Troll-y Yours (20 page)

Open transition during the midst of battle.

Twenty-five

T
he forceful pound of galloping hooves captured Ella’s attention. Sounds of hooves striking rock, drew her thoughts away from the open door and down the hall in the direction she’d come.

Al’s back hooves plowed deep furrows in the soft blue grass median as he slid to a stop, his hindquarters strained tight with effort. Instead of turning left for his room, he turned right and sped the opposite direction—toward the clashing mythics at the end of the hall.

Bottle-necked at the stairwell used by palace servants who worked between the second and third floors, the bad guys going up fought the soldiers on the upper landing.

Shocked to see Al gallop not to her but run straight for the fray, Ella stood mute with his name poised on her lips. Sounds of the raging battle dimmed in her ears. Shouts were muffled as if through cotton-stuffed hearing. Striking swords rang dull.

Abruptly, his hind end wobbled, back hocks dipping as though they would give out at any moment.
Was he injured?
Still he pressed on, crossbow lifted, voiced raised in battle cry.

Without warning, the door to Al’s stallroom opened and a large-bodied Troll barreled out. No time to stop his headlong rush, Eli crashed into her and knocked her back.

“What the hell?” Her brother’s startled gaze matched the surprise she felt at seeing him leave Al’s quarters.

Ella narrowed her eyes at the papers clenched in his fist. “What were you doing in there?”

“What are you doing out here?” he countered.

Drawings, schematics or architectural by the looks of them, disappeared as Eli stuffed the papers inside his shirt.

A heavy weight settled low in her stomach and nearly dragged her to the ground.

“Eli, what were you doing in Al’s room?” She studied her brother’s face closely, watched the way his eyes flicked away and gazed at the fighting down the hall.

With an indrawn breath his eyes widened, and Ella automatically turned to look.

Neither responded to the other as they witnessed Al use the crossbow to shoot down an advancing Troll, then reload to takeout the Satyr, who rose to take the fallen comrade’s place.

Eli reached out and took hold of her wrist, jerking her attention back to him. His thick finger stabbed to the gory scene down the hall. “That’s how your Centaur lover really feels about our people.”

Anger flared within, adding steam to her words. “That’s not true. He was defen—”

Without waiting for her to finish, Eli tightened his grip and dragged her back the way she’d come.

Hauled in his wake as if she were a willful child, her gaze shot back to Al and his equine body. She watched as he leaped the width of the corridor, saw his heavy body land and strike the rock wall, crumpling his legs beneath him.

“Oh, my gods! Al’s hurt.” Panicked, Ella yanked her arm back sharply and twisted to break Eli’s iron grip. Fear, cold and black, eradicated commonsense. She dug her toes into the dirt floor and propelled herself forward, faster than she’d ever run before.

Nearby, a dark-horned Satyr dueled with a two-legged Centaur soldier. Their swords locked and then broke free. Nimble on small cloven hooves, the lighter, more agile male feinted and parried in a macabre invitation. The dance he performed circled around other fighters and headed straight for Al.

“Al!” Why in
Tartarus
did he drag himself across the grass by his hands? She shouted to warn him. “Get up, get up.”

His beautiful black tail lifted and smacked the ground. It lifted again, then twirled—and slowly shrank as it receded into his back.

Ella pistoned her legs and moved her feet fast. All the while, she avoided a Minotaur with a swinging axe and kept her eye on the advancing Satyr—whose destination clearly marked Al with a big red X.

“Ella, no! Come back.”

She barely heard Eli’s distant shout. Let him escape with his stolen papers. She’d deal with him later.

Al comes first.

While she raced forward, she measured the distance between the sword-wielding Satyr and her helpless transitioning Centaur. The space between closed rapidly.

As if someone let out the air, Al’s hind legs compressed and then shriveled back into what was left of his equine body. Empty of arrows, his crossbow lay discarded to the side.

Despite it all, he continued to drag himself across the corridor. Not away from the fracas and blood, but toward it! One arm held him up; the other gripped his gleaming sword.

Doing his best to protect his commanding officer, a soldier sidestepped to slash and cut the air, attempting to draw the Satyr’s attention away from Al and to push the rebel another direction.

Ella’s heart thumped madly in her throat and time slunk at a snail’s pace. Through it all, Ella’s mind focused on one thing: Al, and what a lonely world it would be without him. Louder than the fight that surrounded them, her labored breath filled her ears.

Two Minotaurs launched an attack from both sides of the true form soldier who fought for the palace and Kempor Aleksander. He managed to kick away one hairy bull with a powerful hind hoof planted in the male’s soft belly.

