Epilogue
The shadows clung to him. He wasn’t sure when they had woven themselves into his very soul, but at this point, they were part of him. A darkness writhed in his chest, wriggling deep into his bones. The shadows were who he became in a place like this.
“What are you doing, beast?” a soldier snarled.
The human held a nasty whip in his hands. The cat-o’-nine-tails had made itself very familiar with Bjorn’s back, but he didn’t mind it as much this time. Because now he remembered his name. Now he knew who he was.
Bjorn, son of Dag the Destroyer. He came from a long line of trolls who had killed hundreds of humans in their days. He was not a weak troll, and he would survive this.
He knelt in the luxurious room with far too many humans surrounding him. His arms were chained to the ceiling, his legs bound so that he was on his knees before them. Countless people wearing half masks that revealed their mouths, all of them sipping wine and watching his torture. Already his blood pooled on the floor in front of him, and their long dresses dragged across it, leaving smears across the pretty marble floor.
As the troll wife had reminded him, hope was a dangerous thing. Bjorn was terrified that someday he would lose himself again. He had for many years in this place. He fought, he survived, he killed. That was all he lived for. He was the creature they loved to send out to perform, and he had performed for them far too much. If the humans had their way, he would continue to do so.
But he was not the same creature he had been a few weeks ago. He was himself again. A troll with many layers, and much to do in this lifetime.
Bjorn had been meant to be a good man. He was meant to be somebody who would make a difference. Where his father had only left a trail of blood behind him, his mother had bid him to be kind.
As the whip came down upon his back again, only the tenth lash out of the fifty he would suffer in front of a private audience, he remembered his mother.
The burning pain was lessened only a bit while he thought of her. His human mother had been stolen from her village, terrified of the trolls who had taken her. But while she had always been afraid of the “monsters” as she’d called them, she had loved Bjorn with every ounce of her being.
She used to tell him stories about how she’d cried the day he’d been born. His father had liked to remind him that his mother had cried at the sight of his ugly face, but that hadn’t been why she’d cried. His mother had said she’d felt an overwhelming sense of love. Even for the little monster that had come out of her body.
He’d looked up at her, even after tearing her open with his horns, and she had known she would love him for the rest of his life.
These were the memories he needed to hold on to. He needed them to ground him as he moved forward through this torture. At one point in time, he had done this before.
He remembered talking to her at night. Perhaps her spirit had guided him in those early days until he’d finally lost all memory of who or what he was. Bjorn was not the animal they had taught him to be, though.
And now, he just had to wait.
Gritting his teeth, he endured the lashes and stared at the pool of his own blood that continued to stretch forward, seeking freedom.
Soon enough, he would find his own freedom. He would heal. He would gather forces.
And then he would return here and tear the whole fucking castle to the ground.