Page 103 of A Spark So Bright
Torbin shrugged. "Tiny incision, slide the foot underneath your skin. I assume Gunnar is looking for Ragnar? He'll help them heal over and then you won't have to go through the itching stage."
"Where do you put them?"
Gunnar appeared behind her, breathless with his chest heaving as both he and Ragnar entered the room. "Everywhere," he replied. But then he reached out a hand and traced it alongher collarbone, "But I thought here, for now. I want to cover you in stars, Rose."
She would have endured any pain to hear him say that again. She'd like to be covered in stars, she thought. Maybe that was exactly how she was meant to be.
So Rose sat down at the table in front of everyone. Torbin waved aside her fear of infection, nodding toward Ragnar while making a face at her. And then he drew out the smallest knife she'd ever seen, a scalpel with a blade that was so sharp she didn't even feel it cutting her skin.
He wasn't kidding when he said it was a small incision. And he was fast. Rose barely even had time to feel a bead of warm blood sliding down her skin before he'd already set the foot underneath her skin and then had Ragnar heal it closed.
Over and over again they did it, and every single one she played a memory in her mind as they put it there.
The first man who had touched her without permission.
The first man she'd killed.
The last man to ever touch her without permission.
But then she didn't want them all to be bad memories, so she thought of the first time she'd met Gunnar.
How he'd carried her through the forest so carefully when she had a broken leg, so sure of himself that he wouldn't hurt her anymore.
The first time she'd stepped into Trollveggen, breathing in the fresh air and knowing that she was free. Even if she’d been terrified about what that meant for her.
At least twelve memories were set into her skin, decorating her with starlight as Gunnar held her hand and watched intently. He was there for every single gemstone. Every single piece that marked her as strong, capable, powerful, all the things that she had known she was, but now, they were laid bare on her skin for all to see.
Reaching out, she cupped his jaw in her hand and turned him to look at her. "Maybe I'll get tattoos like you trolls have next. What do you think about that?"
He looked fierce as he met her gaze. "You've earned your fair share of those as well, my love. If you want tattoos, we'll get them for you."
She'd never felt more understood or more loved. Their gazes never wavered until Torbin leaned back, surveyed his work, and nodded. "That'll do. They're pretty."
Rose looked down at all of them, all twenty, ten on each side of her collarbone and breathed in a long, happy breath. She could feel the chains of her memories and her past falling away as she looked at them.
"They are pretty," she replied, and then grinned at Gunnar. "What do you think?"
"Stunning," he replied. But he wasn't looking at the piercings.
He was looking at her.
Forty
Rose
They headed back toward the barracks, to the private room where they had already rested together once. Rose was practically brimming with emotions and feelings and so much love that it made her head spin.
She was decorated as a troll wife now. She had moved on from maiden to wife, and someday when the time came, she would be a crone like all the other women she looked up to here. She had never felt more like she had a family, a place to be, and maybe, just maybe, a little more healed than she had been hours ago.
Gunnar opened the door for her, and she stepped into the room that felt like a portal into a new world. Someone had been kind enough to light candles, illuminating the space with a bright golden hue. Sure, it was still the same room. It was only her small bed and her dresser that didn't have enough clothes in it for the little girl in her who still wished to feel pretty. But it was hers. Theirs.
She spun around to look at him, leaning against the door. He'd pressed a foot against the wood, his arms crossed over his still bare chest. So handsome. So capable. So tolerant as he arched a brow at her.
"Not much of a bridal suite," he grumbled.
"Ragnar offered you the house, if I overheard him correctly."
Gunnar grunted. "I have no intention of sleeping in the same bed where Ragnar and his wife have slept. Besides, they've been all over that house and the images would completely and utterly turn my stomach. Can you imagine seeing the two of them..." He paused, clearly uncertain if he could continue.
