Chapter 23
Hollowed-out horns slammed onto the table, amber liquid spilling over their tops and fizzing on the wood. Half a dozen hands shot to the center.
“Skál!” the elves cheered—the same thing everyone in this pub seemed to be chanting—clinking their mugs, er… horns, together.
The frothy liquid had barely touched my lips when a shoe whizzed past my nose. It knocked a decorative shield off the wall, the metal clanging on the floor.
“Hae!” the barmaid waiting on the group next to us yelled, her thick red hair spilling out of her bun and over her hairy, rounded ears. “Do that again, you’re goin’ back to the bridge you crawled out from under!”
A rather beefy troll rose from his seat, his heavy fists slamming onto the table, the light from the candelabras flickering over his ruddy skin.
“I’ll do what I please. Now get me another ale, skessa.” Pushing his thick neck forward, he let out a burp that was so loud, so foul, I was surprised everyone around him didn’t pass out.
Squinching my nose, I slapped my palm over the lower half of my face.
“Disgusting,” Freyja muttered.
“Get it yourself, ya stupid brute,” the waitress spat, wiping her warty hands on her apron.
More growls, more shouts. More bickering back and forth, more things sailing through the air. I glanced up at the gabled ceiling. An iron chandelier hung from the beam above us, its loose chain swinging. Great.
An elbow nudged my arm—Gunnar. “Don’t worry, this is completely normal for a Friday night at Wild Aven Tavern.”
“Good to know.” I took a sip, my gaze darting around the room at the trolls, on high alert for that second lethal shoe—or the chandelier—to drop.
Siebel rolled a silver coin between his fingers, sliding it to the middle of the table. “Bets that angry one won’t make dawn.”
Some of the others nodded, tossing their money into a pile.
My brows pinched together. “What do you mean?”
“Trolls can’t be caught in daylight,” Siebel downed the rest of his horn, “or they’ll turn to stone.”
“Most make it back to their caves by sunrise, but the unlucky few…” Gunnar trailed off.
“The belligerent few,” Freyja chimed in.
“Check out the statues in the back when you have a chance.” Eva gestured behind her, towards a door with a girthy troll standing beneath the rays of the sun carved into the wood. “All petrified trolls.”
“That sounds horrifying,” I said, reeling in my jaw, which had dropped to the floor, “and I will definitely be avoiding.”
Freyja barked out a laugh, leaning into an elf I didn’t know, twirling a finger around his long copper hair. I may not have bet on the troll, but I would’ve put all my money down on the laugh I just heard being a hallucination…if a tight smile wasn’t still tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“It’s not as bad as they make it out,” a raspy voice quipped across from me.
I locked eyes with Flóki. Despite his obvious charm, even one word from him had a chill running down my back. “Sounds pretty bad—”
Vicious force slammed onto the tabletop, knocking over our drinks and sending sticky booze dripping through the cracks. Squishy palms pressed down, nails indenting the surface.
I flinched back from the troll just as he grinned at me, baring a smile with rows of square teeth that could crush a skull. He then slowly and deliberately met each one of our stares head on. “Which one of you is takin’ bets on old Zulkis here?”
Siebel leaned back, crossing his muscular arms. “What’s it to you?”
“Here’s a bet, elf.” The troll’s voice rumbled through the long hall like an echo in a deep, dank, cavern. “Which one of you is goin’ to end up as my midnight snack?”
Just like that, four pairs of hands slid to their waistbands. My sheath tickled against my ankle, hidden on the inside of my boot. One look at Gunnar told me this was normal.
Siebel rolled up his sleeve. “How about we wrestle for it?” His tone was casual, fearless. Reckless.
Zulkis let out a low chuckle, close enough that his hot breath blew my hair back. “Now you’re talkin’.”
Ramming his elbow onto the surface, he flexed his massive hand, leathered like a mitt and tinged a gray green.
Patrons bustled around, pushing to get closer, their empty horns clattering against the wood, their chants as powerful as their fists. Eva paled, her eyes widening at the growing crowd.
Gunnar gestured to her with a hand parallel to the ground, slowly lowering it. Stay calm.
Flóki swiveled around, pulling a joint out of his pocket. “As I was saying.” He stood. “At least the trolls in the back don’t pull this kind of shit.”
Without a second glance, he wound past the crowd and slipped through the back door.
I looked at the rest of the group. Gunnar, Eva, Freyja, the elf next to her: everyone was preoccupied with Siebel and Zulkis as the match began. The two locked in, veins popping in their necks, their temples, their wrists.
