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I pump my arms hard, willing the pain in my legs to ease as I fly through the Dark Forest toward the troll bridge. It leads into the next town over, and if I can just get there, the villagers behind me will give up the chase—probably.
My woolen hood falls back, my long red hair flowing in the crisp winter air as tears stream down my cheeks. Red is the color of all descendents of the great witch Mona, and witches are a beacon for trouble in this drab, devastated world.
I’d done my best to hide the unfortunate shade with bark and mud dye but today I slipped up.
And the humans have found me out.
I was so godsdamned careful, too, just as my grandmother taught me, until it came to watching a child’s life thread fade or using my power to heal him.
Gritting my teeth, I sprint round a curve in the dirt road until I see the stone bridge ahead. I have no money, but I’m desperate. Desperate enough to beg the bridge troll to let me pass, no matter the cost. Plus I’ve got something else I’m hoping he’ll be willing to take as payment.
“I require passage!” I scream, hoping to warn the troll guardian before I get there. I’m desperately hoping the soldiers won’t have money to pay the toll to cross—or be willing to fight the huge troll.
“Stop!” shouts a rough, male voice behind me. “Stop where you are, witch!” There’s no mistaking the malice in his tone. If I do as he says, the soldiers will gut me first and hang me next.
I ball my fists tighter as I will the last bit of strength into my muscles. The bridge is close, so godsdamn close. Moss covered stones sit like quiet sentinels on either side of the broad bridge. Those stones mean safety.
The stones mean freedom.
I repeat the mantra until the sound of hounds’ footfalls grows close enough that I can scent the beasts. Caked mud, saliva, rotten meat.
The nip of teeth at my billowing skirts urges me on, but then a pair of jaws clamp around my leg, dragging me into the dirt as the hounds descend upon me in a pile. Fangs and claws sink into every bit of skin they’re able to reach as the soldiers hoot and holler gleefully.
I didn’t make it. Mona save me, I didn’t make it. I’ll die today, all because I revealed my magic to save a sick child.
“Please!” I scream as a dog nips at my throat, barely missing my jugular with his long fangs. “I helped that child. I’m not a bad pe—”
The words die in my throat as a soldier comes to stand on top of me, one boot on my cheek as he presses me hard into the dirt.
“Shut that whore mouth, witch,” he snivels, leering at me even though it was his child I saved. He seems to have forgotten that kindness, though it was just hours ago. All I’ve ever wanted was to belong in the human world, to fit in. To find love and be loved. Is that so much to ask?
All I wanted was peace.
“Please,” I murmur again. “Your child is alive because of my gift. Why can’t you—?”
The soldier leans down and backhands me so hard, my mouth fills with blood, my lip splitting from the blow.
Hounds leap away, only to circle back, snarls ringing across the small, rocky road.
Two more men join us, breathing heavily from the chase and wearing similar, horrible gleams in their eyes.
“You get the witch. Well done, Rodrick,” one says. “We’ll hang her by morning.”
When the sick child’s father draws his broadsword, I close my eyes, looking up into the night sky. I refuse to scream or beg for my life. I won’t die like my grandmother did and my mother before her. If I die because I used my magic to save an innocent’s life, I can be proud of that. I don’t look away from the sky or stars that wink playfully down at me.
Mona save me, I pray to my ancestor. I need a miracle.
A dreadfully deep voice booms out. “Put my fare down, or lose a limb.”
The soldiers leap back, gripping their swords tighter. The hounds whine and disappear into the dark shadows to the side of the road as I struggle over onto my belly, then up onto my knees.
Mona help me, the bridge troll. Thank the goddess. I scramble up onto my feet, clutching my woolen coat around my chest as blood drips onto the leaves below. Lurching forward, I put a solid ten feet between the soldiers and me, but the rustling sounds of the troll emerging halt me in my tracks.
I don’t immediately see the guardian, but something green flashes from the rocks beneath the structure. A hulking figure steps into view, just his top half visible above the riverbank. He’s… he’s enormous. I’d have thought he’d be covered in moss, sticks, and dirt too on account of living under the bridge, but no.
Hair the color of grass falls in chunks over a ruggedly handsome face. He stands as tall as two of me and he’s nearly as wide as the bridge itself.
I can’t even fathom how he was hiding under the bridge at all.
The soldiers' footfalls draw closer. A knifepoint comes to my neck, the leader growling at the bridge troll. “She’s not your fare. She’s our witch and we’re taking her back to gut her. Then we’ll hang her by that pretty neck until she’s done with this world.”
The troll laughs, dismissive and haughty, as if he can’t be bothered to entertain these measly humans a moment longer. “She called for passage, so she’ll either pay the fare, or she’ll come with me below.”
Below? Below what?
“I can pay!” I shout out, just to make it absolutely clear I can’t remain here with these humans.
No matter the cost.
No matter what I have to give up.
“The troll stone was given to me by my grandmother’s grandmother, protect it with your life.”
My grandmother’s final words ring in my head. But better the stone save me than me save it at this point. Troll magic is different from mine, and mine is limited to the few healing spells my grandmother saw fit to teach me, bolstered by the troll stone’s power to amplify.
