his throat, he replied, “We find Gunnar. He went ahead of us, and he’ll have gathered those who need the most help.”

“Then that’s where we go.” She reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together, and then they were off.

Gunnar had indeed already set up a tent where those who were the most injured were resting. And there were quite a few injuries. The majority of wounds seemed to be burns. The few trolls who were talking around them were already speaking of the fire the humans had unleashed. Great swaths of it had cut through the battlefield, making it almost impossible for the trolls to even get close to the soldiers they’d needed to attack.

Ragnar went into the tent of burn victims, and the chorus of groans that erupted at the sight of him reminded him just how much he was needed. He walked to the corner where all the healing potions had been set. He’d need to keep their use as sparse as possible, because he was quite certain these weren’t the only injured warriors.

Gunnar brushed aside the tent flap and came in with them. It didn’t escape Ragnar’s notice that his brother wore significantly more weapons than he should have needed.

“Tell me,” Ragnar grunted as he carried the jars of potions over to the burn victims. He handed one of the jars to Maia. “Put this on their burns. Lightly—we need to make it go far. You should be able to see it work quickly. Then wrap the wounds with the gauze on the table behind you. Understand?”

“Well enough. I don’t think I can hurt them any worse than they already are,” she replied, before turning to do the job.

Ragnar turned his attention to Gunnar, who was already shifting back and forth on his feet. His brother only moved like that when he wanted to fight, which meant there was a battle to be had.

“The humans aren’t gone,” Gunnar finally said. “They’ve regrouped at a village nearby, but they’re already preparing more weapons. Our scouts have seen them making the same substance that caused all of this.”

“The king said not to engage unless they were on the mountain, didn’t he?”

“We can’t just let them come back. We can bring the fight to them before they’re able to make more of that fire. If they do and follow us up the mountain, then we can do very little to stop them.” Gunnar ran his hand through the long locks of his hair, some of it getting stuck in the piercings in his ears. “I don’t know the right thing to do here. Do we bring the fight to them and prevent more injuries, or do we listen to what our king has ordered us to do?”

Ragnar didn’t know what to tell him. He wasn’t the warlord here. He was a healer, and the magic inside of him was already blistering. It wanted to heal the people around him, and it wanted to shove aside anyone who distracted him from doing that. The thought of what might happen if the trolls attacked the humans? If he was being honest with himself, he would rather wait and see what other weapons the humans had created. His magic wanted more people to heal, and the only way to get that was to see more people injured.

But that was why he had never become a warlord. He could make choices that were a detriment to the well-being of other trolls. Such was the downside to hungry magic that just wanted to be used.

“You’ll make the right choice,” Ragnar finally said, clapping his hand to Gunnar’s shoulder. “Let me heal these warriors first, though. If you’re going to attack that village, you need all the help you can get.”

Then he turned to help Maia. Together, they healed the trolls who were in so much pain.

And throughout it all, he watched her. Because he could heal a troll in his sleep, but he’d never expected someone with no healing background to do what she did. She was a natural. Where he usually grunted and healed them however he wished, she was the first person to reach for their hands. She held them through the pain of healing, whispering words of encouragement and telling them that they were doing very well.

She asked their first patient where he was from. The question startled the male out of the pain, and he stammered as he told her about his wife and children who were waiting for him back home. When he panicked, fearing that he wouldn’t ever get to see them again, she smiled at him and reassured him that he would be fine.

“Tell me about your troll wife,” she said.

His eyes had teared up at the question, and Ragnar was certain they were going to have a difficult patient. But they didn’t.

Because Maia then said, “I need all the advice I can get. I’m sure you’ve heard I’m not very good at being one.”

The patient had chuckled while Ragnar set in on healing him, using some of Maia’s green magic threaded with his own to make the potion go even farther than it had before. Her fingers curled around his, her magic convincing the marigold to grow and spread through the man’s body, healing faster than before.

And that was how it was with every patient they saw. She reassured them, quietly gave them even more strength while he made sure that they were healed. As each of those warriors fell asleep, she tucked them in. There were blankets at the foot of the cots they all lay on. Blankets he hadn’t ever seen a troll use because he usually moved on to the next person who needed to be healed. But she took the time to make sure they were warm before she joined him at the next.

When they were getting close to the end of the first tent, Maia’s fingers caught his just before he touched the next patient. This woman was already exhausted and asleep, but there were still burns to be healed.

“Ragnar,” she said quietly. “Can we try to speak with the village first? Instead of going in and razing it to the ground without giving them a chance, can we maybe talk to them? Perhaps they will be understanding.”

“They have never listened to trolls.”

“What if I’m there?”

An inner voice screamed in his mind. No. No, he could not allow that. He wouldn’t put her in harm’s way because she wished to see her people in a better light. He knew what they would do. The humans wouldn’t care that she was one of their own. They would see her as a threat.

But he could see a spark of bravery in her. That spark was one he so adored, and one he wanted to cultivate. Because she deserved to be brave. She deserved to try.

“I’ll speak with Gunnar,” he said quietly. “I’ll do my best.”

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