Page 84 of A Spark So Bright
"Her?"
"The woman you're speaking about. You seem to have big feelings for her."
Magnus stared at her a little more. Maybe he was weighing her words to tell if she was being honest. Or if she was trustworthy. Whatever story he had, clearly he didn't want her to know it if she was going to use that story against him.
"No one would believe me if I told them anyway," she whispered. "I'm just mad Rose. No one believes me about anything. I stand on the edges of cliffs and wander outside of my body. They all think I'm insane."
"Right," he muttered. "I suppose if I was going to tell anyone, it should be you."
She turned her attention to the waterfall. The lavender light glowed along his body, turning him almost a purple color. Like Ragnar. Like a few of the other trolls she had seen before. He reflected the light around him, although it sometimes got lost in his white hair.
"When I was a child, I didn't always live with the performers," he started. "There are kingdoms outside of yours. Far beyond the outer reaches of this world. I was sent there, where there are more people with an elven lineage and places to learn. Giant libraries, cities filled with knowledge. My father believes knowledge is power."
His mother sat down beside him, her dress pooling like starlight around her dark figure. She reached for her son, placing a hand on his shoulder that he could not feel.
"It was in one of those outer cities where I first met her. My father had sent me off to learn magic at an academy there, and apparently so had her family. She wasn't like the other girls. Not in a way that would have suggested she behaved better, but because she was kept separate from the rest of us. They put her in a cage for everyone to look at, to stare at, because she was from another realm and because she was rare in her bloodline. There were many types of elves, and she was one with rare magic.
"At least, they let people look at her until they realized they couldn't keep her safe. But before that, I spoke with her. Often. Few people wanted to treat her like a real person, and they oftenused the experience in the same way they did the traveling shows filled with freaks.
"She was just a little girl." Magnus shifted forward, looking down at his palms as though there might be some reasoning for her treatment there. "Just a little girl with more power in her pinky than most of them could ever dream of. And none of them knew I was the son of the troll king, or what my bloodline was. If they had found out, I would have been treated the same as her. I was so young, and I didn’t know how to help her."
Rose's heart broke for that little girl who had likely just wanted to be loved. Like Rose. Like so many other women who had come before them.
"And?" Rose asked. "What happened to her?"
"I don't know. They sold her to one of the traveling bands passing through. Someone who was affiliated with another country, one that could keep her safe, and who had enough money to buy her." His hands turned into fists. "That’s where I was before this. Looking for her. Have been my whole life. Then father forced me back, removed me from the performers who’d kept me hidden and safe, while we traveled all over this continent searching for her."
"And you never heard where she might be?"
He shook his head. "Not once, actually. She's disappeared."
"People don't disappear." Rose smiled at him, the expression rusty and soft on her face. "Trust me. As someone who was thought to have disappeared herself, you'll find her."
"If she's alive."
Another voice broke through their conversation as Gunnar strode out of the forest toward them. "If she's dead, you could always ask me to find her. After all this time, tormenting me, being a complete and utter ass, you could have just asked for my help."
"You don't even speak to me as though I am your prince," Magnus replied dryly.
"And you're lucky I don’t. Otherwise you wouldn't have any friends." Gunnar shoved his shoulder, nearly sending the prince plummeting into the water. "Did you upset her?"
"He didn't," Rose called out. "I've been over here the entire time."
"Good." Gunnar glowered at both of them. "Now what is this about finding a woman with elvish blood? Wouldn't you be able to use the dead to find her?"
Rose shrugged and then looked at the spirit of the queen.
She had stood with a grin on her face. Rose knew that expression. It was the face of a woman who had been told she was useful again, and that excitement was contagious.
"Maybe," Rose replied. "I think maybe we can."
Thirty-Three
Gunnar
Gunnar wasn't sure what to do about Magnus's problem. He'd only been trained to find those who had already passed on, and even then, it took months, sometimes years for him to find them all. Humans loved to chop trolls up into tiny pieces, and he could only imagine what they were doing to a woman who passed as a full blooded elf.
But none of them could stay here for long, and certainly not talking about an issue like this. Anyone could overhear them. Anyone could discover what they were doing.
