Page 99 of A Darkness So Sweet

He lifted his head, and she saw a flash of cunning in those eyes as the plan that she had been so worried he might have bloomed.

“Thank you, Maia. For giving me the chance to do everything I’ve always wanted.”

And then the world exploded around her.

ChapterForty

RAGNAR

Debris flew in his face just moments before he heard the cracking sound. The blast of air sent Ragnar staggering before a second blast knocked him onto his back. He saw the dust that rose in the air and all the clutter from stones that were suddenly shattered into a million pieces. And then he heard it. The harsh ear clap of an explosion and the screams that quickly followed it.

Then sudden silence. He could hear nothing at all as the entire room was tossed backward into the rubble that rained down around their heads.

His ears were ringing. At first, he thought it was the screams of the humans around him, but no. The blast had damaged his hearing.

Maia.

Where was his wife? He’d been standing right next to her and then... His hands slapped at the ground, trying to find anyone and anything that was next to him.

His fingers found a warm, breathing body. But that broad shoulder belonged to a troll. Blinking the dust out of his watering eyes, he tried to see through the clouds of dust and dirt. But he couldn’t. The air was a wall of white and gray, filling his lungs with stones and rocks that were sharp bites every time he inhaled.

“Maia,” he croaked, his throat finally working well enough that he could call her name. “Where are you?”

But no one replied. The only thing he could hear through the ringing in his ears were the groans of all the trolls laid out across the floor. Although some were humans, too. So many of them all crumpled together like their king had broken their wings and thrown them in a corner.

“Maia?” he said again, crawling over one of his own as he tried to figure out where she would have been thrown. She was smaller, but she’d been standing right next to him. She must’ve been in the same area he had ended up in.

Hands grabbed onto his shoulders. Fire burned where they did, and it was like his body woke up at the touch. Suddenly, he could feel all the stone shrapnel that filled his back and shoulder. Bruises spread down his muscles where he had hit the floor, and there was definitely a rib somewhere it shouldn’t be. All of that and more pain, waves of it, crested over his head and sent him back down onto his forearms. His thighs quaked, shaking with the effort to keep himself at least somewhat crouched.

But then those hands grabbed onto him and hauled him to his feet. There were four of them. Four humans, all of them grunting as they lifted him off the ground and threw him onto something with wheels.

His head reeled. He’d hit it against the ground, he realized. Because the moment they made him move faster than a slow crawl, the entire world spun. Ragnar blinked rapidly, trying to get everything to come back into focus, but his vision remained so foggy. No matter what he did, the world continued to spin and he could only lie there and wheeze in pain.

He was still moving. Somehow. They were hauling him across bodies, because he could feel the bumps when they hit someone and heard the groans of those trampled beneath whatever carried him. Then another body hit the wood next to him.

Tilting his head, he looked over to see his brother there. And then another general who had come with them landed beside Gunnar, half on his brother and half on him.

Ragnar couldn’t handle the pain anymore. His eyes drifted shut, and the world went dark.

When he came to, he had no idea where he was. It was darker than he remembered, but that helped with the splitting headache that threatened to take his head off his shoulders. When he groaned and rolled onto his side, he could see he was surrounded by stone. The floor was wet, dripping from the ceiling in singular plops that were so loud they made his skull splinter.

Ragnar took quick stock of his body. He was injured, but not enough to stop him from fighting if he had to. Already the wounds on his back were healing, likely his own power trying to take care of him in his sleep. It wasn’t enough to waste an ounce of his magic on. The head, though, that he had to fix.

With the greatest amount of effort he’d ever used, he healed himself. Even his magic felt sluggish, because it was almost impossible to concentrate long enough for him to figure out what had happened. His head had hit the ground—he knew that. But there was a small amount of bleeding in his brain, it seemed, and thankfully he had woken up before it could do even more damage than it already had.

A wave of exhaustion hit him the moment he finished. Groaning, he slumped back onto the ground, using his forearm to pillow his head.

He had to rest. At least for a few moments, but then he would get up and figure out where he was, how to get out of it, and how to find his bride.

“They put us in a prison,” his brother’s voice quietly interrupted his rest. “Under the castle, it seems.”

“Under the castle? Why?”

“Don’t know. The whole thing was a trap.”

“I realize that,” Ragnar groaned, but then forced himself upright. If his brother was awake, then he needed to be as well. But when he finally sat up, he realized even more trolls surrounded him. Each of them were lined up against the wall in varying states of injury, and not nearly the same amount of trolls he’d come here with.

“Our king should have guessed this would happen,” Gunnar growled.

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