Chapter 9
Nine
Rose
Rhydian worked with her on a problematic translation that had made her head spin.
Plenty of the books he had access to were ancient.
Some of the dialects made it almost impossible for either of them to make out what was being said.
Of course, she did her best with contextual clues.
There were ways for her to guess at what the elves wanted others to know.
He'd just been getting comfortable in a massive chair he had conjured for himself. Rhydian had long ago dropped pretenses that the world they were in was entirely of her own conjuring. Eventually he’d just gotten tired of being uncomfortable while dealing with her.
The house he’d attached to the tower was wonderfully comfortable.
Everything was so plush, likely because his body was so thin that it was hard for him to sit on anything that didn't have the texture of a cloud.
She'd learned that elves were rather delicate creatures, and they had very specific needs.
Rhydian needed everything to be comfortable. Soft. Cushioned.
Rose pointed out a small translated section with a diagram. "I think they're talking about the realm gate, the one that allowed your people to leave this one and go back to the original realm you came from."
"That diagram does not refer to the realm gate."
"Well, fine then. If you know what it refers to, why don't you just say what it is?"
"I am your teacher. Teachers don't just tell you what you need to know! They advise so that you come to the same conclusion." He turned his nose up at her before returning to his own book.
Licking her lips, Rose took a deep breath and asked the question that had been burning in her for quite a while. "Why are you here teaching me at all, Rhydian? Shouldn't you be with all the other elves?"
He stiffened. She could see it in the way his slight shoulders were suddenly wider and not caved in.
His entire body seemed to be electrified by her question, and she already knew that he would not tell her the truth.
He was so good at hiding what he didn't want her to know, and apparently this was one of those answers.
"Are you finished translating that section yet?" he asked, as though she hadn't voiced a question at all. "I need those translations from you today, or they're going to be late."
"Late for who?"
"For our lessons!" He slammed his own book shut.
"I am trying to prepare you for everything that could and will happen in your life!
You need to stay on track, or we are going to fall behind.
The future is barreling toward you, Rose, and I cannot stop it.
The only thing I can do is to prepare you for what will come. "
What did he want from her? Why was this such an issue?
"You don't know why you're here, do you?" she asked. "You don't know why you're stuck answering my silly questions when all you want to do is go back with your people. I know how you feel about humans! You don't have to remind me."
Sticking her nose into her book, she tried to focus on the words, but she couldn't. Anger burned through her chest, hot and unwelcome in situations like this.
Rhydian hated anger. He said it was a feeling for fools and weak-willed beings who couldn't see past their own needs. Maybe she was weak then. She absolutely couldn't look past the need to know why he was in her life.
"Rose," her mentor said, and his tone had softened.
She glanced over the pages of her book to see him looking at her with an expression that made her stomach twist. "You know I can't answer that question.
I have a wealth of knowledge. I know many things.
You simply ask the one question I cannot tell you the answer to. "
"Why?"
"Because—"
She woke in motion. Rose wasn't entirely sure why she was even back in her body at all. She had just been getting somewhere with Rhydian and suddenly, like a bubble had popped, she was right where she didn't want to be.
"Damn it," she cursed, trying to get her bearings on what the fuck was happening.
Rose should’ve been in the labyrinth. Memories flickered. She'd met a woman named Maia who had promised to get her out. The plan had sounded so stupid that she'd gone along with it, in the hopes that the guards would catch them and she'd get in even more trouble than she usually was.
If she was lucky, the king would send her to get tortured. That usually lasted for quite some time, as all the guards loved to see what they could do to her while she wasn't even aware. They sometimes spent weeks with her, and that would give her plenty of time with Rhydian.
But this wasn't the labyrinth at all. All she remembered was jumping down into battle, knowing that she could very well get herself killed. Then she had seen the Bull himself, a beast of a troll who had terrorized many of the fighters here, and she had disappeared just as she’d thought.
She should have opened her eyes to stone walls, or maybe blood dripping in front of her gaze.
Instead, all she saw were... trees.
Green leaves turned emerald in the dappled light.
The tree trunks were covered in so much moss she thought they looked almost fake.
They moved past her at a blistering speed, so she thought perhaps for a moment she was on horseback.
She couldn't hear any snorting from the beast, or hooves striking the ground, though.
Which meant, somehow, she was being carried at this pace.
There were arms beneath her. Strong, sturdy arms that were so covered in muscles which bunched and shifted with the man's movement.
He was shirtless. She could feel the heat of his skin against hers where there were holes in her gown.
If he was running at this speed, he should have been sweating, but all she felt was the pleasant texture of warm, dry skin against her own.
Tilting her head from where it rested on his biceps, she looked up at him.
The troll, she realized. She knew this man. She'd been given to him as a gift only a few weeks ago, and he had wanted her to sleep. Strangely, she had felt comfortable enough to do so.
But now, with the sunlight beaming upon his features, she could get a real look at him.
Like all trolls, he had the usual tusks jutting up from the bottom of his lip.
They were strange to look at, mostly because they warped his bottom jaw and gave him far too square of features.
His skin was an odd shade of green. More emerald and reminding her of green plants rather than what she had seen before from his kind, which was a greenish tone that was more stone-like than reminiscent of a living thing.
His face was framed by rather luscious locks of hair.
Short, though. He only had hair down to his shoulders, but the locks were black as night and glistening in the sunlight.
