Chapter 31 #2
Rose swallowed hard, and it seemed like the words she said next had to be ripped out of her mouth. “I know. I always knew you wouldn’t stop looking for me. It’s just... I knew where you were. But I also knew you would never find me where he put me.”
The green troll she’d been sitting beside slumped back in his chair. “Oh, now she speaks.”
Without hesitation, Astrid glared at the man. Her look would have sliced through his body if it was a knife.
The green troll wilted in his chair before pointing at her sister with a black clawed finger. “She hasn’t talked in weeks.”
“Then she wasn’t ready to talk,” Astrid snapped.
His nostrils flared. She would have gotten into a fight with him if Rose hadn’t reached out for her arm. The troll’s eyes immediately went to the contact, widening in what she could only describe as shock.
Astrid tried not to think too much about that. Of course her sister would touch her. They were family. Family was different, no matter what happened to a person. Family was safe.
Making a point, she twisted her arm in Rose’s grip and laced their fingers together instead.
She’d hoped her sister would understand the comfort she offered, and she was so relieved when Rose squeezed her hand back.
They were always meant to be together, after all.
That had been the plan ever since they’d lived on the streets.
“Come with me,” Rose said, and suddenly she was dragged out of the room.
Astrid had only a second to look back at Bjorn. He stood there, a pillar of strength among his people, and she mouthed the words “thank you” as the door closed behind her.
Her sister.
Finally.
After all this time.
Rose took her to what must have been a drawing room, sitting down on a small couch facing each other and all Astrid could do was drink her sister in. She looked at every feature that had changed, every new wrinkle on Rose’s face. A story that she did not know, but knew at some point she would.
Reaching forward, she gave Rose time to withdraw but then finally traced her sister’s jaw. “You look just like you did ten years ago.”
“Do I? I was afraid you wouldn’t recognize me if you ever saw me again.”
“I would recognize you in pitch black,” Astrid whispered. “I would know you if they took my eyes and ears. You are my sister, Rose. How could I ever forget a single detail about you?”
Her heart broke when tears filled Rose’s eyes. Even now, Astrid tried to drink in the details of her sister’s features. What she wore. How she curved in on herself without a single drop of confidence that she used to have.
Astrid withdrew her hand. “It’s been a long time since we have been together. I know this.”
“I am not the person you knew.” Rose looked down at her hands curled in her lap, and that was when Astrid noticed her sister’s fingers.
Dried blood crusted around her nails from picking at the skin there.
And the nails were chewed raw, it looked like.
She’d seen hands like that before, after horrible tragedies had occurred to a few of the priestesses.
They were sent back to the sisterhood, and she didn’t ever see them act like themselves again.
They were ragged edged pieces of the women they once were.
Some lords were cruel to those they were given. But then again, men were cruel to women.
Astrid risked a touch again, covering her sister’s hands with her own. She tried to ignore how her own hands were smooth and lily white, even after traveling for such a long time.
“We will leave this place,” she said. “I made a deal with the troll king. They said if I brought Bjorn back, then I could take you wherever you want to go. We don’t have to stay here, Rose.”
Her sister’s hands started to shake beneath hers. “I don’t want to go back.”
“Then we’ll go to another kingdom.”
But it was already too late. Rose’s eyes stared into her own, wide and haunted and filled with memories that Astrid couldn’t fix. “Please don’t make me go back. I can’t do it again. I can’t. I’m rotting away inside, Astrid. It’s eating me.”
“What is eating you?”
“The memories,” Rose gasped. And then her pretty voice twisted into something snarled and tangled, like the roots of a tree had grown into her soul. “Them. They’re still eating me from the inside out.”
She’d never seen her sister like this before. Both mourning and aching and raw. Rose had always been a delicate girl. Sensitive in a way that Astrid couldn’t understand. Her sister was gentle and delicate, and now...
Those shaking hands turned to claws beneath hers.
The fingers stiffened and tore at her thighs.
“The king wanted to give me to one of them, and I refused. I said I wouldn’t go.
He pushed, he yelled, he threatened, and then I slapped him.
” Rose hiccupped. “I slapped him, and he sent me away into the darkness and the shadows, where there were only more hands that took. They took everything from me, Astrid.”
Tears burned Astrid’s eyes. She didn’t know how to help her sister. Her magic swelled inside of her, whispering that she could take away the pain. She pulled on it slightly, tugging at those memories to give her sister some relief, but even touching those emotions made Astrid recoil in fear.
“That’s more than enough,” a deep voice interrupted them.
The green troll from before strode into the room, looming above them with his arms crossed over his chest. His hair was wild, not bound like many of the trolls here. He glared at her again, and then gruffly said, “Rose, head back to the house.”
The snapping order was one her sister apparently could not refuse. She scurried away, her head low, her arms wrapped around her waist. Like she didn’t want anyone to see her.
Astrid waited until her sister had left the room before asking, “What happened to her?”
“Years in your labyrinth,” the green troll snarled. “It wasn’t only the men who were ruined there, Priestess.”
He followed her sister out of the room, like a great cat stalking a mouse. Astrid was left seated on that comfortable couch, wondering what had happened to her sister, and how she was going to fix this.