A Darkness So Sweet (The Kingdom Below, #1)

by Emma Hamm

“You and I are the same. Stuck in a life we didn’t choose. Unknowing who our husband will be, or if we even want to marry. I feel such kinship with you.”

“You can be surrounded by people and never feel like a single one truly knows you.”

“I would like Miss Maia to wear a gown of the finest quality. She will stand beside me as the brutes enter our castle grounds, and she will be the first they see. No one will question if she’s afraid, or if I am afraid.” That smile appeared on her face again, so perfect made her appear to be made of stone. “She will be the only one to accompany me to the altar.”

“A good bloodline,” she said quietly. “You got these from your mother.” “My father had less elven blood than she did.” “And so you will follow in your father’s footsteps. A man who sees true goodness in his children, regardless of what they look like. You have a good heart, Ragnar, but I fear you are short sighted.”

“I open your heart to the woman who walks into your life. It is your responsibility to take care of your troll wife. You will keep her safe, keep her happy, and you will put her needs above all others. Even your own.”

She looked up at him, her chest rising and falling more quickly the longer he stared at her. Perhaps he was making her uncomfortable. It was just that he wanted to know every inch of his troll wife’s face before he bound himself to her.

“I am not your husband,” he murmured. “And I never will be.”

“What makes you think I’m a gentleman?”

fire hair.

Because he had the sneaky suspicion that if he caught anyone looking at his wife the way he had just been staring at her, he’d get into a fight. He’d rip their eyes out of their head if they saw what he did, even his own brother. Those were sights for his gaze only.

And then he stalked away before he did something else stupid. Like hold those delicate little feet in his hands and heal every single wound. Like throw sand in his brother’s face and then lock tusks with him just because Gunnar got to eat breakfast with her and he didn’t.

He suddenly had a vision of what he would make her. Golden clasps for her hair. He’d braid it into intricate weavings and then seal those braids with golden caps. She was a woman made for gold. Perhaps he would inlay rubies in a necklace as well, because those would look so pretty sitting against that graceful throat, bouncing against her pulse.

breath. “I want you to say what you’re thinking. I do not enjoy that you play coy and pretend to be some weak little thing. There is fire in you. A fight. It lives in all things just as the dragons of old breathed fire. You hold yourself back, and I do not understand why.”

“Worthy of you? I know nothing of this world you brought me into. I’m not even supposed to be here! You don’t listen to me, you don’t do anything right according to the other trolls I’ve spoken with!” she seethed. “You dress me in rags and someone else had to pierce my ears and give me jewelry from her own husband! Nothing about you makes me wish I was worthy of your attention. You’ve wasted both of our times and I hope to all the gods in the sky and everyone who can hear me that the blood witch finds us incompatible, you absolute beast!”

He wanted to kiss her. He’d wipe that snotty expression off her face and bring her down onto the bed of leaves at her feet. He’d ravage her right here in the forest until she screamed so loud the other trolls would hear her. All just to wipe that smug expression off her face. But she wouldn’t welcome that. Not when she was so angry at him.

He’d known it was a bad idea to be alone with her. But now that he’d discovered her ire, he found he rather liked her.

“Don’t try to make me like you, human. It won’t work.”

“Are you sure?”

“Fear is what limits us. You can let it control your life, or you can control it. The choice is up to you.”

“These are the hands of a woman who has worked hard, as well. A woman who has suffered much at the hands of those who should have cared for her. The death of her family lingers in these palms, not because she is responsible for their loss, but because their souls linger to taint every step she takes. The path she walks will never be easy until she lets those old ghosts go into the underworld where they belong.”

“She’s yours, Ragnar, more than I’ve seen in a hundred years. That woman was made for you and you for her.”

“Your prophecy may speak of your son, not you. She will not make your children weaker, she will keep your bloodline as strong as it is now. But perhaps it is not you who needs to be stronger.” The blood witch stood, bracing her hand on their mingled blood. “You will give her strength, Ragnar, just as she will give you a place to rest.”

“When I take you for the first time, wife, you’ll be dripping for me. Not a single moment sooner.” He drew her hand back up his chest. “But your begging will need to be improved. Long before I give you what you want.”

“I rarely go back on my word, but yes. You were born for me, fire hair. And so I will keep you.”

“And I think about the future constantly. I worry about what path my people will have to walk to stay alive. I fear what your people are planning to do to mine and how our numbers have already dwindled. The joining of our peoples was supposed to stem the flow of hatred that always leads us back to war. And without the binding, my powers are limited to what I now know how to do. If we are at war again, I won’t be able to heal as many people as I’ll need to.”

