“And because of that struggle, you are the woman you are right now who can handle this with her shoulders back and her head held high,” Rachel pointed out quietly as she and Gavril rose from their seats and crossed the length of the chamber toward Kara’s table.Gavril’s hand stayed at the small of his mate’s back the entire way, his stride matching hers exactly.
“While I love your confidence in me, Rach,” Kara said with what she hoped was a kind smile, “I kind of miss Jewel’s random genius facts to distract us when things were going to hell in a handbasket.”
“I can concede to that,” the other healer said graciously.
The Troll King followed a few paces behind them, his heavy boots thudding against the stone floor in a slow, measured rhythm that somehow made the silence around him feel deeper.
He stopped at the head of their table.
“It is time,” he said simply.
Nick’s arm immediately circled Kara’s waist again, drawing her against his side as she rose.“Time for what exactly?”
The king’s gaze shifted briefly toward the lower tunnels beyond the far doorway, where the warm gold light of the lanterns gave way to something dimmer and bluer and considerably less inviting.
“To show you what we guard.”
Silence settled heavily over the remaining tables.
Even Aphid stopped fidgeting with the rim of his cup.
Wadim slowly lowered the piece of bread he’d apparently been using to demonstrate tactical flanking maneuvers to the troll children.Torvik watched him set it down with the wide-eyed reverence usually reserved for relics.
“That sentence,” the historian said carefully, “has literally never led to anything emotionally healthy.”
Torvik, however, looked delighted instead of concerned.He scrambled up onto his knees in his chair.“Are we going below the roots?”
Several nearby troll adults immediately hissed sharp corrections in their language, and one of the older females reached over and pressed a firm hand against Torvik’s shoulder, easing him back down into his seat.
The little troll shrank slightly, his enthusiasm dimming.
Verna sighed and pinched the bridge of her broad nose.“This is why we do not repeat everything.Children overhear.”
Kara frowned.“Below the roots?”
The Troll King’s expression darkened.
“The deepest foundations beneath our realm.”His gaze dropped toward the floor between his boots, as though he could see straight through stone if he looked hard enough.“Places untouched for thousands of years.”
Aphid straightened slowly in his chair.“Untouched by trolls?”
“Yes.”
Well.
That was significantly worse than Kara had hoped for.
Rachel folded her arms tightly across her chest, one hand drifting up to grip her opposite elbow.“You said the darkness is older than Raja.”
The king nodded once.
“And you believe it’s waking up now because the realms are weakening, because of Raja and the Nushtonia?”Gavril asked.
“Not weakening.”Verna’s voice cut quietly through the chamber from where she stood near the head of the table.“Separating.”
For some reason, “separating” felt much more final than “weakening.”Kara found that she preferred “weakening,” but apparently the universe didn’t give a pig’s butt what she preferred.
“What exactly does that mean?”Zara asked.She had shifted in her seat to face the elder more fully, one hand resting protectively over Wadim’s where it had stilled on the table.
