Page 113 of A Light So Blinding
“The king himself. We are to contain the problem within the labyrinth.” The man bared his teeth in a feral smile. “And you are definitely a problem. Weren’t you supposed to be in a cell with the rest of them?”
That was enough.
Astrid lifted her hands, weaving magic with every gesture of her fingers. She pulled the spirits from their bodies, feeling the anger of their guides, who knew damn well these men shouldn’t submit to a king who was so selfish and cruel. The beings who were meant to guide each of these men were so angry it was hard for her to even breathe.
Then she released them and watched as the animals all turned on the men. Suddenly, there were glowing blue beasts all around them. Wolves that hunted, gnawing through armor to the flesh beneath. A bear that stood on its back legs and roared so loud she had to press her hands to her ears as it echoed. A horse thundered past her, rearing up and kicking at the air near one of the guard’s heads.
“Come on!” Astrid shouted over the clamoring madness. “We have to go now!”
The women rushed with her, all of them trying to get through the teeming mass of guards who were trying to fight off the creatures that Astrid had summoned. It was their only shot, though, and it seemed to be working. Until Astrid careened around a corner and came face to face with her own nightmare.
The king himself stood at the exit of the labyrinth, surrounded by even more guards. These were men to fear. The guards at the labyrinth were trained and capable, yes, but they weren’t the people who had won the right to keep the king alive. The most talented, most hardened men in the kingdom were given that role. Now they all stood in front of her.
Clapping his hands, the king walked through his crowd of guards to stand before her. “Impressive, Priestess. For a moment, I almost believed you could do it.”
So had she.
Forty-Three
Bjorn
Bjorn learned many things while he was in the red haze of battle. First, the guards here in the labyrinth had never been prepared to handle an uprising. All of their training had been to prevent anything like this from ever happening. They didn’t know what to do when a full grown troll, hardened by years of battle, came barreling at them down a hall that was entirely too small for them to do anything but hold their ground.
Second, he knew without a doubt that revealing this place to the people of this kingdom was not going to be enough. The problem was deep within the core of the human kingdom.
The men who worked here were regular people. They were guards, yes. They were trained to fight, and the average human was likely better suited to a garden than they were to a battlefield. But these men weren’t noblemen making a profit off the sale of other people’s bodies. They weren’t even making much money at all.
He had to assume they weren’t, considering how quickly they tried to run. None of them had stood to fight against him withany sort of bravery. They all ran for their lives, begging him to spare them when he had absolutely no intent to do so—not when they’d stood by and allowed the atrocities in here to happen for years.
But as he cleaved through them, slicing through their soft flesh, that led him to the realization that the problem was so much higher up than these men. Showing the dark underbelly to the average person in this kingdom would only make them hate living here, but where would they go? The poor could not escape this place any more than he could.
The nobility were the problem, those men and women who had gorged themselves on food and drink while others starved right next to them. Those were the people he needed to target. They were the ones who funded the labyrinth, and who likely sent people into it as well. He needed them to suffer, but those were not the people he fought. They weren’t anywhere near this place.
Bjorn imagined them dotted all across the kingdom, each of them in more and more elaborate homes, beautiful and guarded. It would be hard to kill them. Harder to change their minds about this place. They made money here. They enjoyed being here, and that meant...
Fuck, that meant this might all be for very little. He might only be able to free those who were here already, but no vengeance would be served.
It made him fight even harder. It made the deaths he dealt even bloodier and more cruel. He couldn’t tear at the people he wanted to tear at, nor could he make an impact with this fight.
He would return to his king, beaten again.
“Bjorn!” The voice shouted through the red haze of his mind, but it was hard to focus on that when all he could see was blood. He wanted to listen, though. He needed to. This was no place to not hear those who were trying to help him.
He could hurt another troll. Just like his father had.
“Bjorn!”
But he couldn’t hear that person now. He was stuck in the old memory, the one where his father was killing all who made noise and Bjorn just had to stay quiet. Or he had to fight back.
Suddenly, in his mind he was larger. The size he was now. Facing his father as he had only done a few times in his life before the old man had died a glorious death. But now they were both berserkers, both of them lost to the rage that controlled all of their bloodline. He had feared what would happen if he had challenged his father like this, when the old man had been alive. He’d never even thought to challenge him because what would have happened? Would they both have died?
“Bull!” the shout sliced through the thoughts and pulled him back into the present. He blinked, and suddenly the world was in front of him again. He could see all the bodies that littered the ground, all the guards who had lost their lives trying desperately to fight him off. And as he stood there, he also noticed that Rabbit was way at the end of the hall, staring at him from around a corner.
Bjorn snorted, trying to clear the scent of death from his lungs.
“You with us again?” Rabbit asked.
“You have too much experience getting me out of that,” he muttered.
