Page 110 of A Light So Blinding
Rabbit stood in front of the small slot with bars. He held his arm at a strange angle. Bjorn could see that even through the tiny space between the metal. Rabbit was alive, though. That was all that mattered.
“Bjorn!” Rabbit said, shock and relief in the sound of his voice. “You made it back.”
“Of course I did.”
“I doubted you. That pretty little thing could easily have been a trap. I thought the king was going to tempt you into something even worse than this place. Glad I was wrong.” Rabbit leaned a bit to the side, trying to see around him. “Who did you bring with you?”
“Ragnar.”
“No idea who that is.”
Ragnar huffed out an angry breath behind him. “You didn’t even talk about me in this place?”
“Rabbit was brought in years after me. I stopped talking about my life outside of these walls long before that.” Bjorn grabbed onto the bars of the window, then nodded toward the bar that served as a handle. “Pull with me.”
“You think these can be removed by sheer force?” Ragnar shook his head. “I doubt that. They were built to hold trolls.”
“They were built to hold trolls who were injured, drugged, or nearly dead. They were built, so that they were impossible to open from the inside. Grab the fucking door, Ragnar.”
Together, they heaved against it, pulling and pulling until the stones around it gave. Bjorn grabbed it and then threw it across the hall. The metal and wood hit the neighboring cell and cracked through the door of that one. The other troll would let himself out.
Rabbit let out a low whistle. “You’ve gotten stronger.”
Shaking his head, Bjorn stepped to the side to make some room for them. “No. Just angry.”
“Fuck,” Rabbit said, drawing out the word. “We should all get out of the way then.”
“Armory.”
“Why?”
He was already struggling to make sense of why he wanted anyone to go to the armory. Thankfully, Ragnar stepped inquickly. He even stood in front of Bjorn, blocking the view of his friend, who had gotten even thinner.
“There are a lot more trolls waiting to get inside here. Plenty of them to fight. We’re getting all of you out, and those who can fight with us will need weapons.” Ragnar kept explaining while Bjorn shook his head, trying to get the memories out of his mind.
All he could see now was how thin Rabbit had gotten. And he had already been a very thin man before Bjorn had left. It looked like the king was now completely starving the trolls, and that made him see red. He couldn’t just destroy this place. He couldn’t just bring it down, revealing all the horrors to the people who lived here. Would it even matter to them? Would they even care what their king had done?
He had to try. He had to make sure that no one would ever return to this place, no matter what happened.
“Bjorn?” Rabbit said, his voice hesitant. “You know these halls are too tight. You can’t do that here.”
“Do what?”
“Do what your father taught you to do.” Rabbit reached for him, his skeletal hand surprisingly strong as he grabbed onto Bjorn. “You have to stay with us. We can get everyone out, and then you can do whatever you want to do. But you know you can’t win if you fight them like this.”
But he could. Because he had. Every battle he had ever fought like this was one that he had eventually come out victorious. Just like his father and his grandfather. Like all the men in his bloodline who had forgotten what it meant to care for themselves in the end.
Because other people mattered more than them. Their world was more than just a quiet, calm life. It was protection and honor and pain.
Striding away from them all, he ignored Rabbit’s call for him to stop. He couldn’t. If he looked at Rabbit one more time, thenhe was going to lose his mind. He was going to kill anyone and everyone who stood in the way between him and the king, who should know that Bjorn was coming for him.
“Free them all,” he called out, his voice echoing through the halls. “I hunt.”
And though they were supposed to be quiet, a cheer rose behind him. A whooping, haunting war cry that would make every human guard in this place know what it was to feel terror. They would know he was coming for them, but they would never see him before it was too late.
Bjorn the Destroyer hunted through these halls now.
And he was going to make them all bleed.
