Ignoring the mess of tankards scattered throughout my kitchen, I rose and tugged on a fresh change of clothes before ambling out onto the pathway. My next-door neighbor, Yulla, was watering her flowers, her curtain of brown hair frizzing from the humidity. She paused and sent me a friendly wave, then she froze. Her wide eyes darted to the pin on my tunic. I hadn’t put it there, of course. It had vanished from my previous day’s garb and had reappeared on this one. Damn magic.
“You entered the competition?” Yulla asked, her face paling.
“No, someone else put forth my name,” I said, shrugging. “Not that it matters. I won’t try to win.”
Visibly, she sighed, and the color returned to her cheeks. A prickle of irritation went through me. I’d have the same reaction in her place. Me? Competing? It was a recipe for disaster. I knew that better than anyone. But that was the rub, wasn’t it? It was one thing for me to recognize my inadequacy, but it was quite another for a friend to see me that way, too.
For a moment, I had the unexpected urge to prove her wrong, but that feeling quickly dissipated. The competition, the trials, showing off my nonexistent skills? None of that mattered.
Yulla leaned back on her heels, wiping her hands across her deep green dress. “Where are you heading off to at the crack of dawn?”
Down here in The Deep, we had no know way of seeing the sun rise and fall, but we had a watchtower at the top of the mountain that provided a view of the world beyond. Most of us took turns up there, so we could signal the beginning and end of another day to everyone else. I was the only dwarf to have never done her duty in that regard.
“There’s a tunnel I want to check out,” I told her.
She arched a brow. “You think you might have a lead on your stone?”
“Something like that,” I told her.
“You don’t have your pickaxe on you,” she noted.
“I don’t need it today.” I nodded to her flowers. Like me, she needed another box. “Looks like they’re flourishing. Mind watering mine while you’re at it?”
Yulla beamed. Flowers to her were like chocolate to me. She yearned for the days when she could get more than just green daisies, moss, and vines to grow in our underground village, but try as she might, nothing else survived. But still, she kept at it. Yulla was a stubborn little thing. A lot like me, I guessed.
“I’ll do you one better than that,” she countered with a beaming smile. “I got some new flower boxes the other day. Want one? I can move some of yours over to it.”
“That would be lovely, Yulla. You really don’t mind?”
“‘Course not. On one condition. You got that chocolate for me, right? Don’t think I missed that silver-haired elf going into your house last night. And who was that hunky man with her?”
With a laugh, I lifted the gold-wrapped square of chocolate I’d set aside for her. “You mean this?”
She snapped her fingers together like claws. “Gimme.”
I tossed the bar. It soared from my front door to her ledge, where she caught it in her open palm. With a wink, she unwrapped the chocolate and popped the square into her mouth. Her eyes practically rolled back into her head.
“So delicious,” she said around a mouthful of food.
“Enjoy!” I twisted on my booted feet and traipsed across the bridge leading across the chasm. Wind whistled through the cavernous space, jingling the bells wound into my braided ginger hair. With a bounce in my step and a smile on my face, I wound through my little village and waved at every dwarf I passed. It took several hours for me to span the distance between the cheerful homes and the eerily silent mining tunnels three caverns over and ten ledges down.
I pulled a sunstone from my pack and held it aloft before me, my hand slightly shaking. This part of the mountain was so dark, I’d trip on stray rocks without a light to lead the way. Despite our overwhelming curiosity and stubbornness, us dwarves rarely ventured into this pocket of the mountain. No sunstones were found here. Only the rustle of scraping feet or the scent of rotten meat. Something else lived in these tunnels, and no one knew what.
No one except for me.
I pressed forward, my heart banging against my ribs. When I came to the fork in the tunnel, I stopped short and leaned against the cavern wall, waiting.
A tall demon with curved black horns emerged from the darkness I’d left behind me, the sunstone glinting against his dusky skin. Unlike the day before, he donned linen trousers and a simple black tunic that cut a sharp V in the front, revealing the hard planes of his well-muscled chest. Impressive. Not that I noticed.
“How long have you known I was following you?” Tormund asked, slowing to a stop and folding his arms over said chest.
I lifted my eyes to his face. “I thought I heard you one ledge up. Might have noticed sooner, but I’m not used to men stalking my every step.”
“No?” His lips curved into a suggestive smile. “I assumed you had to scare them away with your pickaxe.”
I flushed. “Flattery will get you nowhere with me. I’m not going to tell you where to find the Everstone.”
“Only because you don’t know where it is,” he countered before lifting his gaze to scan the forked tunnel before us. “But you have more information than I do, and it brought you here. Which tunnel are you taking?”