“Then come, woman,” the troll commands, beckoning me with two meaty fingers.
I stumble toward him as the crushing of leaves indicates movement at my back. Rodrick grips my arm and yanks me against him, pulling the bone from its socket.
“You’re going nowhere,” he hisses in my ear. His breath smells of garlic and rotting onions. I squirm out of his grasp as the troll rumbles up the riverbank with a beleaguered sigh.
Now that he’s on level ground with us, it’s easy to see precisely how much larger he is than the soldiers. He’s all stacked, corded muscle, a plain tunic hiding none of his girth. Simple leather pants do nothing to hide the bulk between his thighs. In every way he looks like a fearsome predator.
At his side hangs a simple wooden club, thick at the end and covered in iron spikes. The tang of blood suggests how he deals with those who try to pass without paying the toll.
My eyes meet his, and he smirks again.
Caught you, he seems to say in the way he looks at me.
I am caught and fucked any way I look at this scenario. Either the soldiers will drag me back and gut me as promised, or this troll will take me under the bridge. I’ve no idea what happens after that.
The knife at my neck digs in a bit harder, splitting my skin until blood dribbles steadily from the wound and down over my ample chest.
“Beat it,” the troll says, poking his thumbs through the wide leather belt around his significant waist. “I don’t want to fight for my fare, but I will. Not that I’d call it a fight, really.” Black eyes glitter down at the men as he fingers the weapon locked to his belt.
The soldier holding my hand twists my arm up behind me until it pops, and pain blooms inside my body as I scream and fall to the ground. He steps back and kicks me square between the shoulders, knocking me forward into the dirt. Pain blooms and I writhe against the agony of a dislocated shoulder.
“Never come back here, witch,” he shouts, as if he’s won a war against some great opponent, rather than injuring a fleeing woman.
I resist the urge t
o snark back, but I can barely think around the daggers shredding my tendons.
Rodrick spits on the ground as the soldiers turn to leave. He shoots me a final smirk. “I’ll be having everything in your cottage, witch, as you’ll no longer need it.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Everything I have of my mother’s and grandmother’s is in that cottage. Yet it can’t be helped. None of it does me a shred of good if I’m dead. And I have the troll stone, the one thing my grandmother told me to protect.
I say nothing as he turns and walks unhurried back up the path. Before the soldiers round the bend once more, the hounds slink out of the woods to join them.
I don’t breathe until the group is gone from view.
When I loose the held breath and turn, the troll stands above me, looking down with a smirk.
Gods, he’s quite handsome this close, but my thoughts quickly turn to safety.
“I don’t have any money,” I admit, rushing on in the same breath. “But I’ll give you anything you want if you’ll let me pass to the next village. I just need to get clear of those soldiers.”
Black eyes turn cold with malice as his smirk falls. “No money?”
When I nod my assent, he spits on the ground, sucking at his teeth as he looks off into the distance.
Reaching into my skirt pocket, I withdraw the chunky purple troll stone and lift it toward him. “I’ve got this troll stone, given to me by my grandmother. I’d hoped perhaps you’d take this as payment?”
He eyes the stone for a moment before leveling that fierce gaze on my shoulder and the bleeding wound at my neck.
“There’s only one way to pay if you have no money for the fare,” he begins, though he swipes the stone and tucks it into his pocket.
I lift my hands to beg, except only one lifts, and the other sends shooting pains through my entire neck and back as I sob, curling over onto myself with my forehead against his enormous knee.
“Please,” I whisper as black stars pool behind my eyelids. “Help me, I’m begging you.”
The troll grunts, but reaches down and gives my arm a quick yank, resetting the joint. I scream at the fresh wave of agony this produces, but in the next moment, I’m flung over his broad, muscular shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“I’ll pay any way you want,” I say in a low, mournful tone. Even like this, if I have to. It’s what I mean, and he knows it, yet barks out a derisive laugh anyhow.
“I’ll keep the stone because troll stones belong with trolls. You should never have had it, witch. But as for your fare?” He spanks my ass hard enough to make me yelp. “Well as for passage, I only take money. You’ll need to work off what you owe another way. I’ve got a few ideas.”
His hand comes to my ass, his fingers resting gently in the seam. It’s a possessive touch, too familiar, and I wriggle away from it. He grips my buttock more tightly.
Turning, he stalks to the bridge and down the riverbank, big feet splashing in the crystal clear water of the brook. Ducking beneath the mossy stones, he pushes his shoulder against a large flat rock. It slips to the side with an angry sounding creak.
Terror rises as he steps into a barely lit hallway. Oh Mona, goddess, save me from whatever this male has planned. Don’t let me have survived the town only to find my downfall at the hands of this beast.
The troll pushes the stone back into place over the entrance and complete and total darkness overtakes us. For long minutes, he walks in utter silence. I try my best to quell the panic as it rises, pressure building in my chest. When a faint light appears up ahead, the troll chuckles.
“Welcome to the Monster Underground, little witch. Now it's time to discuss your payment.”