The Troll King lifted one massive hand, not toward Kara this time, but toward a shadowed opening at the far side of the cavern, where the torchlight failed to reach and the darkness held itself in a way that suggested it had something to hide.
“Bring me Torvik.”
The name rolled through the chamber the way a stone rolls downhill, gathering weight as it traveled, drawing every eye, shifting every enormous body in a ripple of unease that moved through the assembled trolls like a current through standing water.Several of them exchanged glances that Kara, in her professional experience with people who knew things she didn’t, recognized as the specific look of individuals who understood what was coming and had decided, collectively, that understanding it was not the same as being comfortable with it.
Kara frowned at the nearest troll, who declined to acknowledge her.“I don’t love how ominous that sounded,” she said, mostly to the air, since the air seemed to be the only party willing to receive the observation.
No one answered.
A smaller troll–though the creature in question still looked perfectly capable of carrying a carthorse under each arm–separated himself from the group and disappeared into the darkness with the efficiency of something accustomed to following orders it didn’t ask questions about.
Nick’s hands wrapped around the bars again, the metal groaning softly under the pressure of his grip.“What are you doing?”he demanded, directing the question at the king’s back with the precise, clipped restraint, of someone who was working very hard to keep their register below a roar.
The king ignored him with the thoroughness of a mountain ignoring a cloud.
Kara folded her arms across her chest.It was a defensive posture, and she knew it, and she committed to it anyway, because if she was being marched toward whatever fresh catastrophe “Bring me Torvik” implied, she was at least going to face it with attitude and the appearance of structural confidence.
“I just want it on the record,” she muttered, pitching her voice low enough to carry to Wadim without reaching the king, “that if a troll child comes out of that hallway carrying ceremonial knives and reciting prophecy, I am leaving a genuinely scathing review of this realm.Zero stars.Terrible ambiance.”
From his cage, Wadim made a sound that was technically a cough and technically covered by the ambient noise of the cavern.It convinced no one.
“Was that a laugh?”Rachel’’s voice came from the cage to Kara’s left, low and carefully amused, her healer’s calm intact even through iron bars and existential dread.“Wadim, are youlaughing?”
“I am managing a respiratory response to the air quality,” Wadim said with great dignity.
“The air quality,” Gavril repeated flatly, his deep voice carrying the particular inflection of a man who had decided that dry commentary was the only sane response to his current circumstances.“We’re in a troll cavern.The air quality is what concerns you?”
“There’s a great deal that concerns me, air quality is on that list and the first thing that popped up into my mind.You probably don’t want to know about the other things that I’m concerned about at the moment.”Wadim said.
Zara snarled at her mate.“Are you serious right now?”
Wadim didn’t say a word.
“Fair point,” Gavril conceded.
“I still want to know about the ceremonial knives,” Aphid said, his voice bright and entirely inappropriate for the situation, the way his voice generally was.The fae was perched at what appeared to be a very deliberate angle in his cage, one leg drawn up, observing the proceedings with the detached, glittering interest of someone attending a show he hadn’t paid to see but was prepared to critique anyway.“I think it would add something.”
“It would add something to my stress levels,” Kara told him.
“Your stress levels are already catastrophic,” Aphid said cheerfully.“A few ceremonial knives at this point would just be aesthetic.”
Zara, who had been quietly and methodically testing the structural integrity of her cage for the last several minutes with focused patience, paused long enough to look up.“Can everyone please be quiet so I can think about how to get us out of here?”
“Thinking quietly or loudly?”Kara asked.“I find that thinking out loud can really benefit any part of your brain that might be wandering off into random thought territory because that’s what seems to happen anytime we need to be absolutely focused on getting out of a situation where we might die.Kind of like I tend to ramble when I’m feeling a tad bit unsure?—”
“Both options,” Zara cut her off, “would be improved by silence from the rest of you.You’re just going to have to keep the rambling in your mind.”
“Not to completely negate what you just said about needing silence, babe,” Wadim said, his eyes having begun to glow with his wolf.“But when did you become MacGyver?”
“Mc-who?”Zara frowned.
Wadim groaned.“And now I feel old and like a total creeper for mating someone who doesn’t know who MacGyver is.”
“Again,” Zara narrowed her eyes on her mate.“You can mourn your advanced age later.Let me focus.”
Kara’s attention was drawn back to the entrance where the Troll King was focused.The darkness at the far end of the cavern moved, and the smaller troll returned.
And Kara forgot, entirely and without warning, how sarcasm worked.In his arms lay a child.
