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Page 20 of A Darkness So Sweet (The Kingdom Below #1)

Chapter Twenty

RAGNAR

He made himself scarce for a while after that. But even days afterward, Ragnar hadn’t forgotten the taste of her on his tongue. He could still hear the little sounds she’d made and feel the way she’d twisted in his hands. He had been completely enraptured by her movements. She was the rising wave of passion that he had ridden with no hope but to be dashed upon the sands of reality.

Ragnar should have known this would happen. She was his troll wife. Already the Blood Witch’s magic was connecting them. Their blood had mingled. Their magics had been drawn out of their bodies to meet the other. They were, without a doubt, bound in a way that neither of them could ever escape. Only through death, and now that he had accepted her, he would not let her die. Not without him.

Gunnar clapped a hand to his shoulder in the market they wandered through, thoroughly delighted by the conversation. “So you actually like her now?”

“I don’t like her.”

“You seem to be thinking about her an awful lot. And one of the vendors told me you bought her proper earrings. Sounds like you’re leaving your mark on her, and that in itself says a lot about what you’re thinking.” The cheeky grin on his face was one that Ragnar wanted to wipe off with a jab of his fist.

“I do not like the human. She’s difficult at the best of times and far too concerned about what is proper or what is right.” Unless his tongue was between her legs. Then she seemed to unravel.

And now he was uncomfortable again, surrounded by trolls with the ability to smell his passion and he needed to leave the crowd before he was laughed out of it.

Gunnar wouldn’t let him, though. His brother wrapped an arm around his shoulders and dragged him toward a tavern in the farthest corner of this street. “Oh, come on. You’ve always been such a grump. You know better than to let a woman get the better of you, troll or human. It doesn’t matter.”

“You have no idea the ties that already bind us.” Ragnar rubbed a hand over his chest where there was an ache he could not explain. It was like a part of him wanted to go back home. Like there was a thread of his magic that was tied to her, and the longer he was away, the more it stretched and ached.

His brother chuckled. “You’ve been staying away from her like a snake waits in your bed. From the moment we first picked her up, you’ve been hiding this feeling. So I don’t think going to a tavern and having a drink with your brother is going to change that.”

It likely wouldn’t, and Ragnar did need a drink. Maybe he could drink himself under the table and not feel like he was getting ripped in two by his mind and his soul.

They walked up to the doorway that was taller than two trolls high. It was surrounded by the antlers of deer that had been hunted on the mountain for centuries. Wisps gathered between the tines, pooling a warmer light around the space that already filled the streets with the sound of laughter. He knew beyond that door he would be greeted with the scent of warm baked bread, countless steins of ale, and friendship that would soothe the ache in his soul. Even if he would become the joke of the century, considering he was in a bar while his new troll wife waited at home.

“A few drinks,” he muttered. “I don’t want to give anyone the idea that I regret?—”

The ground shook beneath their feet. He looked at his brother, shock on both of their features as a rumble spread throughout the mountain of Trollveggen. The mountain had never shaken before. Not like this. And then they heard it. The sound of rock and rubble falling from above.

“Run!” Gunnar shouted, shoving him out of the way as a large stone fell where they had just been standing.

More rocks tumbled out of the sky, splitting them off from each other for a moment that had his heart racing. They ran for the tavern as one, ducking into the doorway and watching as the mountain shook with rage.

Pressing his hands against the stone, Ragnar tried to understand what would bring the mountain to this reaction. But when he reached out with his magic, the magic that connected all trolls to the home they lived in, he could feel it wasn’t rage. It was fear. Fear that moved throughout the entire stone of his home as the mountain did what she could to protect them from something terrible.

Another rumble shook beneath their feet. Screams echoed throughout the streets, along with shrieks of pain that filled the air. Lights fell from behind him, crashing onto tables that sent trolls to their feet as they shouted. More shaking, more stones, until the very ceiling above their heads creaked.

He looked up, brow furrowed, as he noticed a crack spread across the stone above them. Gunnar did the same, and all the trolls in the room held their breath as it seemed like their lives might be over.

But then there was sudden silence. Dust billowed around them, a quiet reprieve from the moments of madness. Then all the sound returned as the mountain settled back into comfort.

All he could hear was the sound of his people dying. Countless of them. Their pain was something he could feel deep in his chest as his magic woke and flooded through his veins. He had to go to them. He had to get out of this tavern and help where they needed him. It wasn’t a choice. His body becoming a vessel for the power inside of him when he was surrounded by the wounded and the dying, and his brother knew that.

Helplessly, Ragnar looked for Gunnar as they both staggered toward the door. He stepped over rubble that had fallen in front of him, knowing that he was going to see more of it as he walked out into the streets.