The horned mythic doubled in half, arms wrapped his gut and he expelled a great whoosh of air.

Steps away from Al’s prone body, the Satyr swung his sharp blade. Glow stones above winked on the shiny steel, adding an evil glint. The reflecting light flashed on Aleksander’s gold neck chain as the sword in the rebel’s hand lurched upward.

Ella saw her opportunity and didn’t hesitate to seize it. She sprinted the last few steps, took a springing leap, and threw herself between the Satyr’s downward sailing weapon and Al’s vulnerable neck.

*~*~*

“Nooo!” Ella’s scream came out of nowhere, ricocheting off the chiseled rock walls. Stark determination, set in eyes of pure green, ran full speed toward him. Outstretched body streamlined in midair, wild red hair poured out behind her.

Aleksander experienced a degree of terror as he’d never felt before.

With his lower-half dead until the transition completed, age-old fear reached up and grabbed him by the balls. Fixated by the events in motion, he could only look on, horrified, as she threw her soft body between him and the rebel’s lusty sword.

If the weapon didn’t kill him, a heart attack would.

Distracted by her shriek and flying body, the Satyr’s shocked reaction slowed the inertia of his sword arm’s descent.

Just as Ella landed, Aleksander caught her against his chest.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and spun her body violently before the rest of her weight descended.

Both hands at her waist, air expelled from his lungs in a rush. His human legs were forming and he was able to toss one over her thigh to protect as much of her as he could from the slash to come.

Ella used his thrown leg as part of the impetus to rotate them, her Troll strength surprising his Centaur nature.

The Satyr’s arm continued to drop.

The sword fell with it.

Monstrous fear snapped through him and exploded to larger proportions. He gripped her tighter and fought to turn them, to place him directly in the path of steel death. Anguish spread in numbing degrees as he waited for her last breath to fall.

No! Not Ella!

Her sweet, terrified face wore a familiar mask of stubbornness.

At the thought of losing her, something panged deep inside. He didn’t understand half of why she would risk her life for him, but Alek knew Ella had to be in more danger than himself if she were above him, baring her back to the blade.

As if the gods heard his tortured plea, the ground split beneath them.

Opened up—

—and swallowed them whole.

Twenty-Six

E
li held his breath as he watched his sister corkscrew her body the moment she grabbed the fallen playboy. Shell-shocked at her extreme show of courage, he almost forgot where he stood.

Sonofabitch.
If that fucking Satyr with the sword hurt Ella, he’d—He’d what?

Kill him?

The thought of taking another mythic’s life hadn’t occurred to him when he started down this undercover road. He gulped. And despite the fact his skin sheened with perspiration, he shivered.

Pennelope had made it all sound so simple: Find Kempor Aleksander’s room. Find a diagram of the palace. Get the hell out.

Easy as a Minotaur whore.

He’d failed on the first attempt, but not the second.

Ella and the Centaur dissolved instantly, plunging to safety beneath the tunnel’s crust.

Eli blew a relieved breath.
Impressive move.
And damn lucky her Centaur boyfriend happened to lie over the only patch of dirt in the hall.

Her appearance outside the door had surprised him; he thought for sure she’d be inside the Kempor’s quarters—or in his bed. When he didn’t find her in either place, he figured she’d be with that Wood Nymph, Serenity, or any other number of friends. Divine providence had been on his side with an empty stallroom and papers easily located in the male’s tiny home office.

The Satyr’s glance darted around, head turning as he searched for the two bodies lying in front of him a moment ago. Confused, he kicked at the flat, unchurned ground with a black cloven hoof. He had little time to digest their disappearance as more Centaurs advanced, armed to the teeth, coming to the aid of the stairwell guards.

Eli shrank back into the shadow of the stallroom’s open door. There appeared to be only one way out of this corridor, and that was the way he’d come… the closest exit he knew of. Checking both directions, he pulled the door closed behind him, patted the papers inside his shirt, and left the area undetected.

When he finally revealed the documents to Pennelope, the promotion would be his. On his own, he’d finally make something of himself. Not something of his parents’ creation.

Mindful of the meandering tunnels that snaked all directions, Eli paid close attention to familiar landmarks. The last thing he wanted was to be lost in the twists of the old Troll cavern.

He chuckled to himself. “But wait! I have a map of every passageway, stallroom, royal auditorium—everything.”
Even the layout of Queen Savella’s private suite.

