Page 72 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

Behind me, Dagmarra said faintly, “Should I fetch him the rest of the casserole?”

“He’s not staying. Oh! You’re one of the sisters! Moerrven called you in for backup?” Sky beamed between us. “That’s so sweet!”

“Dagmarra,” Dagmarra said. “And this is Grunnhild.”

“It’s lovely to finally meet you,” Sky said, “since I don’t think we can officially count the bridge incident. Do you, Oallian?”

“He wasn’t there,” I said.

Oallian huffed. “I wasn’t, but I have way too much information about the bridge incident, and about how he swooned for your gorgeous face the moment he met you. Sky talks too much.”

“He’s gorgeous though, isn’t he?” Sky waved his fingers at me like he was presenting a prize.

“Looks like a regular troll to me,” Oallian grumped.

Sky elbowed him in the ribs. “Moerrven Mossren. The author. You have his books. I saw the whole stack in your hoard.”

Oallian went still. The ember eyes returned to me and conducted a second, far more thorough inspection. “Oh,” he said. “Well, that makes sense, then.”

I had been reviewed by critics, by librarians, and by my late wife’s entire quilting circle, and no verdict had ever landed so squarely in my favor.

Sky stepped in and, to the visible alarm of all of the Mossren family, threw his arms around the naked dragon-man in a quick, fierce hug. Oallian went rigid, then relaxed, his eyes sliding shut for half a second, like a man who hadn’t been held in a while and had forgotten what to do with his hands.

“Thank you,” Sky said, quieter, for him alone. “For the ride. For all of it. Go find your person, okay? I meant what I told you up there. We’re friends.”

Oallian frowned. “This portal is in the farmlands, you say?”

“Yeah, like, big open fields and stuff. Trees,” Sky said, nodding.

“I can fly. I shall investigate.”

“Do not land there,” Sky said, pointing at him. “You will scare the hay out of some poor farmer. Look from the air. Looking only.”

“Of course,” Oallian said, in the tone of a dragon who had already chosen his landing site.

Oallian looked at him. Then at me.

“Thank you,” I said. “For not eating him.”

“Oh, I didn’t want to snack on him. I wanted to fuck him,” Oallian said. “Then return him to the palace and collect the ransom. But he told me he was taken, and that you would be worried sick, so we set out to search for you. Only you were not where he expected you to be.”

“I was searching for—” I trailed off because Oallian was already stepping away.

At the edge of the meadow, he paused and looked back, not at Sky but at me. “The books are good,” he said, with the gravity of a king conferring a lordship. “You may keep him.” The scales took him. The dragon rose up over the rooftops in a wash of heat and was gone, a coal into the blue, off to his mountain to brood about whatever it was he’d just decided to want.

“See you tomorrow,” Sky yelled, waving both arms. “Oh, he’s so cool, isn’t he?”

“I think you mean hot,” Dagmarra said, chuckling.

“That too. Okay.” Sky brushed off his hands and turned back to me, sheepish. “Sorry. Where were we?”

I took him by the shoulders. I looked at him, whole, unharmed, ridiculous, here, and the relief was so total that it came out the only way relief ever comes out of me, which is sideways, and badly.

“You let it keep you,” I said. “Two days. You were carried off by an apex predator the size of a granary, and you spent the time making a friend.”

“In my defense—”

“You hugged it. I watched you hug it.”