“Let me help you,” Gunnar said, rushing ahead of him to get out into the streets first. This wasn’t the first time they’d done this. Gunnar’s magic was in control. He was better on a battlefield where minds were weaker and able to be manipulated. But he’d seen Ragnar in this state many times after a battle, and he was the one to seek out those who needed help first.

Ragnar’s magic liked to find anyone who was hurt. It didn’t matter if that was a small cut on their finger or their guts hanging out of their belly. He wasn’t good at picking who to start with, only who would ease the sudden swelling of magic that pressed against his lips and tongue.

“This way,” Gunnar said, grabbing onto his forearm and yanking him away from a small group of trolls with bloodied hands from digging people out of the rubble.

Ragnar blindly followed his brother, his vision becoming obscured by the white magic that boiled inside of him now. It hurt. It ached. His fingernails felt like they were ripping from his body, but that was the pain of his magic. It was always a little painful.

A whispered voice in his mind kept repeating the same word over and over again. He could barely hear it over the rushing sound of magic in his ears.

But he thought the word might be Maia.

His wife. He needed to go to her, make sure she was all right. But the screams of the dying and injured were right in front of him and he knew logically that their house was safe. She was far from here. Much farther than the quake would have reached.

If she stayed where she was, then she was safe. She had no reason to leave their house.

He took one step away from the street that would lead him to her. Then another. Even as his soul screamed to just look. All he wanted was to just check on her and make sure that he was right, and she was okay.

But so many other people needed him too. And she was fine. He would know if she was hurt, so he kept going.

Soon enough, they stopped and Gunnar pushed him down onto his knees. Clawed hands grabbed his, drawing his fingers to a wound that was warm and wet and vibrated with pain that he could feel .

The magic in him pushed out, shoving through his skin and into the body of the troll who had been injured. Though he couldn’t quite see her, he could feel that she’d been caught underneath a rock. It was her leg that he had in his hands. He could feel the broken bone and how it had cracked in so many places that, without magic, it never would have healed. The blood that coated his hand was from the skin that had torn beneath the weight of the rock.

But his magic knew what to do. It knit through flesh and bone, mending and weaving the form before him like clay. Though it would never be the same as a leg unaffected by such trauma, he knew it would be walkable for her. She would still be able to stride through the city without limping.

“Good enough,” Gunnar grunted, his hands on Ragnar’s shoulders once again. “More.”

The word echoed in his mind. More, more, more.

A child who had been pinned to the stone, his face scraped raw against the wall. A man who had pushed his family out of the way and the stone had landed on his torso where his guts had emptied into the cavity of his chest. An elderly woman crushed in her bed. But he hadn’t been able to save her. So many trolls, so little time.

They wandered through the city, depleting his magic until his hands were shaking. There were so many trolls injured, so few people like him who were gifted in flesh weaving. He stood after hours, his knees weak and his vision back to normal. Even his magic seemed to whimper inside of him when he came across another injured child.

“Get my supplies,” he said, his voice little more than a croak as he directed his brother. “The salves and herb packs—they will help. I can use them.”

He’d been on battlefields like this before. His magic simply could not do more, but he could convince the body to speed things along. With the right herbs, the right poultices, he could place them on the wounds and then speed up what it would have done already. It wasn’t the best option. Stitching together skin and then begging it to heal left scars that his regular magic would not leave.

Still, he had to try. There were more people who needed him.

Gunnar nodded, stretching out his back before turning down the street that would lead to their home. “Get some rest until I come back, brother. I won’t know where else to find you.”

Rest? He couldn’t rest. Not when he could hear all of their pain and still feel it sparking throughout his body. But when he tried to walk, he ended up slumped against a wall and sliding right down it. Maybe Gunnar was right. He needed to rest his body for a few moments before he could continue this mad dash to help his people.

Then they would find out what had happened. Because the mountain had been terrified and he had felt that in the very marrow of his bones.

He must have drifted off to sleep. But even resting, his mind ran through every single injury that he’d healed. All the people he might have soothed better if he hadn’t been so distracted by other screams that still echoed in his ears. He would think of this day for years to come. All the good he might have done and all the mistakes he certainly had made.

But then he blinked and his brother had returned, only he wasn’t alone.

A small human trailed along behind him, her eyes wide and her face streaked with dirt. Why was she always dirty? This human seemed to constantly get herself in situations where he had to plunk her into a river or a bath and pray that she wouldn’t be the small gremlin creature she always seemed to be.

But on the tail of that angry thought was relief. She was alive. She was okay. He’d been right about one of them.

