Chapter 11
Eleven
Rose
Her first glimpse of Trollveggen was darkness. Rose hadn't realized how long it would take for them to even see a hint of light, and she felt herself spiraling.
Rhydian wouldn't let her back into her hidden realm. He continued to block her, no matter how much pain she endured, no matter how hard she fought to get back to him. The only thing she could find was an empty field, left there to remind her how alone she was right now.
It was terrifying. Every time she stepped out of her body, it was like she had been blocked from all her reasons to stay alive. She'd been cut free, left to drift in this realm that wasn't right. Nothing here served her. She was just made to serve others.
So when this massive troll stepped into the darkness with her dangling in his grip, she couldn't even breathe. What if something was wrong with her? What if she had gone blind? What if this was all a trap, and they had brought her here to eat her?
Anxious thoughts. He'd proven that he didn't want to hurt her, and she had promised to trust him when she hadn't trusted anyone else in a very long time. She was... Rose. A plaything for others. A body without a mind. That was all she had become, and that was all she was good for.
Perhaps she made some kind of noise, because the troll's arms came around her a little tighter. He tucked her against his chest, her head pressed against his heart so all she could hear was the steady, confident thud beyond the cage of his ribs.
He wasn't nervous. He wasn't frightened. But why would he be? This place had been made for his kind.
And then the world opened up.
Light bloomed in the distance, blues and purples and greens that were so vibrant Rose wondered if she had ever actually seen the colors before.
She tilted her head back to look up at the leaves that were larger than she was tall, their outlines traced in neon light. They turned the world blue around her.
She looked at him, Gunnar, this troll who had promised he wouldn't hurt her.
The light played across his features, making him somehow even greener than he had been before, and she didn't think it was possible for him to be even more colorful.
Purple light traced along his smaller tusks that jutted up from his bottom lip, and those dark eyes looked down at her with a soft smile on his face.
"My brother will heal you soon," he said.
Her world came crashing down again. No, she wouldn't let anyone else touch her.
She couldn't. She couldn't be touched again when Rhydian wasn't letting her run from this place.
There was no safety for her. If another person touched her, did what they wanted, tore at her flesh and skin and bone, there would be no reprieve from the pain and the torment.
Gunnar took her reaction the wrong way. He tightened his grip on her, hushing her with soft words that were meant to reassure. “It’s different,” he said. “I know it’s different. But you’ve survived worse than this.”
She saw the others look at them, and her gaze traced all the terrifying features there. The scars, the tusks, the suspicious gazes.
They looked at her and saw something broken. Something bleeding. They saw weakness, and she knew that was dangerous to show in a place like this. They would pick at her, just like every creature did when it saw something weaker than itself.
Her breathing turned erratic. She could feel that she didn't have a good hold of it and that if she wasn't careful, she was going to hyperventilate.
"I'm bringing you to my home," Gunnar was saying.
"I would bring you to our childhood home, but I gave that over to Ragnar a while ago.
He's got a new wife, you see, and I think you'll be fine in the barracks.
I'm sure they'll understand once I get you there.
Then we'll have a healer look at your leg. "
"No," she gasped. "No one can touch me."
"I'm touching you now, Rose. You are going to be fine if someone else heals that leg of yours."
"No!" The sound was almost a shriek, unbearable even to her ears. Panic set in, and for a moment, she wasn't even human. She was a feral creature, kicking and clawing at him, leg be damned. If she broke the damn thing again getting away, at least she would be free. She wasn't in the labyrinth.
She wasn't with the king.
The knowledge seared through her, finally sinking in that she wasn't within King James's grasp any longer.
She didn't have to fight any longer if she didn't want to.
Holding herself together, clutching at the tattered pieces of her soul had been so exhausting, and now all she wanted to do was scream.
So she did. She screamed until her throat went raw.
Even feeling him place her down on a cot and hearing him begging for her to stop didn't end the sounds that burst forth from her body.
She couldn't control them. She couldn't stop them either.
They weren't human sounds. They were raw and blistering rage that had been pushed down for such a long time.
Until she slipped away. Until finally her mind snapped and she slipped away to that other realm where Rhydian waited for her with a disapproving expression on his face.
"That was rather dramatic," he scolded.
She was on her hands and knees in his home, her fingers pressed against the polished stone floor. Breathing hard, she looked up at him through the tangled locks of her hair. "You'd make those sounds too if you endured what I did."
One of his too arched brows lifted even higher. "I suppose you are right."
She pulled herself back together, knowing that in this place, there was also no time for weakness. She had a job. Translations, learning, trying to figure out what this elf wanted from her when the rest of the world seemed to be falling down around her ears.
Rhydian continued on as though nothing had changed. Only she could see there was a different set to his shoulders. He was practically vibrating with some energy that she knew was about to burst forth at any moment now.
"I'm in Trollveggen," she finally said, wondering if that was what had gotten him all excited. "I don't know if you're aware of the place."
He whirled. The fine white robe he wore spun around him in a graceful arc as he became more animated than she had ever seen him be before.
"I know! Can you believe it? I remember making them all those years ago.
I breathed life into a few of them myself, but I never thought those beings of mud and fur would create what they have managed here. "
She blinked a few times. "You made them?"
"Yes, yes. Elves created slaves out of creatures they thought were barely sentient.
But look at them now! Look at the kingdom they have built.
The fortitude it took to pull themselves out of the bestial and into the.
.. the..." He seemed to struggle for the right word. "Into enlightenment, I suppose."
Rose was having a hard time following. She reached for the book she usually translated but found it hard to even think about translations when everything else was happening.