Lank, of course. Disgusting, like all of them who had been trapped in the labyrinth.
They had the promise of beauty, though. And perhaps even a hint of a curl.
He glanced down at her, and she was caught in his spearing emerald gaze. Green, just like the rest of him. That gaze was powerful, though, so vivid that she wondered if he could see straight through to her soul.
"You're awake?" he asked, as though he wasn't sure if she would answer.
Right. He must have seen that she wasn't with it most of the time. Most of the time, Rose was wandering. She could hear others running nearby. How many of them were there?
"I am."
"Then all I can ask is that you hang on for a little while longer. We'll stop for camp soon and I will tend to you."
Tend to her? She was more focused on the strange cadence of his tone than whether or not she needed tending.
The way he said the words wasn't entirely an accent she was used to.
Everyone in this kingdom had different ways of speaking.
She had heard many accents in her time there, and then of course there were visitors to this kingdom from others.
But he spoke almost like Rhydian did. The strange way he wrapped his tongue around the words made her think of her friend rather than the men in the labyrinth.
Then he leapt over a log, or something. She wasn't looking forward so she hadn't the faintest idea what he was jumping over. The movement jostled her leg and sent blinding pain throughout her entire body.
Throwing her head back, she gritted her teeth, so she wouldn't scream. She knew how to stay quiet through pain. She had done it her entire life, it felt like. But this was something else. This was a pain she had rarely felt.
"Sorry," the troll ground out. The muscles of his jaw ticked as she turned her attention back to him. "There's no good way to get through a forest while holding a woman with a broken leg. Like I said, hold on a little while longer. I'll set the leg once we're safe."
Set it? How bad was it?
Rose tried to sit up in his arms, but the best she could do was twist her body so she could lean over his massive bulk and see that her right leg was at an angle that just..
. wasn't right. It was awful to look at, clearly hanging off her body at an unnatural angle.
Dangling there, so swollen it didn't even look like her limb.
She tried to fade away. Tried to slip back into that safe place where an elven man waited for her to read books to him, but he didn't let her.
She could actually feel Rhydian blocking her, and the mocking words he sent into her mind: "This pain was of your own doing, little Rose.
You will have to deal with it all on your own. "
She'd forgotten that rule. She could hide from the pain others wanted to cause her, but she couldn't hide from the pain she had given herself. It was how he had gotten her not to kill herself over the many, many years of torment she had endured.
Rose had been the one to jump. She'd trusted Maia that it wouldn't kill them, but she had been the one to break her own leg.
So she gritted her teeth against the pain and endured. As she always did. Because Rose was good at enduring all manner of pain.
The troll carrying her slowed after what felt like hours.
The others continued on, a few of them looking over their shoulders as he stopped beside a stream.
She could see a small band of them stopping with him.
Another troll, purple-skinned and tattooed, paused with the redheaded woman who was familiar.
"Why are we stopping?" she asked.
"To set your leg."
"Is it dangerous to stop?"
He paused beside the stream, gently lowering her onto a flat rock that was somehow still warm even as the sun set in the distance. "Very. But we are smart, and we have better hearing than you. No one will get close to us."
Rose watched him walk over to another troll and grab something off their back before he approached. Carefully, so carefully she knew he thought she was some feral creature who would snap at any moment, he draped the troll's borrowed cloak over her shoulders. The heat immediately enveloped her.
She hadn't realized how cold she had been. The temperatures outside had dropped, and the sudden warmth made her shiver. It was the opposite of how her body was supposed to react. She should have shivered while cold, not while warming up. It made no sense.
Then again, none of this made any sense at all. These trolls had taken her with them. She was in danger here, even more so than she had been in the labyrinth.
And still, her magic did not allow her to hide.
She wanted to wrap herself into a ball, but that couldn't protect her. Her leg hurt so badly she couldn't even curl up. Pulling the hood of the cloak over her head, she hid from the rest of the world and did her best to not exist.
Pretending like this wasn't as good as being with Rhydian, though. The darkness didn't hide her from the rioting thoughts and terror that pulsed through her veins, making her heart thunder in her chest and her stomach revolt against her own saliva.
She flinched when footsteps approached, the sound obviously intended to be loud so she knew he was coming.
Then a clawed hand, black tipped, peeled the hood away from her face. She would have screamed in terror if she hadn't recognized the soft, kind expression on his face.
"Peace, fair lady. I mean you no harm." The troll set down a few straight sticks beside her leg and a bundle of fabric that had seen better days. "My name is Gunnar. This is going to hurt, but it is the best we can do to keep it safe. We still have a long way to go."
She just... froze. Didn't know what to do while he reached for her leg.
The feeling of his hands touching her was a little better than a human man's.
At least she knew it was different. Strong hands still, yes, with callouses that she had felt countless times, but those claws made it hard to think of him as the gladiators or other men who had taken from her for years.
The trolls never took. They only killed when the women begged them, and Rose had considered it countless times.
He looked up at her again, those vivid green eyes holding on to hers like a lifeline. "Just look at me," he murmured. "Look at me and think of how terrifying I appear, or how disgusting you find my tusks. Whatever it takes to get you through this."
She wanted to tell him he wasn't all that disgusting. She'd seen a lot of trolls in her time, most of them heavily scarred and misshapen from years of fighting. He wasn’t that bad, really.
Then he grabbed onto the broken segment of her leg and twisted it into place, and all she could do was scream.