“How high up did you say we were?”
“I didn’t.” He pulled me tight against his chest, and I inhaled the clean smell of his linen shirt as I tried to find my balance. “I’m not worried about dropping you; it’s what happens when I put you down in the middle of a city full of disgruntled trolls that concerns me.”
My plan seemed like a worse and worse idea with each passing moment, and I knew if I delayed any longer that I’d lose my nerve entirely. Standing on my tiptoes, I kissed him hard. “For good luck.”
He rested his forehead against mine. “Luck is what poor planners rely upon. As long as you stick to what we agreed, you should be fine. Go straight to Pierre, find out what we need to know, and then go back to the place where I set you down. Don’t go looking for Marc or the twins or trouble, or any of the usual sorts of disasters you always seem to find.”
I nodded, my heart beating so hard and fast I was sure he could hear it. “Right. In and out.”
“The riskiest moment will be when you first go in and your shadow will be visible, so I’m going to move you very quickly. Don’t make a sound – I know for a fact that your voice carries well in this cursed place.”
“Not a peep.” I was shaking, and it had nothing to do with the winter air. Removing my riding gloves, I shoved them into my pocket and wiped my sweating palms on my skirts. Before I could even think to back down, magic wrapped around my waist and hips and I lifted up into the air. I scrunched myself up into a ball, resting my cheek against my knees and gripping my ankles with one arm. With my free hand, I clutched Tristan’s magic like it was a rope.
“You really don’t need to do that.”
“Makes me feel better.” My voice sounded high-pitched and strange.
“Ready?”
I wasn’t. I really wasn’t. But I nodded anyway.
He needn’t have worried about me making a sound. The force of being snapped backwards and down stole my breath, and before I could think, much less squeak, I was hanging suspended beneath the rocks, all of Trollus laid out below me. Letting go of my ankles, I clung with both hands to the rope of magic, trying to get my breathing under control.
Although Tristan had assured me that it would be all but impossible for anyone to see me in the darkness, I still felt utterly exposed, and panic began to erode my self-control. There was no surviving a fall from this height. I’d be nothing more than a splatter of gore against the paving stones, my screams echoing long after my life winked out. A whimper of noise forced its way from my lips.
Sensing I was close to cracking, Tristan began to slowly move me along the ceiling of the cavern. It wasn’t simply a matter of setting me down in the middle of the city – he needed to keep me hidden in the shadows, dropping me down where the rock rested against the highest reaches of the valley. But he was working blind, entirely dependent on memory to navigate me not only to my destination, but around the magic columns and arcs and canopies that held the rock off the city. His concentration on the task steadied my nerves, and my mind refocused on what was below me.
Trollus was beautiful. It had always felt like a dream to me, so otherworldly that it seemed impossible that it existed in the same reality as my farm, the Hollow, and even Trianon. Seeing it like this transported me back, made me feel as though I’d never left. The familiar roar of the falls, the water sparkling as it fell from the heights at the far end of the city to explode into spray and foam in the river that drove straight and true toward the mouth of the river road.
The terraced streets rising like steps for a giant’s feet up the sides of the valley and bisected by staircases that swept and curved around the pale stone buildings. The palace was massive, white and gold and stately where it sat overlooking the river, the glass gardens lying behind it, black but for the troll-lights that lined the meandering pathways. I wondered if anyone walked those paths now that I was gone, or if the flowers, bushes, and trees had languished in darkness.
But not everything was the same.