The lights moved closer. Definitely not friendly.
Her legs gave up before her brain did. The snow caught her, cold and soft and far too inviting. She tried to stand again, but her knees buckled. Her vision flickered between white and gray, and the wind roared louder, as if laughing.
“Not how I wanted to go,” she muttered. “Death by art project.”
A shadow loomed through the snow—tall, broad, wrong in the way that made her instincts scream and her curiosity flare at the same time.
“Okay,” she whispered, not sure if she was talking to herself or the storm. “You’re dramatic, whoever you are.”
The shadow crouched beside her. She blinked through the blur of snowflakes—and saw him.
A face carved from stone and night. Skin the deep, mossy green of lichen-covered rock. Eyes that glowed faintly gold through the snow. Dark hair streaked with frost. And tusks—short but unmistakable—curving from his lower jaw. He looked like Ketill, yet not like him.
“Oh,” she breathed. “You’re new.”
He frowned, voice rumbling like distant thunder. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“That makes two of us,” she mumbled. Her body gave one last shiver of protest before exhaustion won.
She slumped forward—and strong arms caught her.
For one dizzying heartbeat, she thought she might be dreaming, that she’d sculpted this towering, impossible figure from her imagination and he’d simply stepped off her workbench to scold her. But the heat of him burned through her frozen clothes, real and grounding.
Her last flicker of defiance slipped out as a mumble against his chest. “You better not be mythological.”
He huffed, the sound halfway between exasperation and disbelief.
“Humans,” he grumbled, shifting her easily into his arms. “Always wandering where they don’t belong.”
The world tilted, warmth pressed close, and Wren let the darkness take her.
Chapter
Three
If Wren had a guardian angel, she just knew he was thinking,What fresh hell has she gotten into now?Her angel was either drinking himself into a stupor or had quit entirely, moving on to someone smarter—and less likely to die of exposure.
Consciousness crept over her slowly, stealthy as dawn sliding across a snow-blanketed horizon. Warmth came first. She was warm. Dry, even. Not frozen stiff like she should’ve been after tromping through thigh-deep drifts while muttering curses at Google Maps and Icelandic weather. The storm had rolled in fast, swallowing her in white. She’d never seen snow pile up that quickly in her life. Then again, Massachusetts winters had nothing on Iceland.
She shifted carefully, mindful of her surroundings, and her bare legs brushed against something sinfully soft. Fur—thick, plush, and warm enough to melt away the last shivers still trapped under her skin.
“You may as well open your eyes. I know you’re awake. Though it’s hard to tell. You talk a lot in your sleep.”
The voice was a low rumble that slid over her like smoke, roughened and deep enough to vibrate through her chest. Her eyes flew open.
A towering figure stood before a crackling fire, all shadow and molten gold light. The man—no, not a man—he was a troll. His skin was a deep moss green, alive with faint movement like shifting lichen. Dark runes glowed dimly across the ridges of his arms. His black hair fell in a thick curtain halfway down his back, his tusks gleamed ivory-bright, and his dark eyes fixed on her with a glower that could’ve melted glaciers.
Her breath caught. This was him. The one she’d been looking for. Certainty thrummed through her like a struck chord, wild and inexplicable, and for the first time in years the restless energy that had chased her across continents stilled.
“Ketill is your brother?” she asked, her voice scratchy from sleep.
The only sign of surprise was a brief flicker of his brow. “You know Ketill? Of course you do,” he muttered. “He’s probably in on this with Gryla. Yes, he’s my brother. The nicer one.”
She pushed herself upright, clutching the white fur to her chest. It slid across her bare skin, and the brush of it made her acutely aware of how little she was wearing—nothing. Heat crawled up her neck. “He told me not to wander too far.”
The troll settled on his heels, the movement fluid despite his massive size. “Then why did you?”
“I got lost. And I didn’t expect the storm. The forecast said it’d be clear.” She frowned. “It was supposed to be a nice day.”
