Page 64 of A Spark So Bright
"I heard you went to the brothels regularly before me."
She hadn't realized he could blush that fiercely. His ears turned a deep, dark green, just like the rest of his face. It spread down his neck and likely beneath the white shirt he wore.
"Ah," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "You heard about all that?"
She nodded solemnly. "I did."
"Shit."
Rose didn't want him to feel bad about it. So she just shrugged like he had. "I was a whore, Gunnar. It doesn't surprise me."
"I didn't use those women like you were used."
"No, and I imagine they were paid." She twisted her lips in what she hoped kind of looked like a smile. "It's all right. I just wanted you to know that I understood you aren't used to wooing a woman."
"Fuck, that sounds awful."
"Not really." She glanced over at the pile of gold on the forge. "What's all this?"
Gunnar let out a very long breath that suggested he was thankful for the break in what was likely a very awkward moment for him. "Right, I thought... Well, you don't wear any jewelry."
Rose ghosted her fingers over her pierced ears. She did, in fact, wear jewelry. Just her ears, which the trolls thought was odd because she wasn't married.
"No," he muttered as he gathered up the gold. "I mean jewelry that you were given. Jewelry that means something."
She watched as he manipulated the gold in his hands. The wire was so easy for him to wind and braid until he had something that was rather pretty to look at. Braided gold, with a pattern of five strands instead of three. And then he reached for her hand.
She let him take it, fascinated as he started to fit the gold to her wrist. "When I was young, I learned how to do this with all the other young trolls. Making jewelry is a large part of who we are. And when I was just starting, I broke the favorite bowl of our teacher. I thought I was going to get a beating for it. Our father was ruthless in his lessons."
He wove it a little more around her wrist, fitting the strands before continuing the intricate pattern.
"The teacher said something to me that stuck. Broken things can be fixed with gold," he said. "Pieces can be forged anew. They aren't ruined. They're formed into something even stronger."
With one final touch, he wove the ends together. It wrapped around her wrist multiple times, weaving up her arm just as the strands were woven together. Simplistic, yes, but beautiful all the same.
And when she looked up to thank him, Gunnar was looking at her with an expression she had never seen before. Soft. Kind. Perhaps even... longing.
"You are forging yourself into something new," he murmured. "I'm glad to be here to see it."
“Oh,” she whispered. “That’s lovely, Gunnar.”
“Would you like to make a few more?”
She nodded fiercely because she did. She really, really did.
Twenty-Five
Gunnar
The king might’ve wanted him to compete in the bridal games, but he sure did not care in the slightest that Gunnar was busy. One of the newer families that had come seeking asylum in Trollveggen was missing their oldest son. He'd been taken by the humans on the way in. A raid that had still been happening while the human king was still alive.
Bjorn had seen one of them. He'd killed every single soldier who had thought they could take trolls in cages back to the capital of the human kingdom. And yet there were more. So many more.
They had been hearing from many of the trolls who had arrived here that others were lost. They'd tried to track them down before, but it had never worked.
Maybe because the king had never sent Gunnar.
Usually he was sent after those who they knew were dead. He snuck in the middle of the night, heading out into the human kingdom so he could find what was lost. Body parts. Pieces. Butthis time he had been sent with the hope that he would find the young man still alive.
