Page 82 of A Darkness So Sweet

She waited just a little too long. Hands grabbed her by the hair, hoisting her up by the long strands. Kicking out her feet, she tried to cut the grip that made her scalp scream in pain. She must have caught something with the knife, because an angry curse echoed right next to her ear before she was thrown onto the ground.

Maia just barely moved the knife out of the way before she impaled herself on it. But that meant she landed hard on the ground, knocking the wind from her lungs. She couldn’t stay still. She had to crawl away, if that was what it took.

Dragging herself with her forearms, she tried to get the air back into her lungs while she moved. She had just barely wheezed in a breath before a boot caught her in the ribs, flipping her over. Everything in her screamed in pain, unlike anything she’d felt before. But then she focused on the man standing over her, and adrenaline flooded through her.

A soldier. Someone who might have once been familiar. He looked like so many of the men she had known in her life. Sandy brown hair, streaked with lighter colors from years of being in the sun. Sunburnt skin across his nose and dark brown eyes that were almost handsome. A square jaw that she would have once thought was appealing, and it certainly would have made her blush if he had flirted with her.

But now? Now he was glaring at her like she was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen in his life.

“Troll whore,” he snapped, then spit onto her chest.

What did he just call her?

He pulled the sword out from his belt, and she didn’t have time to think. Maia let out a startled shriek that made him freeze for the barest of moments before she sank the knife into his thigh. She didn’t know if she’d gotten him good, or if she’d even hit something important. All she knew was that she wasn’t going to die at the hands of this man.

“You bitch!” he screamed, grabbing for the knife and ripping it out of his leg.

But that was just enough time for her to roll and get up onto her feet. She ran. The skirts around her legs were cut on the edges, so she could run faster than she would have in her older clothing. Her breath sawed in her lungs, her heart thundering in her chest.

Troll whore.

He’d called her a whore, and she wasn’t that. She was a troll wife and howdarehe call her anything else?

With that fueling her, she ran faster than she ever had in her life. And still, it wasn’t enough.

The man tackled her from behind. The air flooded out of her lungs for a second time, and now she saw stars. Little specks made it hard for her to focus on fighting when she wasn’t even sure she could stay conscious. If she passed out now, though, she didn’t know what he would do to her. Already he was wrestling her body, flipping her onto her back. Straddling her with his legs on either side of hers, she didn’t have to guess what he might do.

These men all wanted the same thing. Control. She’d seen it countless times when she was under her father’s roof. He’d protected her then, saying he wanted a daughter as pristine as the first snow. But the expressions on the faces of those men had been the same as the one above her now.

They all wanted to feel powerful, even for a few moments.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” he hissed as he reached for his belt. “You’re a troll whore. You can take me just fine.”

A glint of metal appeared in the center of his throat. He looked a little shocked by that, even reaching up to touch the sharp tip of the blade that had pierced through him. A bead of ruby red blood rolled down the strong muscles of his neck, disappearing into the armor beneath.

And then more of that red blood, trickling up into his mouth as he made a choked sound. He was thrust away from her, his body forcibly lifted by the tip of the sword in his throat. She watched as the weight of his body warped the wound, stretching the wound in a wide open maw as the sword slid out and his body dropped onto the ground, before her eyes were drawn to the troll standing above her.

Ragnar stared down at her, his chest heaving with breath and slick with sweat. There was blood splattered all over his body, along with dirt and smears of things she didn’t want to acknowledge.

“Troll wife,” he said. “Are you well?”

No. She wasn’t sure what had just happened, but she wasn’t well. She didn’t know if she would ever be well again.

But she cleared her throat and replied, “I’m alive.”

The corner of his lip twitched above his tusk, his expression nearing a snarl. “I should have made him suffer longer than he did.”

“I wouldn’t have minded.”

His gaze flicked to the man still drowning in his own blood, before he spat onto the man’s body. The wad of spit stood out on the gleaming armor, now dripping with blood. “Or perhaps I should have let you live, soldier. I would have sent you back to your people missing all of your limbs, so that you could tell them what would happen if any of your people touchmy wifeagain.”

He lifted his sword into the air and she turned her gaze away as Ragnar hacked into the body. The sounds were enough. But soon there was no more noise, only her husband as he gathered her up to his chest and disappeared with her into the forest.

She clung to him, holding onto his form as tightly as she could. Dark shadows moved through the trees with them. Trolls who ran through the woods like they were part of this wild place, and one with Gunnar’s limp body slung over his shoulder.

All of them covered in blood.

ChapterThirty-Four

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