The troll princess laughed. “You are a funny thing. So lively.”
“I want to see him. Now.”
“We have no need for you to see him,” the princess said. Cassie felt cool wind on her back and heard waves crash. She glanced behind her. The wooden door now stood open. “You can leave. We don’t need you.” The troll princess waved her feathered tentacles at the open door. “Go on, it is no trick. I promise you are free to leave. You can trust me—it is a magic promise.”
“Not without Bear. Promise me he can leave.”
“I told you, we need him.”
“For what?”
Feathers combined into cilia. “He has to cooperate. The queen is disappointed in him. She had such high hopes for a munaqsri.”
“You’d free him if he cooperated?” Could it be that simple? Meet their demands and then Bear could go free?
“You could convince him!” the troll said. Excited, the cilia waved. She shimmered in the white light. “Yes, he would listen to his Cassie.”
Cassie didn’t trust the troll. It couldn’t be something good if Bear was refusing. She thought of the mermaid Sedna saying, No one knows what trolls want. “What won’t he do?”
“He won’t make me a baby.”
For an instant, Cassie felt as if her heart had stopped.
CHAPTER 30
Latitude indeterminate
Longitude indeterminate
Altitude indeterminate
The troll princess melted the walls. Retreating to the center of the room, Cassie tried to tell herself that this place was no different from Bear’s ice castle and that the troll princess was no more inhuman than the winds, but it felt different. The troll pushed her jellied tentacles against another white wall, and it dissolved like a sugar cobweb. The castle itself was an illusion of earthliness.
Thick smoke poured into the room. “Do not be afraid,” the troll princess said, and blinked with three eyes. A fourth blossomed on her forehead.
The smoke pressed on Cassie’s skin like fabric, curling around her. She batted at her arms. Covered in clouds, the troll princess repeated, “Do not be afraid. We won’t hurt you.”
It wasn’t smoke, Cassie realized, it was trolls. The air was thick with trolls. In the squirming cloud, she saw traces of eyes and teeth, fur and feathers, arms and tentacles. Strobelike color flashed, like a surreal discotheque, and she panicked. “Don’t touch me!” She slapped at them. It felt like pushing through rain. She realized she had felt this waterair before—when the trolls had taken Bear, back before the castle had melted.
Hundreds of trolls pressed their flimsy forms against her, only to dissipate like mist. She thought of her mother, imprisoned here for years, and knew it was hopeless to have come here without a clear plan. She wanted to screech like the aspen. Bear was almost in reach. She couldn’t have come so far only to fail.
“Follow me,” the troll princess said. Through the wispy shapes, she shone iridescent. She bobbed like a floating Japanese lantern.
Gritting her teeth, Cassie elbowed trolls out of her way. The trolls melted, as insubstantial as ghosts, as soundless as wisps of cloud. It was an eerie silence. The only sound was her own breathing. The trolls did not breathe. Shuddering, she hugged her stomach. Her uncles had been right: This was no place for living things. All her instincts were screaming at her to run away, but she kept going, deeper into the trolls.
Her heart sank as she followed the princess farther into the castle and through more and more trolls. Who was she to think she could go up against this—whatever “this” was? She was just a human. She didn’t have any magic.
Her stomach squeezed, and she had to stop. Clutching her stomach, she panted. Trolls swarmed her. She felt their light, damp touch on her neck and on her face. Colors teased the corners of her eyes.
Trolls thinned in front of her, and Cassie pushed sweat-streaked hair out of her eyes. She was standing before a dais of basalt. Filling the dais was the troll queen. Unlike the wisps all around her, the troll queen seemed as solid as a granite mountain. A thousand eyes coated her body like rivets.
Cassie straightened her shoulders and tried to stare back into the queen’s splintered gaze. She hadn’t let Father Forest or the winds see her fear; she wasn’t going to let this queen see it either. Even if her rescue mission was doomed.
In unison, the eyes blinked. “We have no need for another human,” the queen said in a voice like a hive of bees. “Why have you brought her to us?”
The troll princess floated to the dais. She was now a purple orb with a distorted humanesque face. She whispered to the queen.
With her thousand eyes, the queen scrutinized Cassie. “Interesting.” She closed half her eyes, and those eyes hardened into silver plates.
Cassie lifted her chin and summoned her courage. This was what it had all been for—all for this moment. She would face down a troll queen. She would not take no for an answer. She would wring Bear out of her, if she had to. “I’m here for my husband. And you cannot stop me.”
“Very well,” the queen said.
Cassie’s jaw dropped open. “Excuse me?” She must have misheard, or at least misunderstood. “You’ll let me… He’s free to go?”
“Convince him to make my daughter a baby, and he is free.”
Cassie opened and shut her mouth. “Can I talk to him?”
“Of course,” the queen said.
Cassie’s head spun. All he had to do was sleep with the troll princess, and he would be free? She bit her lip. Had he refused because he loved Cassie too much, or had he refused because he had not loved Cassie enough?
All around her, the trolls rustled. It sounded like wind in autumn leaves.
Out of the trolls, Bear came. Soundless, his paws padded on the stone. Cassie dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. Her knees shook. Two feet in front of her, he stopped. His black eyes were unfathomable.
Cassie could not speak. She stretched her fingertips and touched his muzzle. His fur was as soft as she remembered. She buried her hand in his pelt. He nuzzled her hair. She threw her arms around his broad neck. “Good to see you, Your Royal Ursine Highness,” she whispered.
“You came for me.”
“Just in the area,” she said. “Thought I’d say hello.”
Bear dipped his head to Cassie’s abdomen. He pressed his furry face to it. Cassie stroked his ears. “He… she… is moving,” Bear said. He looked at her. “Can you forgive me?”
Cassie swallowed a lump in her throat. “Yes. You?”
“Yes,” he said.
She smiled, and then she hugged her stomach again as a contraction robbed her breath.
“My bears should have taken care of you,” he said, concern in his voice.
When she could breathe again, she answered, “They did.” It seemed like years ago that she’d been on the ice.
“Good,” he said. They were silent for a moment. Cassie wished she could find words—there was so much she had wanted to say. As she’d crossed the ice, the tundra, and the forest, she’d imagined this moment over and over, but this wasn’t how she’d pictured it, with thousands of trolls looking on.
“I missed you,” he said simply.
She flushed and looked down at her pregnant self, speckled with blood and dirt. “Hardly the movie star rescuer.”
“You are beautiful,” he said.
She snorted.
“You have a beautiful soul.”
“Nice euphemism.”
“On an island of trolls, it is a compliment.”
She glanced over at the troll queen. Spikes sprouted from her head and tail, outgrowths of the eye plates. “So,” Cassie said conversationally, “is she going to skewer us?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
He touched her cheek with his wet nose and whispered in her ear, “Tell me the plan. I am ready.”
She wanted to cry. So close! “Find the castle, find Bear… That’s as far as I got. You have any ideas?”