Gunnar knelt in front of him. “You ready for more?”

The word continued to echo in his mind, and then his eyes met wide green ones over Gunnar’s shoulder. Ragnar had no idea what he must look like at this moment. Slumped against the wall, nearly drained of all his magic, crushed by the weight of all that he must still do. The horrified expression on her face was enough for him to know he must’ve looked worse than he thought he did.

But he still stood. All on his own. Even though his knees shook and his back ached and his vision skewed to the side. He still did it, and there was some pride in that.

“Where did you come from?” he grumbled, as a small arm wrapped around his waist.

“I was with Rota,” she replied as they started down the street. “She stopped by your home to drop off a gift from her mother. She said you helped her with her arthritis, and then the shakes happened. She barely saved me when a part of your ceiling came off and fell into the center of the parlor. Your home is... We’ll figure that out later.”

“That doesn’t explain where you came from.” Although it warmed his heart that Rota had been with her. The troll maidens were always helpful, even before they had their own families to join.

“She didn’t want me to be alone,” Maia murmured. “And then Gunnar came to the house hours later and when he said he was bringing you supplies, he thought I could help.”

“He thought you could help? You have no magic, fire hair.” He didn’t mean to spit the words at her, but he knew how they sounded.

Instead of flinching, her jaw seemed to set a little firmer. He watched a muscle bounce in her jaw as Gunnar gestured for them to come to yet another person propped against the side of a building. The troll woman was holding a hand against her leg where the muscle had been cut clean through by a stone. She was already weak. He could feel it. The pool of blood puddling around her was going to be the death of her before that wound.

Maia released him and cautiously knelt beside the woman with light blue skin who was so much larger than her. He stared down at the two of them, realizing that the troll woman laid out before them was everything he had once dreamt of. Perfect tusks, long black hair that was tangled around her face, that beautiful blue skin that he might have wanted to lick only weeks ago. But now? Now he was more stunned by the presence of those strangely small hands now smeared with blood as she pressed them against the woman’s wounds.

Maia looked up at him, her eyes wide. “I don’t know what to do, healer. But if I can help as your brother believes, then I will.”

She couldn’t help him. No one could. But Gunnar tossed his bag of herbs at him and nodded at the bag. “She’s a plant speaker, brother. Even if there isn’t a lot of magic in her, she can still convince that bag of goodies to do more than what you’ve got. It’ll last longer.”

The theory had merit. Sighing, he took out his needle and thread and got to work. The throbbing, angry vein that had been severed by the stone was difficult to knit back together, and he had to use more magic on that than he wanted to. Then he stitched together muscle and flesh until finally he reached into his bag and took out the smallest amount of yarrow to stop the bleeding further.

He held it up for Maia to see and then asked, “Can you convince this to do more than it normally would? I can use her body to absorb it, but I need more than what I have.”

She frowned, staring at the small bit of yarrow before holding out her hands. He dropped the leaves into her hand and then watched as she cupped it. Holding her closed hands to her mouth, she whispered to the plant.

He thought he could hear her asking for its help. Begging it to give them a chance to save more people, even though it was tired and had long been resting.

But when she opened her palms, the leaves in her hands were significantly larger. There was more than enough for this one troll, and perhaps even two more.

Relief spread through his chest. He set to work with the now generous amount of yarrow, placing the leaf against the woman’s leg. When Maia’s hand came down on his, he could feel her magic intertwining with his own. Now, it felt like he could speak to both the plant and the body. Use them both together to convince the healing properties of the plants to be stronger while convincing the body to use it faster.

When they were done, the leg was healed as though it had been weeks since the injury. And his magic hadn’t been used up to the point of him shaking yet again.

“Thank you,” the troll woman said, placing her hand over theirs. “Now go, healer. There are many more trolls for you to see.”

He stood with his troll wife and marveled at her strength. She lifted him to his feet with what seemed like little effort and then tugged him forward. “Come on. There’s a lot more of them.”

“You will continue to heal them with me?” he asked, stunned.

“Of course I will.”

He tugged her to a halt, needing this answer above all others. “Why?”

“Because they need help.” Her brows had furrowed, but then her features softened. She reached for his hand and brought his bloody fingers to her lips. Gently, she pressed a kiss to his worn knuckles. “I’m so sorry that all you have seen of my kind is anger and hate. Not all of us rejoice in the pain of your people, Ragnar, and I know nothing I say will take those memories away. But I am here. I will help for as long as I’m able.”

Together, they headed out into the city to heal who they could and to help those who needed help. And for a few moments, he allowed hope to bloom in his chest. Perhaps his troll wife wouldn’t be such a burden after all.