Page 33 of A Spark So Bright
She was already leaving him, though. Apparently all she'd wanted was for someone to acknowledge that there was a wrongness in the air.
Gunnar tried to think if he'd felt it on the last hunting party. Of course there was a frantic nature to the way the humans were fighting right now. There was a hole where there had once been a king. No one knew who to listen to, or who was giving orders that they actually had to follow. The soldiers were fighting blindly. Some of them returned home because they had no interest in fighting creatures who could kill them with one hand if they weren't getting some form of payment from their king.
And yet... His gut said that she was right. There was something wrong, and he had missed it.
Maybe he had. Maybe he hadn't.
King Egil wanted them all to focus on what was happening right now. He wanted all of Trollveggen to be here, watching a bridal game that hadn't happened for years on end. One certainly hadn't happened in Gunnar's lifetime.
This was a time for happiness. A time to celebrate what had been done, the victory they had claimed over the humans, and for the trolls to heal. They would find new love. Life would grow once more beneath the mountain until they could all feel the hard edges of war disappearing from their shoulders.
Perhaps that was King Egil's plan. To convince the trolls that there was something to be done beyond fighting and war.
Sighing, he turned his attention to all the trolls who were gazing up at the stands with hope in their eyes. A few of the men were flexing for troll maidens and eating up the attention. The maidens were catcalling the men, whistling through their teeth and shouting encouragements as a few of the younger trolls flexed their arms and bared their tusks.
If it had been a few years ago, Gunnar would have been among them. He would have shown off just as hard, trying to catch the eye of a pretty woman who might take him to her bed. That was how he'd always been.
But war had hardened him, he supposed. Or maybe it was simply that he wasn't all that interested in a cold bed in the morning, even though he knew someone had slept in it with him.
He wanted... Well, he wasn't sure what he wanted. But he knew it wasn't the same life that he had been living two years ago. That much he was certain of.
"Gunnar!" a voice called out, yet another of the warriors who fought with him in his war band. "Show us that flip you did before, when you were fighting the big human! The one we last fought."
"It wasn't a flip," he growled. "It was me moving out of the way of a sword."
"Without a single limb on the ground."
Well, he had done that. And he remembered there had been quite a few shocked gasps from those who had been watching him, but that was mostly just instinct. He wasn't like some of those other trolls who were already participating in shocking displays of acrobatics.
Gunnar was a fighter. He was the only person here who had been fighting his entire life, and he'd spent most of those years seeking out dead bodies to bring them home.
What he was doing in the midst of all this, he had no idea. Pretty trolls were meant to compete, but his king had been adamant that he would be part of this.
Why? Gunnar still didn't understand.
Angrily, he shook his head at the young troll who was still pushing for him to do something "impressive". Surely the legendary Bone Keeper could prove them all to be little children compared to his prowess. Give them a show! That was what everyone in the stands was waiting for. That was why they were here.
"Unless you're waiting for a certain blonde human woman?" the young man asked.
Time stood still.
How dare he?
He didn't have any right to bring up Rose. Not when she could very well be in the stands, not that Gunnar would ever think she would come to a showcase like this. She was too fragile for any of them to tease her like that. She would disappear from him again, meandering into that other world she had built in her head, and it would take him days to pull her out.
Rose could not be perceived by others, or she would leave. Gunnar hated it when she left like that. She was in a place he couldn't reach, her soul gone, and he still hadn't figured out how to keep it in her body where it belonged.
Anger ran through him and he rushed for the younger man. Gunnar's tusks weren't long like the others’, so when they did lock tusks, he could press his forehead against the younger troll's. Intimidation had always been on Gunnar's side, though.
"Don't," he warned. "Don't say a word about her. You don't get to speak in her presence."
"I thought you were here for a bride?" Again, the bravado of this young man was as impressive as it was foolish. "Or do you already have one? You're wasting all of our time if you aren't going to take someone here."
"Why? Do you want her?" Gunnar ripped himself away from the troll and shoved him so hard on the chest that the young man staggered back multiple steps. "You think she'd have you?"
He wanted to shout that Rose wouldn't give a youngling like this one the time of day. When she was in her own mind, she knew quality people. She always knew which troll to seek out when she was lost, and who would bring her back to Gunnar. She had never once given her attention to anyone other than him.
And yes, maybe that had given Gunnar some kind of complex. He liked that she trusted him and only him. He liked that she got nervous when he wasn't near her.
