Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Bjorn
Bjorn watched Astrid go with his heart in his throat. He was pleased that her sister was here, and seemingly unharmed. It was a relief to know that Astrid would finally get what she wanted. But it made him nervous, too.
What if Rose wanted to leave this place?
What if they both wanted to return to the human kingdom, where he couldn’t go?
He’d tried to be a good husband. To prove to Astrid that he would be someone worthwhile to remain with.
They could build a life together here, even if it wasn’t the life she was used to.
Now was the moment when he would find out if that was enough.
But he hadn’t been given enough time. There was so much more he wanted to prove to her. So much more that he could do to give her the right first impression.
Doing that in Trollveggen was, apparently, going to be much more difficult than he had originally thought. All the warlords around the table stared at him with expectations in those gazes. Even the king himself had called him the Destroyer.
They wanted him to be like his father. They hoped that he would be.
These warlords expected a beast of a man who could plow through any and all soldiers that stood in his way, no matter the pain that was caused or the wounds that were acquired.
He was expected to be just like Dag the Destroyer.
His father had been a renowned fighter simply because of the insanity with which he’d fought.
Bjorn didn’t want to be that person. But if he didn’t have Astrid, what else did he have? This was his future, no matter the cost.
He squared his shoulders and turned his attention to his king. Slowly, he dropped onto one knee and pressed his hand to his heart. “I have returned, King Egil.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t get you out sooner, boy. That is a fault of our own, and one I apologize sincerely for. You should never have been there that long.”
Bjorn almost choked when he felt the king’s hand on his shoulder. He’d never seen the king touch another like this, not in kindness or deference for what another troll had gone through. It was unprecedented.
Trying hard not to get choked up, he cleared his throat. It was hard for him to accept this kind of treatment. Bjorn had been taken when he was a young man, and he wasn’t a young man anymore. But he still wasn’t old. He wasn’t ancient. He just... felt like it.
The king patted his shoulder again, and then addressed the other warlords.
“Our destroyer has returned! With a bloodline from berserkers, we now have our shield. Our people are whole again, but there are many still to save. Together, we will break into the human king’s castle, and we will take back all those who are ours.
We will destroy this labyrinth once and for all.
We will fill it with earth and blood, crumbling it into ruin to send a message to all humans. The trolls will not break easily.”
A cry rose from the twenty warlords at the table. Each of them thirsted for blood, and so should’ve Bjorn.
But even the thought of it made him shudder. Returning to that place would be hard enough, but knowing he had to return only to fight again? Even if it was fighting to free the others, even if it was the right thing to do...
He was tired. Tired of fighting, of battle, of blood. He wanted a quiet life, with a quiet place to rest his head.
He’d been running for such a long time. Even before Astrid had freed him, Bjorn had never felt like he was safe.
Even thinking back to when he’d been a child here, he wasn’t sure he’d known what safe felt like.
His mother and father had always argued.
Dag had wanted him to be a warrior. His mother had wanted him to delve deeper into his magic and ability to control animals.
Everyone had expectations of him considering who his parents were, and he. .. he just wanted it all to be silent.
Yet now he stood with the weight of the troll kingdom on his shoulders yet again, with all their expectations as they stared at him and cheered, knowing that he would lead them in a fight they could not lose.
He just wasn’t sure they were right. The humans had bested him before. And now he had something to lose.
Perhaps that was why his father had never truly loved his mother. Dag had been pragmatic. The man had always known that a woman could be his greatest downfall.
The king stood along with the other warlords. They all watched King Egil, waiting for the moment they were released. With a snap of his wings, their king nodded his head. “Go. Be with your people now.”
Then Bjorn was swarmed. Just like in the grotto, too many people touched him, lingering hands that made him want to snap at them. He would bite through their flesh if that was what it took for them to give him air, but he held himself together.
Barely.
