Movement existed inside it.Slow.Thick.Wrong.Like shadows swimming beneath ice.
Kara shook her head.“Guessing it’s not mold.That’s truly disappointing and that’s a statement I never thought I’d say.”
Nick’s entire body went rigid against her side.She felt the shift before she saw it, the subtle tightening of his arm, the way his weight redistributed onto the balls of his feet.
Aphid stopped at the edge of one of the stone bridges and stared openly downward, his usual restless energy draining out of him in a single slow exhale.“I really don’t think this is what Fane had in mind when he told us to come here and recruit the trolls,” he said quietly.“I feel like we’ve been signed up for something where we should have been given the fine print.”
Honestly, fair.
The Troll King stood at the far edge of the fractured stone, his back to them, one enormous hand resting on the pommel of a sword strapped around his waist.Several older looking trolls had gathered around him now, half a dozen of them, their heavy robes stitched with silver symbols Kara couldn’t read but didn’t particularly want to.
He turned as they approached.His deep amber gaze fixed first on Kara.Then on her stomach.
And something old and exhausted moved briefly through his expression before it vanished again beneath stone-faced control.
“Kara.”
She resisted the urge to point out that hearing an ancient troll king say her name like he was announcing the end of civilization was not helping her anxiety levels.
Instead she folded her arms beneath the cloak and tipped her chin up.“I’m beginning to feel like every conversation in this realm starts with people saying my name like I’m an errant child who has once again done something to cause the downfall of their entire civilization and must now climb some mountain to get a flower that blooms once a year on the coldest day in winter in order to save everyone.”
“That was oddly specific,” Wadim muttered.
One of the elder trolls, a woman with silver-threaded braids hanging past her waist, made a choking sound suspiciously close to laughter.
Nick looked offended on her behalf.“That wasn’t funny.”
“It was a little funny,” Kara admitted.
The Troll King motioned toward the spreading darkness behind him without looking away from her.“You have asked several times why you have remained here.”
Her humor evaporated.“Yes,” she said flatly.“I have.”
Around them, the chamber quieted.
Even the warriors farther along the bridges had gone still, axes lowered, shoulders angled toward the king.That kind of silence didn’t happen by accident.That kind of silence meant whatever was coming next was meant to be heard.
Nick stepped half a pace closer to Kara, his shoulder brushing hers.Protective.Always protective.
The Troll King’s gaze slid toward the corruption, then back.“At first, we believed the rot followed you.”
Kara blinked once.“Well,” she said.“Very judgy.I didn’t walk into your realm and assume that you’d caused the stupid craze of pencils being shoved up troll butts so that their hair waved wildly while people wrote.Seems like you could have given me the same courtesy.”
“There are trolls with something shoved up their butts in the human realm?”A huge troll with no hair and a bulbous nose asked, his dark eyes wide with shock.
“Not real trolls,” Kara said, hoping her tone was at least a little placating.“They’re little plastic toys,” she paused, “but remarkably accurate in some ways.Wait, do any of you fart glitter?”
Nick’s arm tightened around her waist.“Babe, probably not the time to ask that.”
“That’s totally going in the archives,” Wadim spoke up.“And if we manage to save the world from whatever the hell this is,” he motioned to the black veins, “I’d like to talk to more of you about the similarities that Kara is speaking of.Strictly for the sake of keeping records correct, of course.”
“Right,” Zara muttered.“Not for your amusement at all.”
The king continued as if none of them had spoken.“The darkness beneath the mountain began changing shortly before your arrival.Stone weakened.Pathways we have used for centuries shifted.Creatures from the lower caverns turned on their own kin.”His jaw tightened.“Then the heartbeat began.”
The chamber floor pulsed faintly beneath Kara’s boots, as though answering him.
Nope.Still hated that.
