Page 6 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

“Who are they?” I asked, jerking my chin toward the cart.

Moerrven’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look. “No one.”

“They keep staring at us.”

“Many people stare. It’s a small town. You’re a newcomer.” He paused. “Also, in Thessaly’s son’s clothes, you look… noticeable.”

“I do feel elegant. They might be the nicest clothes I’ve ever worn.” I looked down at the blue trousers, examining the beautiful silk brocade fabric. “They are quite incredibly made.”

He looked down, too. The faintest blue flush crept up from under his collar, and I filed that away. Trolls blushed blue.

Moerrven was undeniably hot, but it wasn’t the gym-selfie perfect hotness of the guys I usually went for. He was a seven-foot-tall walking monument to testosterone. His gray-blue skin was warm and smooth, and his shoulders were so broad they’d brushed both sides of the narrow shop doorway. He had arms like tree trunks, hands that could palm my whole head, and ram-like horns curving back from his temples, dark at the base and fading to gray at the tips, framing his square-jawed face and making it look even broader.

I was admiring him openly by the time I polished off the last bite of pie, noticing the way Moerrven’s eyes dropped to my fingers as I licked them. And the way he looked away fast when he realized I’d caught him looking. I reached for a second pie as he set his own down and sat back.

“So, Sky Liang, how did you end up in Stonedeep County?”

“I was looking for my friend, Pip. He went missing the night before last. Or I think it was the night before last?”

Moerrven blinked. “Missing from where?”

“We’re both cage dancers, hence the shorts, and we were warming up in the bathroom when he just vanished. Poof! It took me hours to figure out the mirror was some kind of portal.”

“Hm,” Moerrven said.

“At first I thought he’d somehow left the bathroom and gone to the dance floor, like a prank, maybe, while I was practicing. But when I went out there, he wasn’t there. I wanted to keep looking, but my manager wasn’t having it. I had to get in the cage.”

“The cage?” Moerrven frowned, his bushy black eyebrows pushing together.

“It’s a prop for cage dancing, which is like a sexy, mostly naked dance. The cage dangles from the ceiling so people can... view us from every angle. The sparkly shorts are my costume, which is why they are so tiny. I mean, I don’t mind tiny clothing when I’m on the prowl, but I don’t typically wear sequins walking around the street.”

He cleared his throat, stiffening a little as his eyes skimmed over my thighs. “Oh.”

“Anyway, I went back to the bathroom after the club closed and paced around, retracing Pip’s steps, but then I realized the mirror looked awfully suspicious. I pushed on it, tried to open it like a door; nothing worked. And then, finally, I turned around all frustrated and leaned back against it, trying to look at it from Pip’s angle, and it… I don’t know, melted? Suddenly I was falling through it.”

“Falling through it? Did it break? Are you wounded?”

“It didn’t break at all; it just let me through. I think it was some kind of portal.”

Moerrven paused, brow creased. “A portal?”

“Yeah, someone painted it pink and covered it in rhinestones, which — honestly, iconic — but what do you know about interdimensional portals?”

He frowned. “I haven’t heard of that concept before. But maybe it’s not translating your words right?”

My heart dropped. “It’s like a magical pathway between worlds. There are tons of theories, and I mean, my mom would say I’d been reading too much fantasy, but I’m talking to a troll, so… joke’s on her.” The mention of my mom made me pause, staring down at my hands as I took a deep, steadying breath. “You don’t think it’s a one-way portal, do you?”

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that magic.”

As he spoke, my chest went tight. It was hard to breathe. He must have sensed my panic because his face softened.

“There are many kinds of magic, so I wouldn’t put much stock in my knowledge.”

Surely it wasn’t one-way. It couldn’t be. “You’ve never heard of it before? Where I’m from, we have stories about it. You know, people slip through a hole in time and get fucked raw by a big highland warrior, that sort of fun.”

He didn’t answer, and for a moment, I thought I’d broken him. I took another bite of my pie and waited.

“I have—” His voice came out a little choked, and he coughed. “I have never heard of such a thing, but there is a library in Highmark that carries historical records of all strange magic.”