Joso is worried for you.
Butterflies take flight in my belly.He’s been kind to me since I arrived, but I am still sorting out my feelings. He is the first man I’ve flirted with in a long time.
As for Lothar, the Lord of the Hunters standing on the left, he's harder to read. His broad shoulders make him imposing and he often wears a frown, but his tone remains caring. It is challenging yet for me to gauge the exact ages of these folk, but his paternal way speaksto me, so I choose to see him as a gentle, middle-aged man. Maybe even nurturing a family I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting yet.
The thought soothes me.
Before I came to live under the mountain, the beings inhabiting the underground city had been a chill-inducing horror story whispered around fires in the slave pens. The fires were lit to keep the huddled masses from freezing, and the stories were told to keep us in line.
Both worked well enough. In fact, I’d feared being brought to Enduvida. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the bloodthirsty monsters who’d ended The Great War by unleashing a volcano upon their enemies—and the land itself. The king who’d made the order, Teo’s father, possessed an indiscriminate rage. Millions died, including his own people. Only three hundred trolls survived.
The west has known nothing but sorrow since, but humans have suffered the worst. Even before the war, we had no gods, short lives, and little magic to defend ourselves. Once, giants enslaved us to build their towering cities. Now, only our spoken language remains—our last fragile tether to what we once were.
While I wouldn’t call the trolls harmless, they were not nightmares. They were not anything like the giants. I was more than glad to make my home alongside them.
“I will not leave your side, not even for a second,” Joso declares as we round another corner.
“Thank you,” I respond with a grin of my own. “Both of you, really. It is kind of you two to accompany me this evening.”
Lord Lothar grunts. “Remember, they want to be sold on the idea that some of you might be willing to help their kind bring forth a new generation.” He pauses, his broad shoulders pulling back as he frowns. “That doesn’t mean you should feel pressured. Remember?—”
I wave my hand, cutting him off. “You will be there to help me divert unwanted advances. I am not worried.”
I definitely fucking was, but he didn’t need to know that. I could withstand feeling uneasy.
Lord Lothar inclines his head, pleased.
As we turn the corner down the gilded hallways and move into the dimly lit area where guests of the crown stay, my throat tightens.
Reaching up to touch my hair, I ensure that the massive pile of wavy auburn locks twisted atop my head hasn’t come loose just as Joso looks back at me. My stomach flips when he gives me another lopsided smile. I wonder what he sees.
I am paler than most humans—especially after weeks underground—though my skin still retains the natural olive hue of my ancestors. Among humans, deep, unblemished skin is prized, rich and dark like polished mahogany, smooth as woven silk. I am neither.
My skin is a shade too light, an unfortunate quirk of fate that made my freckles stand out even more. They dust my nose and cheeks like spilled dye, stubborn marks that never fade, no matter how much I stay in the shade.
I'm average-height for my people, neither as slender as a silver thread nor as curvaceous as a winding riverbank. In most senses, I would consider myself just… somewhere in the middle.
But here, among the enduares, it doesn’t seem to matter. Not because they find me beautiful, but because I am as foreign to them as they are to me. Their deep blue bodies, their elongated canines and sweeping tails, make human concerns about complexion and symmetry laughable. To them, I imagine I am just a strange, pale thing—not flawed, not perfect. Simplyother.
But then, Joso cuts back into my thoughts.
"You look beautiful. Everything is going to be fine," Joso says softly, as if he could sense the unease I’d denied just moments before.
My heart stutters again, and I preen with the compliment.Beautiful. I wasn’t usually beautiful for men.
"You are kind," I say, grateful.
A year ago, I would’ve turned down any advances from a potential partner, one of the reasons I liked the enduares was because they did not see the salvation my people offered as something to be taken advantage of, like our labor had been for so long.
These people cultivate relationships with their romantic partners in a way I’d never witnessed. They aren’t regular marriages, like theone I almost had with my first love, Daniel, back in the giant capital of Zlosa; they are a joining of souls.
That is something I craved with unwavering devotion. I cannot survive being made to feel small again, and I do not share myself easily.
From my understanding, their version of matehood is meant to behealing,both physically and emotionally.
Thanks to the goddess-blessed gem they have put in my chest—the Fuegorra—life is not only made possible under the mountain where the sun’s rays don’t reach, but it is extended for my kind.
Instead of fifty or sixty withering winters, it was presumed we would live several hundreds of years along with the enduares.