“Aphid,” Rachel said.
“I’m watching,” Aphid said as if that was going to somehow prevent a battle between Nick and all the trolls.Those odds just seemed pretty crappy, even if her mate was a badass.
“How about not watching and insteadhelp,” Rachel said, her tone that of a parent exasperated with a child.
“Right, yes.”A pause.The sound of something subtle and strange, a fae-flavored magic that didn’t quite register as noise but moved through the air causing the hair on the back of Kara’s neck to rise.“Give me a moment,” Aphid said.
“How about let’s everyone remain calm,” Kara breathed, because she was still on her heels on the stone floor and Nick was a wall of barely-contained wolf between her and everything.The situation had arrived at the particular intersection of “enraged wolves” and “it hasn’t been a day until someone is maimed or dead” that she was beginning to recognize as the default register of her life.“There’s no reason to go all crazy.Nick,” she nudged his back leg.“I’m good, yeah?”She hoped using his favorite word might break him out of his rage, but it didn’t have the effect she hoped for.He simply snarled at her, and then turned his attention back to those he considered the threat.Kara’s attention was pulled from her mate when the Troll King moved.
Not toward Nick.He turned, slowly, with complete deliberateness, and he dropped to one knee so that he was angled to be able to see her from behind her mate.
The stone floor cracked slightly under the impact.One knee, both enormous hands resting on the opposite thigh, his ancient head lowering with the weight of ceremony, not defeat, nothing so simple as defeat, but acknowledgment and recognition.It was the posture of something vast and powerful choosing, consciously and publicly, to mark a moment.
“A healer,” he said, and the word in his voice was not a title.It was somethingmorethan a title.Something closer to a covenant.
“She is,” the fae, who’d done nothing but watch since he’d recommended bringing the child to her, said.“But I will get confirmation.”
The Troll King didn’t look up as he spoke.“And confirm their story about his alpha they speak of.”
The fae disappeared, flashing from the cave.
The silence that followed was different from every silence before it.The trolls had gone motionless with a synchrony that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with what they were witnessing.All of them still, and watching.All of them holding the weight of something their king had just said with a gravity that suggested it had meaning Kara could only understand to a certain degree.She’d been involved in the supernatural world long enough to know that gypsy healers were special.The power in them was something different from every other supernatural being.But the way the Troll King was acting made it seem as if she was something to be treasured.
Nick grew still as stone, though his growling continued, albeit lower now.His head was tilted at an angle that suggested he was a tad confused, the aggression in it complicated by uncertainty.He didn’t lower his hands, but the claws were less prominent, the half-shift pulling slightly back as the situation stopped matching the threat pattern he’d launched himself toward.
Kara’s brain was trying to catch up, filtering through everything that had just happened and then attempting to formulate a way to respond.She still hadn’t quite determined if the trolls were still a threat, or had moved into the “ally” bracket.
Then the king’s voice, still in that same register, public, sonorous, dropped into the cavern like a stone dropped into deep water, “Protect the mother and the child she carries at all cost.Release her companions.”
There was utter silence.
Not the silence of waiting.The silence of something having just shifted, tectonic and permanent, and everyone in the room pausing to confirm that the ground was, in fact, in a different place than it had been a moment ago.
Nick turned around very slowly and looked at Kara.“What the hell is going on?”he asked through their bond.
She looked back at him.“That is also my question.”
Suddenly movement began.The clanging of cage doors opening filled the space, along with the soft rumblings of Wadim and Gavril’s voices as they spoke to their mates.Aphid simply stood still, eyes watching with a look that still held distrust.
What happened next was the thing that Kara would later describe, in retellings that became progressively more elaborate with time and distance, as the moment the mission became categorically weirder than anything she’d been briefed to handle.
From somewhere in the assembled trolls, a female voice, broad, authoritative, carrying the specific volume of someone accustomed to being listened to and prepared to repeat herself until she was, cut through the stunned quiet like an axe through kindling.“Move.”
Immediately, the crowd parted.
She was broader than most of the warriors, built like something that had decided comfort was a strategic liability and had planned accordingly, her gray braids pinned in an elaborate crown that Kara recognized, on some instinctive level, as a marker of domestic authority so absolute it made royal titles look tentative.The warrior moved through the assembled trolls the way water moved through sand, not asking permission, not acknowledging resistance, simply proceeding on the assumption that the path would exist when she arrived at it.
She stopped in front of Nick.“Wolf,” the woman said, her voice still stern.“Let me look at your mate.She needs to be cared for, especially after healing Torvik.I mean her no harm.”
Kara waited, unsure of how he would respond, and really hoping he didn’t attempt to rip the old woman’s head off.That would just be a really sucky end to an already spectacularly sucky day, week, month ...hell she didn’t even know anymore.
There was a brief staring contest, until Nick stepped slightly to the side, though he didn’t drop the female’s gaze because, hello, dominant wolf.
The elderly troll female looked down at Kara with amber eyes that were unexpectedly and entirely warm, and pointed one blunt finger at Kara’s abdomen with the directness of someone who had borne children and had strong opinions about the proper conditions for doing so.
“She needs broth, meat, and vegetables, and I’ll need a few of you to go gather bullrot root, taser flowers, and nettle saliva.”
“Umm,” Kara held up her hand as her eyes widened.“I sort of draw the line at ingesting saliva of any kind.Other than my own, of course.”
