Chapter 12 DERRICK
The scent was so strong it sliced through the old rot and snowmelt, making my hackles lift. Even Magnus, who liked to pretend that the dwarf's stink was beneath him, turned our nose into the wind and huffed.
I found a fresh trail marked with a heavy, anxious tread that dug into the sodden earth as if the dwarf's greed itself weighed him down.
I followed, ears and claws sharp, weaving between the pines where snow still clung in lopsided shrouds, each step a living memory of the last time I'd seen Rose's face, so pale and luminous it made the dawn jealous.
At first, the forest seemed to almost part for me.
The birds went dead silent. Even the wind, which hated me with the patient malice of something that would outlast my bones, seemed to hush.
I imagined the woods themselves wanted this chase done, wanted the old feud finished.
But the deeper I went, the more I understood that all I'd earned was the right to be hated slower, more intimately.
Roots curled up in the muck to snag my paws.
Branches whipped me; one nearly gouged my eye out.
The snow softened beneath me, and I felt the land itself trying to drag me down into the old wounds, the ones that never healed.
Still, I pressed on. I pressed on not just for myself, and not just for the promise I'd made to Father in the last lucid moment before his mind turned to stone, but for Rose, who haunted me.
She hovered at the edge of each thought, a ghost I feared to conjure and yet could not dismiss.
I remembered her lips, warm and raw with her own grief, whispering against my fur—I love you too.
Each time the memory surfaced, something inside me contracted so violently that even Magnus had to pause and pant to catch his breath.
For a time, I lost the trail, water had pooled into a miniature bog, and the tracks vanished.
I circled, snuffling, until my nose caught the undertone of metal and bitterness, the troll's coat, or maybe just his own bile.
I found the trail again, and with it, a glimmer just ahead.
Past two leaning stones, something glittered, a coin, maybe, or a drop of blood in one of the last snowbanks for the season. I crept closer, every sense on fire.
Suddenly, the ground, traitorous as always, gave way beneath me.
I fell fast, and the shock of the drop jarred my teeth together hard enough to taste blood.
I landed on something sharp, then all went spinning as snow and dirt collapsed over me.
The air was thick with the stench of pitch.
I tried to scramble upright, but found that the sides of the pit, slicked with resin and mud, were lined with sharpened stakes.
I bellowed, a roar that sent birds shrieking from the trees, and clawed at the edge, but only slipped, tumbling back and gouging a raw line down my right foreleg.
Above, I heard his laughter. It was as ugly as his soul, and echoed in the way only true malice can, turning even the air against me.
"Big, stupid bear," he shrilled, and I could almost see him grinning from the safety of his perch. "Follow the crumbs, follow the trail, right into the hole. I thought you were supposed to be smart!"
I tried to ignore him, but Alarion—or Grimbalt, as he was cursed to be, warped by greed, spite, and a malice that had shriveled him into a troll—scrambled to the edge of his pit, jeering down at me. His face was a mask of mockery, and every word struck like a stone against my chest.
I dug my claws in and climbed, but the stakes splintered under my weight, and black pitch smeared my paws. It burned, gods, it burned. My fur smoked where the pitch had caught fire from the friction of my own escape attempt.
Magnus snarled inside me, savage and weary all at once. Enough. Let it end here. We’ve fought long enough.
For a moment, I almost agreed. It would be so easy: let the pit fill, let the darkness close around me, let the curse finish what it started.
But then I saw her again. Rose, kneeling at the stream with the winter sunlight on her hair, turning it to copper and flame. Her hands, both strong and soft, cupped my ruined muzzle, her voice so gentle and absolute when she said, It’s really you.
I seized on that memory and shoved it at Magnus. She’s why we need to get out. You hear me? She’s what matters. Not this hole. Not Grimbalt’s lies. Her.
Magnus growled, low and reluctant, but it wasn’t refusal; it was rage. A pulse of fury, of fight.
So I tried, again and again. My muscles screamed, and my paws were slick with burning pitch. The walls crumbled every time I managed to drag myself higher, showering me with dirt and ash, making me slide back half the footing I had just gained.
Grimbalt’s cackling rattled the pit like thunder. “Stay down, beast! The hole suits you. Crawl and burn until nothing’s left!”
Shut him out, Derrick urged Magnus. Climb. Claw. Tear if you must, but move!
A roar tore from my throat, Magnus’s and mine both.
I bared my teeth and hauled upward; every movement was agony.
More stakes snapped beneath me, driving splinters into my flesh, but I forced myself higher.
Always higher. Smoke curled from my fur, acrid and choking, but her face was there—Rose’s face—cutting through the haze like dawn through fog.
I dug in deeper. My claws tore the dirt where the stakes fell away, my muscles strained to the point of ripping, Magnus raging with me now instead of against me. With a final lunge, I heaved myself over the lip, collapsing in the dirt above.
For a moment, I lay there shaking, the stink of pitch clinging to me, my lungs dragging in ragged air. But I was free.
When I lifted my head, Grimbalt was gone. Only his laughter lingered, carried on the wind, needling at my ears. I staggered to my feet. Whatever it took, I would hunt him down. I was closing in on him, closer than I had come in a long time, and I was ready to finish him.
"That's right, little monster," I roared, not caring if he heard.
"Run. But I'll find you. And when I do, you'll tell me how to end this.
Or I'll tear the forest down around your ears.
" My voice was thick, half Magnus, half man, but the words were my own.
The wind swallowed them and spun them away, but I spoke for myself now, and for her.
The pain hummed in my limbs, but I ran faster than I had in years, following the scent over brush and through thorns. The troll was weakened; I could smell it. A nick, maybe, or just the coward's sweat of fear. I followed, even when the woods closed in and tried to turn me aside.
Each step dragged at my wounds, but I did not slow.
I followed the path the troll had left in his panicked flight, broken twigs, bent grass, a smear of black pitch on a birch trunk.
There was no subtlety to him now, only terror and haste.
And something else: a faint, sour reek I recognized as fear.
Human fear, not the distilled venom Grimbalt usually radiated.
I grinned, a bloody, animal grin. The tables had turned.
I stalked him, keeping to the shadows, letting my wounds scab over in the cold air.
I circled wide around the next bend, careful of more traps.
Twice I found them—a snare looped low for my hind foot, and a branch rigged to swing a blade at neck height—but I was wary now, and I dispatched them with a swipe or a careful step.