Not her fear, but something else’s.
Ancient.Sleeping.Hurting.
The words escaped her before she could decide whether to say them.“It’s trapped.”
The corruption spread across the chamber floor convulsed.
Troll warriors shouted.Several lifted weapons.The black veins recoiled backward several inches through the stone, flinching away like living things retreating from flame.Blue light surged through the mineral lines beneath the floor bright enough to illuminate the entire cavern in silver fire, washing the bridges, the walls, the upturned faces of every troll in the chamber in pale, blinding light.
Rachel gasped softly behind her.Aphid took a sharp step backward, his hand half-raised as if to ward off something he couldn’t see, the perpetual smirk wiped clean off his face for the first time since they’d entered the mountain.
And Kara felt her daughter move sharply beneath her heart.
The darkness retreated again, another inch, another, the convulsion shuddering outward through the stone like ripples on a pond.
Every troll in the chamber froze.
The silver-braided elder lowered herself slowly to one knee.The cloak pooled around her like dark water.
Then another elder.
Then another.
Oh no.
Absolutely not.
Kara stared at them in genuine horror.“Please don’t start worshipping me.I do not have the emotional stability for that kind of responsibility.”
Shockingly, nobody laughed.
The Troll King looked, if anything, more unsettled than reassured.His amber gaze tracked from the kneeling elders to Kara’s stomach and back to her face.
“That has never happened before,” he said quietly.
Nick’s hand spread fully across Kara’s stomach again, fingers wide, his wolf surging so hard against the bond that she could feel it like static along the back of her neck.
“What exactly are you guarding down there?”he demanded.The growl was still riding the edges of his voice.
The Troll King held his gaze for several long seconds before answering.The chamber held its breath with him.“The foundations.”
A cold chill slid down Kara’s spine despite the heat radiating up through the stone.“The foundations of what?”
The Troll King turned his head, slowly, toward the darkness pooling beneath the stone bridges, toward the endless cavern depths that disappeared below them into shadow and the slow, steady pulse of something far older than any of them.“The realms.”
Silence settled heavily over the chamber.
Behind Kara, even Aphid had stopped fidgeting.
“I’m sorry, but is there ever going to be a time when we stop getting new revelations that a certain supernatural species is in charge of that no one else knows about?”Zara asked, her voice calm, but a tad annoyed.
“There’s a reason we don’t allow people into the troll realm,” the Troll King told them.
“And here we thought you wanted to eat us,” Kara said with a small chuckle.
“We did,” a young troll said as he pushed through a couple of warriors.“But papa said you’re friends, not food.”
Another troll child pushed through the crowd to stand beside the first.“You still smell like food to us.But we won’t bite you to find out, or we’ll have to take baths for a month.”
