Page 20 of A Light So Blinding
He stared at her, his eerie eyes glowing in the dark. “You sacrificed yourself to find out if I knew your sister?”
“I want to know if the letter is true.”
“You could have just asked when you saw me hanging from the ceiling. There was no need to come here.” There was a hint of anger in his voice, as though he was upset withher.
“I had no other choice. I need to get my sister back, and if that means helping you escape from here, then that’s what I’m going to do. All I’m asking is if you know if it’s true that she is with the trolls.” She wanted to pace, but there was no room here.
He stayed where he was, at least. Giving her all the room she needed to breathe. “She’s with the trolls who escaped fromhere. Your sister was in the labyrinth with the rest of us. She was one of the women gifted to the warriors who won. She was never gifted to me.”
Astrid’s heart shattered.
She’d known Rose had been taken somewhere. She hadn’t realized her sister had been right under her nose all this time.
If she’d known, she could have saved her. Rose had been so close. She might have even seen Astrid in the stands if she looked through her cell or... or...
Astrid pressed her hands to her suddenly hot face. “She was so close this whole time.”
“There is no way out of this labyrinth now,” Bjorn said. His gaze caught on her face, as though he was seeking a way to ease her torment, but that didn’t help at all. “I gave your sister the lastway out. If the trolls asked for your help, it is because they are going to try to come for us. If they succeed, we will leave. If they do not, then we will all die here.”
She needed a moment. This was wrong. None of this was going as she had thought it would go, and Astrid was never wrong.
Until now. Until...
“Sleep, priestess,” his deep voice rumbled. “Tomorrow will be a better day.”
She rolled onto her side on the cot and tugged the blanket over her head. Maybe tomorrow would be better.
But she doubted it.
Eight
Bjorn
Bjorn’s memory was foggy at best. He used to be a good man. He knew that. He’d seen so much of his life in his memories, replaying them in his darkest hours there, that it almost felt as though they weren’t his memories at all. Ten years. Or more. That was how long he’d been in this nightmarish place and, unfortunately, that had whittled away at whatever sanity he’d once had.
Crouched in the darkness, he stared at her. His hands twitched every now and then, but that was the only part of him that could move. Not even his eyes.
Astrid had fallen asleep far too easily in a place like this. It made his stomach twist with fear and his heart race. This woman should have known how dangerous it was to rest in the labyrinth. Someone would notice that she was weak. Someone would see that she was an easy target.
He’d keep her safe. Keeping women safe was one of the few things he remembered. Troll men were tasked with ensuring their women were not attacked by humans or anyone else. Theirjob was not to provide, but to be a shield between all they loved and all who would take that from them.
But his mind had fractured long ago. Those memories, whether his or not, had faded. He knew that he was expected to care for her, but he did not know how to do so. Human women were different. They weren’t trolls. She clearly had no way to protect herself, and he didn’t even have a way to clothe her and hide the skin revealed by the dress that continually fell off her shoulder now.
So delicate.
So breakable.
And a voice whispered in his head that it was better if he did the breaking. The same voice that told him the women who’d begged for their freedom into the afterlife could only be helped by him. It was a darkness that existed inside him now, bred and conditioned by the never-ending drip of water that slithered down the walls of his cage and the echoing howls of wounded men that he had cut up and torn apart.
“Bull?” Rabbit asked, his voice quietly floating through the wall.
“What?”
“Is she still sleeping?”
It was hard to tell. His eyes hadn’t moved from her small form underneath the blanket, but her breathing hadn’t yet changed. It was slow and even, deep as if she were in her dreams. Sometimes she shifted, and one of the last times that movement had dragged the blanket halfway down her head. Golden hair spilled off her pillow and hung off the edge of the cot.
“That or dead,” he replied.