Nobody batted an eye when I swung my legs over the bench, strode across the busy pub, and followed Flóki outside.
The lot was bigger than I’d assumed, rows of string lights holding back the darkness. Silhouettes dotted the night, still as statues, their contorted faces raging up at the stars. I stalled.
Trolls that didn’t make it.
They were statues.
“Geez, it’s like an open grave.” I walked over to Flóki, shoes crunching in the compacted dirt. “Kind of morbid, right?”
“Kind of morbid, kind of beautiful.” The end of his joint burned steadily with his long drag.
“What’s beautiful about a sculpture garden made out of a bunch of dead people?”
“Serves as a reminder to us all.” He blew out.
“A reminder of what?”
“That we can’t escape death.” In offering, he held out the tightly rolled hemp paper, the skunky scent billowing in the night. “At least they went out having fun.”
Taking it from his hand, I tentatively pressed the unlit end to my lips. “Carpe diem,” I said with an inhale, the smoke searing my lungs, my throat.
“Isn’t that right.” A trace of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
I fought to hold my muscles still to avoid coughing.
“So, tomorrow’s the day,” he said in a raspy drawl, playing with one of the many rings on his fingers.
I raised my brows, nearly gagging on the smoke as I passed the joint back to him.
“When you go to Jarearbaeli,” he clarified, as if I had forgotten.
“It’s supposed to be,” I managed to get out without gasping too hard.
I cleared my throat. “Got any advice? Nobody here seems to know anything, and the queen sure as hell hasn’t told me what to expect.
It’s in the highlands.” I remembered what he’d told me when I first met him. “That’s where you’re stationed, right?”
“I’ve poked around there,” he said smoothly. “Never went in.”
I stared at him expectantly. “And…?”
“Whatever’s in that cave wants to be left alone.” His eyes fixed on my heart, as if he were counting the beats. “But isn’t that true of most good things? They’re guarded.”
“Great, so Fritz and Eva were right. There is a monster in there.” The tickle in my throat finally subsiding, a tingling calm washed over me. “Apparently the only person who’s been inside and lived to see another day is some dude lovingly named the Coffin Seeker.”
“Ah, Kistuleitarinn.” He took another hit. “That tracks.”
“The others seemed…” Words floated outside my head, swirling with the bright auroras, painting the sky in scattered colors and thoughts and dreams. “Scared to even mention him?”
“Nothing to be scared of. He’s in an oubliette in the ice dungeons.”
“An oubliette?” Such a strange term. Such a strange sound. I giggled at the way my lips puckered when I said it. “How intense…”
“Yes, in the Dead Man’s Zone. There’s no escaping that place.”
“What is he?” Innocence lined the question, almost awe. What could be so merciless, so evil, it had to be locked in a hole far beneath the ground?
“A demon.”
“What?” My chin fell, gaze level with his. I hadn’t even realized I’d been looking up at the stars. “The queen has a fucking demon under her castle?”
His mouth split into a grin, but it was all wrong. Menacing. He held out the joint.
Shaking my head no, I took a step back. I didn’t think I was that stoned, but surely I was hearing things. Because there’s no way he just told me… “Are you for real?”
“Where else is she going to put him?”
“I—uh, I don’t know. Why does she have him in the first place?” I squinched my lids closed, to shut out the world and give my thoughts a hope of being organized. But the shock and the buzz shuffled them into a meaningless mess.
“She keeps lots of specimens.” Moving next to a petrified troll, Flóki ran the back of his hand over its cheek. “Before Kistuleitarinn was a demon, he was Einar the farmer. Born in a typical village. Lived a quiet life. Until… he didn’t.”
“He was human?”
“Part human, part angel. You probably know it as Nephilim.” He paced around the statue, every so often stopping to run his fingers over the dips and grooves, like it were a work of art, and not a creature that once lived and breathed.
“What are you doing?” I gestured to the troll, its mouth contorted in an infinite scream, fear apparent even in its stone stare.
“Hm? Oh.” Brushing his palms together, he took a step back. “Sometimes I wonder if this is just a shell, and their souls are still trapped inside.”
“So,” I laughed breathlessly, the horror and revulsion warring in me against the absurdity, “somewhere along the line, Einar became a demon?”
“All demons have some angel lineage, River. They’re different sides of the same coin.” He tilted his head, the silver hoops along his pointed ears reflecting the soft light. “It’s funny. People are so afraid of Chthonia—but don’t they know Earth has some of the biggest monsters.”
My heart turned leaden, heavy in my chest. “Why do you say that?”
“Because here, that’s what they choose to become.”