The pressure snapped like a cable giving way.Magic rushed outward and died, collapsing into silence so abrupt it rang.The hum vanished.The weight lifted.
Kara staggered but stayed upright, dragging oxygen into lungs that refused to work naturally.Her palm still clutched her abdomen; she could feel the life beneath her fingers, safe.For now.
The cavern held its breath.Every troll watched her like a mountain waiting to fall.
The king approached with deliberate care, his expression no longer speculative.Now it was certain.“I don’t believe you are what you claim,” he said.“You are more.”
“She is,” the fae male said, his voice held no inflection.“You should bring up the young one for her.That is the test that she needs.If she is what I believe she is, then she will pass it.”
Kara’s laugh came, thin but functional.“I’m not sure whether I should be flattered or offended.”She eased her hand down to her side, pretending calm she did not have.
The trolls murmured among themselves, low, confused, cautious.Not overtly aggressive anymore, but far from surrendering their suspicion.
The king tilted his head, eyes narrowing.“You carry corruption,” he said, his tone almost reverent.“And balance.”
Her stomach dropped.The description fit with horrible accuracy.
“And whatever lives beneath this realm,” his voice turned low enough that the cavern walls seemed to absorb it, “has taken notice of you.”
Kara huffed, the sound halfway between disbelief and exhaustion.“Yeah.I really wish it hadn’t.”
His attention sharpened to a point.“You will not leave,” he said.“Not yet.”
That broke whatever fragile restraint kept Nick still.He slammed into the bars a final time.“Like hell she won’t?—”
The Troll ?King raised a hand.
Power rolled through the room like a silent concussion, and everyone froze, not out of compliance, but because the air itself had changed.The tone of the chamber shifted; no longer prisoner and captor, but something older, a circle closing around secrets too ancient to name.
The king turned to the fae, “You will go to the human realm and confirm what they claim, and what you believe her to be.”The fae male nodded and then vanished.
Kara swallowed hard.
This had gotten far more complicated than she’d feared.And for the first time since entering the Troll ?Realm, her terror was for a whole lot more than just the Troll King figuring out exactlywhatshe was.
CHAPTER3
“Oaths are funny things.People think they’re just words ...right up until those words decide to come back and collect.”~Myanin
The thing wearingher face didn’t blink.
That was the first problem.
Myanin stood motionless, arms loose at her sides, every muscle in her body holding the kind of stillness she reserved for moments when instinct outran thought.The hollow version of herself stood no more than a few feet away, and the gray nothingness surrounding them had gone utterly quiet, the shifting parchment ground frozen mid-motion as though the book itself had paused to watch the encounter unfold.
Which, honestly, felt rude.
She studied the doppelganger for a long moment, tilting her head just enough to make the gesture look casual rather than wary.“Well,” she said, keeping her voice conversational enough to be insulting, “this is new.I’ve encountered a fair number of questionable things in my life, but a knockoff version of myself is a genuine first.Do you come with a refund policy, or are you just permanently disappointing?”
The echo smiled.
It was wrong in the worst possible way.Not in the dramatic, obvious fashion of monsters she’d faced before, but in the quiet, uncanny way of something not quite right.The expression didn’t move the way lips should, didn’t lift from the inside the way a real smile did.It folded inward, like ink dragged slowly across wet parchment, shaping itself from the outside rather than from any genuine muscle memory or lived emotion.
The skin along the back of Myanin’s neck prickled.She didn’t let it show.
Shade shifted beside her, barely, just a subtle repositioning of his weight, and she caught the movement in her peripheral vision without turning to look.He didn’t step in front of her this time.Didn’t angle himself between her and the threat with that particular brand of protective stubbornness she’d come to know well.He was watching the echo with focused, calculating stillness, measuring it with the kind of quiet that meant he was already three moves ahead and taking careful inventory of the distance between each one.
Good.That was good.