He was near snapping when he saw a familiar face. Lavender colored features and tattoos down his left arm, it was hard to miss Ragnar where he stood at the back of the crowd. His oldest friend had his arms crossed over his barrel of a chest, waiting for all the others to get through.
So Bjorn did the same. He waited, enduring all the touches and well wishes with a nod of his head and what he hoped looked like a convincing smile. Until everyone had filtered out of the room and all that remained were he and Ragnar.
The last time he’d seen this purple-skinned bastard had been in the labyrinth. He’d had a troll wife then, although the redhead was nowhere to be seen at this moment. Apparently, only Astrid’s sister was brought along for important meetings like this.
Alone with his oldest friend, he had no idea what to even say.
The last time they’d seen each other, Bjorn had been little more than an animal running on instinct.
He knew there was no way to sugarcoat that.
He’d killed in front of Ragnar, given them the only chance he’d known at getting out, and even then it hadn’t felt like enough.
Bjorn had scared Ragnar’s troll wife. He’d done the worst thing a male like him could do. Even though he’d tried not to, he knew what state he had been in when Maia had seen him.
The same state he’d been in when Astrid had seen him, although at least she had come upon him when he’d had a little more hope than before. He hadn’t been quite so animalistic as he had been before... well. Before.
Shaking out his hands, he snarled, “Are you going to say anything?”
Ragnar was too silent. Silence was usually a precursor to something horrible happening. Someone was going to attack him, he could feel it. That itch crawled up his spine until Ragnar’s arms dropped to his sides.
“I don’t know what to say. Seeing you here, in your home, is strange. You are not the young man who used to live here, and yet, I see so much of him in you.” Ragnar’s face creased into a smile that was supposed to be reassuring, but it wasn’t.
Bjorn couldn’t parse out why it wasn’t reassuring. He didn’t want to be here. His soul felt like it was trying to crawl out of his body, as though if he could just get out of his skin then he could find a safe place to rest. To reset.
Then Ragnar was right in front of him, his hand on the back of Bjorn’s neck. They were both big trolls, always had been. They had trained together as young men, fighting, rolling, always locking tusks when they were younger.
Perhaps that old muscle memory was why he lunged forward and did just that.
Their tusks locked, breath fanning against each other, the very air they breathed battling as they both held themselves just out of reach from fighting.
They were not going to lose control just yet, but he could feel that it was close.
One of them was going to snap, and he was almost glad for it. Bjorn needed to fight. He needed to release these horrible emotions so he felt more like himself. He needed this.
But then Ragnar lifted his hand again, gently placing it on the back of his neck, and pulling him in a little closer. It was a gentle touch. Not one meant to fight, but to console.
Ragnar’s breathing wasn’t out of control like Bjorn’s was. He was steady and calm, his heart beating slowly, each inhale calculated and measured. Louder than it needed to be. As though he was trying to guide Bjorn through quieter, steadier breaths.
And it worked. Perhaps he was aided by the cool guidance of Ragnar’s magic as well, but he felt his anger simmering down to the place it usually was. Manageable. Just out of reach in case he needed it, but he didn’t right now.
Their tusks unlocked. Their foreheads touched. And he stood there breathing with the man who had given up on him. The friend who hadn’t spent his lifetime searching for him, when he had been right there.
“You have every right to be angry with me,” Ragnar said, his voice pitched low. “I expected that. I knew that if you were going to make your way back to us, there would be a long time where we had to mend what we had.”
“You left me there.”
“I did. I didn’t know you were alive. None of us did.
But the moment I found out you were there, I sent people after you.
We tried. We tried to get you out, and we failed.
I am sorry for that, brother.” Ragnar’s voice was unsteady at the end of it.
As though he was honest in his words, but it was hard to believe them.
“Ten years,” Bjorn said. “Ten years of fighting. Ten years of losing myself, bit by bit until I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I buried every memory of this place, of the people who loved me. I hid in the violence, and it lives and breathes inside of me now.”
“This is not a wound I can heal.”
