LUCIAN
The water was cold as it sluiced over Lucian's face, dripping from his chin onto the packed earth beneath his feet. He gripped the edges of the leather basin until his claws bit into the hide, his breath coming in slow, measured drags. For two months, his thoughts had been a tempest—voices clashing, doubts howling like winter winds through the mountain passes.
What he had agreed to was not just wrong.
It was unthinkable.
To aid his people was one thing. To fight, to bleed, even to die for them—that was the duty of every troll. But this?
Marrying a human.
His stomach clenched, bile rising in his throat. He could already see himself standing at that cursed altar, the scent of human flesh and perfumed oils thick in the air. He'd vomit at her feet, not from fear, but from the sheer wrongness of it. Humans were soft, fragile creatures, no claws, no tusks, their pinkish skin burning under the slightest sun. And now he was to bind himself to one? To share his bed, his bloodline, his life?
A growl rumbled in his chest. King Oberion had laughed in King Caspian's face when the human begged for peace. "Only elven blood will silence our war cries,"he'd sneered. Yet here they were, bartering Lucian's future for a half-elven princess. Her veins carried more of the old magic than his own, they said. A prize for their people, desperate to wash the mud and beast from their lineage.
But the king would not sully his own kin with human taint. No, that dishonor fell to Lucian.
The tent flap lifted with a whisper of supple leather. Tiberius ducked inside, his massive frame blocking the morning light. His brother was everything a troll should be, broad as a mountain oak, his dark green skin etched with the faded stripes of their hunting clan. His tusks, thick and curved like falchions, nearly brushed his cheekbones when he grinned.
Lucian, by contrast, bore their mother's legacy. Plum and mulberry streaked beneath his tattoos, his ears slightly sharper, his frame a fraction leaner.
"You look like you're preparing for a funeral, not a wedding," Tiberius said, cuffing Lucian's shoulder hard enough to knock him into the basin. Water sloshed over the rim. "Stand straight. Your bride won't want a husband who slouches like a whipped pup."
Lucian bared his teeth. "You know I'd rather bed a sludgebrood than a human."
Tiberius's grin widened. "Ah, yes. Your legendary disgust. Remind me—what was it about them that offends you so? The way they scuttle like insects? Or the way they stink so gracefully without a care in the world " Tiberius said while laughing.
"Everything." Lucian dragged a hand over his freshly shaved scalp, the stubble rough against his palm. He'd done this for a wife he'd never wanted—a mate chosen by politics, not the gods. "They're weak. Their bones snap like twigs. They stink of fear and perfumed oils to mask it. And now I'm to—"
Tiberius clapped a hand over his mouth. "Enough. The Ivory Tongue's waiting and I wasn't asking about the human, I was talking about the sludgebrood."
Outside, the sun was a white-hot brand against his eyes. Trolls were creatures of twilight and shadow, their slit pupils aching in the midday glare. Yet the camp had gathered, a wall of muscle and tusks and glinting piercings, their voices rising in a low, rhythmic chant.
At the center sat the Ivory Tongue
Her dreadlocks coiled like serpents atop her head, threaded with the tiny bones of creatures long dead. Milky eyes, blind yet all-seeing, stared through him. Her lavender skin was a living tapestry of ink, so dense the true hue beneath was a mystery. The bones in her palms—rabbit ribs, snake vertebrae—rattled as she swayed, alive with a magic that made Lucian's own blood hum in answer.
"Lucian, The Veinbloom," she intoned, her voice like wind through dead leaves. "You stand before me seeking a troll wife."
No.
He wanted a warrior. A mate with tusks that would scrape his own in challenge, with skin the blue of a storm-laden sky, with hair like the embers of a forge-fire. Not some pallid, trembling human princess.
But the bones cared nothing for his desires. They skittered across the rug, dancing to a fate he could not escape. The Ivory Tongue's power coiled around him, icy tendrils sinking into his flesh, dragging him forward until his knees struck the earth before her.
"Your blood is strong," she murmured, tracing the points of his ears. "But your sight is clouded, Lucian. You rail against the gods' design."
He gritted his teeth. "The king swore she was half-elven. If he lied—"
She silenced him with a look. A bowl of white paint sat between them, swirling like mist. Her palm, coated in it, pressed against his chest, over the thunder of his heart.
"A troll wife does not merely share your bed. She roots in your soul, as the great oaks root in stone. You will shield her. Nourish her. Place her above all else."
The crowd erupted. "Troll wife! Troll wife!"
Lucian's claws dug into his thighs. This was no blessing. It was a shackle.
The Ivory Tongue painted his face, her fingers cold as a corpse's touch. "The hunt begins tonight. The gods have woven your threads together, though you refuse to see the pattern."
He rose, looming over her. "You mistake duty for destiny."
Her milky eyes held something like sorrow. "The sharpest chains, Lucian, are the ones you cannot see."
The chanting swelled. They would hunt. They would drag her to him.
And there was no force under sky or stone that could stop it.