“I think we can both agree that I’m giving up more than you are,”

“Listen closely, fire hair. If another man touches you, I will first cut off his fingers. I will make him watch as I eat them, one by one. I will savor the taste of his blood and his pain before I cut off his hand for ever having it graze your skin. If he survives that, I will hunt him down. I will run him through the forest until his breath saws from his lungs and until he knows what it feels like to be prey. Then I will skin him alive until he dies. I will wait for him to wake up if he passes out. I will continue until the end,” he said. “Do you hear me? Trolls are not humans. We do not use our wives as play things, nor would we ever allow a woman to be traded around like that. You are not in your human kingdom with your foolish men.”

“This is my troll wife. I have agreed to take her. I made a vow the moment I saw the Blood Witch, and she said this woman was my destiny. I have no desire to leave this place, but you will force my hand if you try to take her from me. My father’s line does not end with me. Gunnar is perfectly capable of creating strong children. Therefore, I relinquish my claim to my father’s birthright and I give it to my brother.”

“You’re married to a troll, Maia. Swear all you fucking like.”

“A troll wife is a gift to her husband. A treasure that must be protected at all costs. It is his job—no, his duty and honor—to decorate her in all the elegance he can find. Gemstones do not come near to her beauty, but they can enhance it. Gold and silver are only the merest specks to make her prettier. Clothing, fabric, all of it can make her comfortable, but it’s no competition to the beauty he finds in just looking at her.”

“It’s an obsession that a male can never break free from. An honorable troll knows his wife is the most beautiful being he will ever see in his life. To adorn her with whatever he can find that might contend with that radiance is a lifelong challenge that none will ever succeed in.”

“But it’s all worth it to see her in nothing but the jewelry he has given her, and the beauty that captivated him for years. When he earns that, troll wife, that is the greatest gift of all.”

“Someday, when you are ready to earn new piercings, I will place my mark here.” He pinched her nipples hard enough to make her stop breathing. “You will wear my bars, troll wife. Soon enough, I will see you dripping in gemstones.”

“You are an instrument to play. Your moans are a symphony to my ears, fire hair. Let me hear them.”

“I will be your slave,” he rasped. “I will do all that you require and more. All I ask is for one thing.”

She was the rising wave of passion that he had ridden with no hope but to be dashed upon the sands of reality.

“I’m so sorry that all you have seen of my kind is anger and hate. Not all of us rejoice in the pain of your people, Ragnar, and I know nothing I say will take those memories away. But I am here. I will help for as long as I’m able.”

“Hush, my wife. I need to remember that something is alive tonight.”

His hand was over her heart. Ragnar had moved them so that he could fall asleep with her heart beating against his palm, all because he had lost so many people today that he needed to know she was alive. Just so that he could finally rest. She pressed her hand over his, holding him a little tighter.

“You are no longer a human if you are here with us. You are a troll wife. You are one of us, Maia.”

“Then he can rot. He mingled his blood with you, which means you are ours as much as you are his. And we take care of our own.”

“I’ve had a very long day, wife. I would love nothing more than to lick you here. To feed you my fingers until you beg for my cock. I want you writhing underneath me, all that pretty skin turning bright pink as it always does. I want to hear your moans again. Let me fill this room with the sound of your pleasure.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “I have no interest in a moment of release. I want all of this to be over with so I can convince my wife to fuck me.”

He’d called her a whore, and she wasn’t that. She was a troll wife and how dare he call her anything else?

“Or perhaps I should have let you live, soldier. I would have sent you back to your people missing all of your limbs, so that you could tell them what would happen if any of your people touch my wife again.”

“I’m fine. The rest of us will heal on our own. Take her to the illuminated glen, brother. No one will be there for a while yet. Bring her somewhere to remember that there’s still beauty in this world. Heal her soul as well as her body.”

Ragnar, in the full sight of all the trolls around him, knelt before her. On his knees before his troll wife. As it always should be.

“I know what it is to have a memory that has sunk its teeth into you. It’s a wolf with a grip on the back of your neck, shaking you every time you think you can get away from it. This is all very new for you, fire hair. I know that. Rushing you through an experience like this will only make it sink its teeth in even deeper.”

“And perhaps to remind myself that, unlike Bjorn, I did not lose you.”

“Sit on my face, fire hair. Fucking crush me, if that’s what it takes. But I want to feel you come on my tongue before I make you scream on my cock.”