Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1)(104)

My nerves reached a fevered pitch as we approached the heavily armed and very imposing trolls standing to either side of the gate. They bowed low and one of them lifted the heavy bar holding the gate shut. It swung open silently on greased hinges.

“Haven’t noticed any fallen rock, my lord,” one of the trolls said.

“There’s never a problem until there is,” Tristan said, his arm drawing me forward.





The incline of the road was steep, the rock smooth, and everything was slick with water. We hadn’t gone far when I was forced to take off my shoes and walk barefoot. The road was perhaps ten feet wide, and the river, white with rapids, flowed only a few feet below.



Tristan didn’t look at me as we walked, but he did let go of my arm to take my hand instead. I held on as tight as I could, trying to memorize the way his skin felt beneath mine, the way his thumb rubbed the tops of my knuckles. Every step I took was one closer to the moment he’d make me leave him. When I saw the glow of sunlight appear ahead, fear lanced through me. It was the end of the tunnel. It was the end of us.

And the fear wasn’t just mine. Tristan’s dread had grown into something close to terror as we neared the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Will it do anything if you get too close?” I asked, suddenly uneasy.

Tristan jumped at my voice. “No,” he said. “No, it isn’t that.” Suddenly, he stopped and held up his hand, knuckles rapping against something that sounded like glass but which I suspected was infinitely stronger. “No. It isn’t that,” he repeated. Then he staggered back away from the barrier with a groan, and slumped against the wall.

“Tristan!” I dropped to my knees in front of him, terrified the curse had hurt him somehow. He grabbed hold of me and pulled me close. Tugging off the black wig, he buried his face in my hair, his whole body shaking. “I can’t lose you,” he whispered, and I felt him brush away Ana?s’s magic so that I was myself again.

“Then why are you doing this?” I demanded. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Because I can’t live this way, Cécile. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I live every moment on edge, thinking that I’ll turn around and you’ll be gone. I never know whether you’re telling me what you feel or what you think I want to hear. I need to know that you’re here by choice, not because you were never given one.” He pulled away so that he could look at me, and I saw his eyes and cheeks were streaked with tears.

I brushed one of them away, staring at the gleaming droplet sitting on my fingertip. “I didn’t think trolls could cry.”

He blinked. “Another myth?”

I shook my head. “No, I… When I first came, I thought trolls didn’t feel sorrow like we do. Pain like we do. Loss like we do.” I pressed the tear to my lips, tasting its sweet saltiness and thinking of all the many times the trolls had proven that notion false. “I was wrong.”

We sat on the road for a time, my head resting against his chest, both of us watching waves crash against the shore, pushing the river in and then drawing the flow out. A warm breeze blew into the tunnel, smelling of salt and seaweed, carrying with it the sound of gulls. This was the closest Tristan would ever get to the world outside of Trollus. This one small and unchanging view of the ocean.

“Tristan?”

“Yes?” He was voice was raspy, thick with emotion.

“Are you really giving me a choice? You won’t argue with what I decide?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I won’t stop you.”

“And if I want to stay, you’ll let me? You won’t make me leave?”

His eyelids twitched against his cheeks, but he didn’t open them. “It is your choice to make.”

I kissed him hard, drinking in the taste of him. I felt punch-drunk and reckless, willing to say whatever it took to keep him from making me leave. “Then I’m staying. I want to be with you – forever.” In the back of my mind, I knew I wasn’t considering the full extent of my words, but I had faith Tristan would succeed in everything he set out to accomplish. That perhaps it would take a year or two, but my isolation from the world would not be a permanent thing. It couldn’t be.

He held me against him, hand stroking my back, but I didn’t feel the sense of relief from him that I had hoped for. “You are impetuous, love,” he said softly. “You think with your heart, not with your mind.”

“So?” My voice was muffled against his chest.

“You can’t make the decision here. Troll magic is too thick. Half of what you feel is what I feel. You don’t know what you want.”

“Yes, I do!” I shouted against him, my voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “I want you.” I dug my nails into his shoulder, inhaling the clean scent of him. “I want you.”

With me clinging to his shoulders, Tristan got to his feet. Then he took hold of my wrists, gently tugging them free, and pushed me through the barrier. I stepped through the sticky thickness, and the roar of emotion in my mind subsided into a faint murmur. I gasped aloud, hating the loss, and I tried to go forward again, back to him. But Tristan held up one hand. “Go out into the sun and remember all the things you would give up for a life with me. If you decide not to come back, then…” He swallowed hard and tossed me a heavy purse that clinked when I caught it. “This should keep you for a time.”