Satisfaction and a positive outlook firmly in place, Eli picked up the pace. Pennelope wouldn’t only be confident of his abilities from here on out, but she’ll lobby him to the top of the Protectorates with all her connections.

Damn, it’s good to be me today.

Mares with two and four-legged foals caused chaos with their screams on the ground floor. They ran every direction, crashed into each other, sobbing in a free-for-all pandemonium. He couldn’t have asked for a more perfect distraction.

The second floor pillar supports made good cover from passing Centaur guards. Like game pieces on a checkers board, Eli hopped from one concealment to the next. Other than pretending an injury, and diving behind a bubbling fountain, he found his way out of the palace with relative ease, blending with the throng of civilians who were escaping the rebel madness.

Frosty night air bathed his perspiration covered face, sharpening his senses like a slap to the cheek. The night hovered dark as pitch and quiet as the dead. Eli slipped into the tree line unnoticed. He followed the thin trail up the hillside by rote, adjusting his Troll vision to make use of minute slivers of light.

There were no crickets chirping, no night birds singing.

Just his hard breath, breaking the silence in a steady pulse as he approached the ancient oak tree and ducked under the canopy of dirt-dragging branches to sit on the bench of a long dead log. Through the tangle of sparsely-leafed branches, he watched mythics in panic mode down below. It reminded him of ants getting pissed on.

“You made it.” Pennelope’s face turned toward him and lit up the center oval with an inhaled drag of her cigarette.

He forced himself to relax, to convey a sense of cool-under-fire he was yet to feel. “I don’t know what the big deal’s about. Espionage isn’t that hard.”

In front of them, the screen of branches flinched. “Oh, calm down,” she spoke to the gnarled trunk behind them. “It’s the kid’s first season. Damned trees have eyes and ears. No privacy for anyone these days.”

Chuckling, she held out a hand and snapped her jeweled fingers.

Eli reached for the papers inside his shirt but thought twice and left one sheet behind, pulling out two and handing them over. Without looking, she rolled them into a tube and stuck them in the inside pocket of her coat.

“Now what?”
Would the leaders of the Protectorates want to meet him?

“Patience, my boy.” She reached over and lightly stroked his thigh. “Let’s see what the council says about your latest contribution. Then, we’ll know what our next step will be.” Not one to stick around, Pennelope stood and calmly pulled her dark coat together, then took another drag off her smoke. She glanced down the hill at the scrambling people, who dodged flurries of scattered fights.

Even in the darkness, Eli noted the hard glitter behind her stare.

For some reason, she seemed different from her normal, unruffled complacency tonight. Edgy…Nervous.

For the hundredth time, he wished for the ability to read auras for some insight to his premonition.

*~*~*

Disoriented, Aleksander lay in the near-dark. An object covered his upper body, impeding the ability to draw a full breath. He blinked his eyes and moved slowly, starting with his feet. Each toe moved pain-free, so he tried lifting his left knee.

“Ohhh…” Ella moaned against his throat. Her breasts were pressed against him, as well as her trembling belly and thighs.

His physical response to her body’s heat and terror didn’t so much astound him as to nearly annihilate him. He kissed Ella’s hot cheek, because he had no choice but to kiss her. No choice at all.

“Where are we, Sweet-thing?”

“Ground.” Her voice sounded strained… shaky. Coming in short, sharp gasps.

“In the palace?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You dissolved us underground?”

“Yeah.”

Their voices were amplified, as if they were stuffed in a box. In the dimness lit only by random specs of thermo-luminescent stones, her face reflected the palest porcelain.

Alek shifted his arm to pull it out from between their bodies, and his elbow scraped the dirt wall. Pushing his hands down the sides of his hips, he splayed his fingers and shoved them away from his sides. The distance from his body to the wall was less than the width of his hand.

A fucking coffin.

Living underground in a series of connecting caves equipped Aleksander for tight living space. Maybe not crammed into the earthen can they were in now, but it prepared him for the rise of claustrophobia that threatened to erupt.

Ella’s chest rose and fell too fast. She took a shuddered breath and exhaled. “You hurt? Am I too heavy?”

“No,” he answered both questions with a single word.

Her hot body quivered against his and her heart pounded like a drum.

Bacchus!
It pounded so hard and fast, he knew she’d been only seconds away from some real bad timing. Adrenaline, he assured himself.

His fingers drifted up the rough, uneven walls of the dirt hole they laid in. When his elbows extended almost straight above, he hit the ceiling. Particles of dirt rained down and he rapidly blinked his eyes. Beneath him, the ground lay cold and hard.