“No, it is not. But it is my reality, and the reality of so many others. You want to attack the castle? You want to take them back?” Bjorn breathed in and separated himself from Ragnar, reeling until his hands were pressed against the table.
A map spread out before him, nowhere near detailed enough to get them into the castle the right way.
“What if you lose all of them, Ragnar? What if we lose and all of them are trapped in the same place that we escaped?”
“It’s a risk we have to take. We could get them back. We could have gotten you back if we had tried hard enough, and we didn’t.” Ragnar didn’t move, but Bjorn could feel his eyes on his back. “You would leave them there?”
“I cannot tell you how many times I believed it would be better to die than return here. It would be better to seek out a bitter end than to know you all had lived and moved on without me.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “And now I fear I may have been right.”
There was silence in response. Silence that told him he had stepped over some line that Ragnar could not understand. But his friend couldn’t understand it to begin with.
The sound of nothingness burned, and finally Bjorn tried to explain it away.
“You don’t know what it was like down there.
You don’t know how it felt to be fighting for my own survival while killing our kind.
People I knew. People who meant something to me.
Did you know I was taken with Hakon? A good man.
They made me slit his throat into a barrel so they could take his blood away.
I don’t know what they did with it. I will never forget him begging me not to do it, when I knew if I didn’t, they were going to make him do it to me. ”
So many memories. Maybe they were the reason for the rage that bubbled up inside him. They were the reason he didn’t want other trolls to touch him.
Bjorn was tainted. The curse had sunk into his flesh, and he feared it would spread to anyone who touched him. He couldn’t shake that thought. Not in the grotto. And certainly not here.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” Ragnar replied. “No one is going to begrudge you that. They’re just happy you’re home.”
“They want me to be a weapon. Again. They want to wield me like they did my father, and they expect me to do so because I’d want my revenge.
” He looked up from the table and stared into Ragnar’s gaze.
“I just want to be left alone, brother. I want to go back to my farm and grow food with my own two hands. I want to finally have pigs. And to live with the woman I love, quietly. Without anyone bothering us.”
There was a lot to unpack in that statement. But Ragnar’s brows lifted at the end, and he repeated, “The woman you love?”
Fuck.
He did love her, though. He loved every inch of her beautiful body and every spark in that brilliant mind. Nodding solemnly, he admitted, “I’ve known for a while now. She doesn’t, though. So keep your mouth shut about it.”
Ragnar lifted his hands. “I wouldn’t dream of saying a word.”
“Not even to Maia.”
“Now, brother, you know as well as I do, a troll wife like mine knows everything and everyone.” A flash of his white teeth reminded Bjorn of the boy Ragnar used to be. Teasing. Funny. Always joking about something.
And now look at him. Beaten into a sharp sword that healed as much as he hurt.
Heaving a sigh, Bjorn pushed away from the table. “Look at the two of us. If you had asked me when I was a child who we would be as men, I never would have said this.”
“No, neither would I.”
“It’s a disappointment to our ancestors, I suppose.”
“Ah, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” Ragnar gestured for the door, and the two of them headed out of the room. “I was a young man who had a lot of big dreams. But I wouldn’t change anything that happened to me, because it led me to her.”
The door opened, revealing the redhead Bjorn had met in the labyrinth. He’d carried her to Ragnar and then watched them both disappear through the damaged wall he had shown them. She was still alive. He was pleased to see it.
Her eyes danced over him, and he saw the sheer pleasure in them. “Bjorn!”
His name rang out, echoing too loudly. Trolls looked at him, many of them knowing who he was without question now and it made him panic.
Ragnar grabbed her arm gently, reeling her into his chest and leaning down to murmur in her ear. The redhead, while boisterous, clearly understood that there was going to have to be some time before they had their reunion.
She nodded and mouthed, “Later.”
And then she had eyes only for Ragnar as he swept her into his arms, and headed out of the castle. Like no one existed other than the two of them.
Bjorn could only hope his future was so bright. He’d have to wait and see.