"Rhydian?" she asked, her voice little more than a whisper. "Am I safe here?"
He reached for her, grabbing her hands with his own and squeezing them tightly.
"Safer than you have ever been. And just think of all the raw magic here.
All the learning that can be done. You are in the belly of the beast now, Rose.
I am thrilled that you have found yourself here.
The research we can do together is unlimited. "
"Research?"
"I haven't known what ever happened to the trolls.
No elf ever has. But to know that right now, no matter what happens, you and I can learn what has happened to the creation of the elves?
You and I are going to write a book about it.
And that book will be recorded for the ages.
Finally. You, Rose, have helped me discover my life's meaning. "
She wasn't sure that was why she was here. But Rhydian was happy, and that always made her happy as well. He enjoyed learning. So did she. Learning had given her a safe space all this time and... if that was what it took, then that was what she would do.
For however long she had.
Rose wavered between the real world and the illusion in her mind. Here in Trollveggen, it was easier to waltz between the worlds, allowing her soul to drift from her body.
Rhydian taught her a new skill. She could see through the veil of this world and the one she had created in her mind. But she couldn't stay in one place while she did it. She had to wander.
No safer place could exist for her to walk through the worlds, either. The trolls were all very aware of her. Where she was, how far she had gone, and they pointed out her direction to Gunnar often.
For the most part, her troll guard was very good at finding her. He liked to know where she was. He was awfully attentive, even though she rarely spoke to him at all. He had made a vow, and he intended to keep it.
Sometimes that made her feel a little guilty.
Sometimes it didn't.
Rose was done pretending that she was anyone's toy. She was going to do what she wanted to do, and that was research. This life had never been for her, anyway. She'd been at a disadvantage from the start.
So she wandered. She learned. She found all the magic in Trollveggen that others couldn't see, and she recorded it. Not the locations so that others might find it, but what the magic was.
Like the deposits deep in the roots of the glowing blue trees.
Not the yellow or green ones, only the blue.
It was a deep pool of magic that spread out far below the roots and seemed to come from the mountain itself.
Rose often disappeared into the forest so she could lie upon the ground and watch the swelling waves below the roots, following the magic up into the bark of the trees, out into the leaves where the color glimmered at the tips.
Her favorite was the deep green magic that she could sometimes see in the rocks. Rhydian claimed those were stones that had once been used in many magical spells, often worn around the necks of elves strong enough to harness the raw potential there.
She spent so much of her time wandering that sometimes she lost herself.
It was easy to wander around the streets of Trollveggen.
The grid made a lot of sense once one got to know it, but sometimes she wandered a little too far and did not know where she was.
Like now. There were a lot of places here that she hadn't been, and Rose wasn't sure she was somewhere safe.
That was all right, though. She didn't mind the risk too much.
At least until she heard his voice. Rose was halfway through recording a document about the rocks and the color variances of the power she had seen inside them when she heard him.
Gunnar's voice had been cutting through a lot of her research lately. He didn’t care that her soul had wandered far from her body, or that he could have just ordered her to go somewhere safe.
He always seemed to want to talk to her.
To get through the oddity of her disappearances and force her to listen to him.
Sighing, she put down her quill and looked up at Rhydian, who was currently at his own desk. "What does he want this time?"
"For you to come away from the edge."
"The what?"
Without even looking up at her, he waved a hand and sent her out of this realm and back into her own body.
Rose blinked and suddenly she was staring at the wide open expanse of Trollveggen.
The mountain was hollow, after all, and right now it was all spread out in front of her beneath the cliff face without a single thing between her and a dizzying fall.
"Please," she heard Gunnar say behind her. His tone wasn't quite begging, but it was certainly something akin to it. "Take my hand, Rose. Please."
She looked back at him over her shoulder, feeling a breeze ruffle the trailing strands of her hair. "You could just order me to do that."
"I won't take that right away from you. Not even now." His hand, that clawed hand she had taken so many times, remained unwavering before her gaze. "Now let me pull you away from the edge."
Rose took a deep breath, feeling tension fading from her shoulders. Apparently even her body had been a little nervous at how close she was to certain death.
A question burned in her chest, though it flew out from her lips. "Why haven't you given up yet?"
His brow creased. "Given up?"
"On me. Someday I'm going to accidentally walk off a cliff, and I won't be all that sad about it. I don't think I'm fixable, Gunnar."
It wasn't the first time she'd said it to him, but it was the first time she'd seen his expression harden like that.
How long had they been dancing like this?
Her putting herself in dangerous situations, him rushing to save her?
It must have been months now. Months of him telling her that he wasn't going to give up, and her reminding him that she had no interest whatsoever in whatever game he was playing.
Gunnar shrugged, and she watched the breeze play through his hair, too. He'd twisted braids through it today, twin braids that kept the hair out of his face. His stocky chest was framed by a shirt split open along his pectorals, showing off all the muscles there.
"I like putting things back together," he finally said. "And I don't believe anything is broken forever. Neither are you. I have faith that you will find your way back to yourself, Rose. And I'll be here to watch that beautiful moment happen."
"I broke those pieces myself. Shattered whatever remained of who I once was and turned her inside out." She shook her head. "You're wasting your time. I give it only a few more months before some accident befalls me."
"Not on my watch." He waited until she took his hand, and then gently tugged her away from the edge she’d wandered to.
It didn't escape her notice that he was very careful to make sure he didn't touch any part of her other than her hand.
He was always considerate like that. "Everyone deserves a second chance at life.
I believe that, and I think you do too."
She didn't.
But he made her want to believe.