There were worse things than the nightmarish thought of being buried alive with a Troll. At least with her abilities, it would offer them an escape.

Lowering his arms, he crossed them to rest over Ella’s back, meaning only to soothe—
needing
to soothe her in a way that was completely foreign to him.

“Ahh, no!” She jerked, arching away from the pressure. “Don’t touch me.”

Alek lifted his arms in an instant.

“Where?” His heart, which had begun to slow, sped up, accelerating with every whimper Ella made.

“My back,” she whispered as she pressed her face into the crook of his neck, panting.

Hot tears dripped onto his Adam’s apple, then tracked slowly toward the dirt in a warm, moist trail. Her breath trembled softly in his ear.

“What were you thinking, jumping into the middle of a sword fight?” he admonished. Careful, and as tender as he could manage in the cramped space, Alek felt along Ella’s back, starting at her shoulders. Grateful for the dark, he didn’t wipe the rage off his face for that dirty, rotten Satyr.

“Wasn’t thinking.”

Aleksander gently skimmed his fingers on either side of her spine. Situated above her shoulder blade, he encountered a wet portion of torn shirt.
Shit.
She’d done nothing to deserve any of this and at the moment, he couldn’t do anything but help her through it.

Ella was soft and sweet, everything his life wasn’t.

He’d felt he was missing something, he now knew what that
something
was.

“Listen,
Kalos,
we need a way out of here to get you patched up.” With a grimace, Alek recalled how much a sword wound hurt. The memory of his decades-old strike on the thigh was as fresh today as it’d been back then.

Sweat dampened her lower back, and she shuddered as pain sang through her body.

“Just have to stop the bleeding and wrap you up. You’ll be fine.”

Ella tried to move, shaking when her body lifted from his. When she would have rolled to begin their dissolve, her breath hitched. She cried out and collapsed back on top of him.

“Al…” Her voice quavered between her clenched teeth. “This is bad.”

“No, Sweet-thing. Bad, would be if you’d been hit a few inches higher.” He tried to smile, but it wouldn’t form. His fingers searched to unclasp the front of his armor. He pulled it open. In doing so, he took the full force of her body heat.

In one of the inside pockets of his vest, he carried the remaining yarrow that he’d picked two days earlier. It twisted his gut worse than colic in a Centaur to know he would use it on Ella. He stared at the curve of her cheek a moment.

The female in his arms was so strong, so utterly amazing.

He realized it’d been selfish of him. Bringing her in on the assignment to flush out rebels had to be the single most egotistic thing he’d ever done. He should’ve left her back at her home rock, safe—

Ella shivered and then burrowed into him. The adrenaline was wearing off and shock settling in. Her fast breathing burned into his damp neck. “Stop it,” she said.

“Stop what?”

Her face lifted an inch off his shoulder. “You couldn’t have left me there. Too dangerous.”

He felt his mouth go slack. “You’re reading my mind now?”

“Not your mind, Captain Chimpy-nuts. Aura—it glows sky blue, dark green.”

Alek wasn’t sure what to make of that, how interpreting colors could come so close to what he’d been thinking. Didn’t matter, in a moment she’d only feel agony when he applied the medicinal plant. Then, he’d have time to remind himself what an asshole he was for bringing her to the palace in the first place.

“I’m going to lay some yarrow on your back, Ella. Do you know about yarrow?” At her nod, he brought his arms over her back, scraping his knuckles on the lid of their dirt box above. “It’ll burn, but will slow the bleeding until I get you out of here. Ready?”

She nodded and braced a hand to his chest. “Are you?”

With his heart in his throat, Alek couldn’t answer aloud.
When it comes to hurting you, never.
In a quick move, he found the deepest section of her laceration and pressed the homeopathic medicine into the wound.

“Oh, gods!” Her body shook, feet kicking.

Aleksander sucked air in through his teeth and silently called himself every foul name he could think of. To know it was
his
fault she was in the palace when the rebels launched an invasion.
His
fault she’d reacted so bravely to save him.
His
fault when her legs stiffened in pain, her body convulsing, her tears flowing free on his neck.

Ella was brave, strong, and intelligent.

Not exactly the wallflower he’d first thought.

Aleksander felt her tense body uncoil, the harsh breath in his ear subside. “Does your back feel better?”

The pounding of her heart moderated, matched her breathing, her hand fell away from his chest. Tears leaked from her eyes and dribbled onto his throat.

He slid his hand around to cup her exquisite face. “Ella?”

No answer.