Goldilocks and the Bear by Vivienne Savage

Author:Vivienne Savage [Savage, Vivienne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Payne & Taylor

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Of course, over a week had passed before she remained mounted while shooting, and even longer before her aim improved. Hitting the troll hadn’t been mere luck, and calling it anything less than skill would be a disservice to her hard work.

The trolls grew too quiet for her comfort. Daring to peer over the edge again, she counted only seven of them beside the oil-scalded corpse. Earlier, she and Ramsay had each lessened their numbers by one after loading the ballistas and catching two of the beasts by surprise. One perished right away, taken by a javelin to the chest, but the survivor had loped away to hopefully die.

Where have the others gone? What are they up to?

Refusing to hope that a group of them had given up the chase, she crept along the ledge and glanced down below. Instead of scaling the palace, the trolls had stacked stones and gnomish armor against the garden wall while their hairy cohorts ran a diversion. They’d made it over the rear wall.

Glass shattered somewhere in the distance, beyond her sight.

“Ramsay!” Victoria cried. “I think they’ve found the windows!”

At first, she’d been positive they would be safe, but then she recalled the human-sized doorways. If Ramsay could fit, a determined, starving troll could squeeze through in a pinch on its hands and knees. And if they were smart enough to distract her with phony attempts to scale the palace, they’d be clever enough to find a way up.

With her heart in her throat, she dashed into the corridor and slammed the door shut behind her as the rousing bear shifter returned to his two-legged body.

“Then we have no time to waste. We’ll have to try to make it past them to the lift.”

“And if that fails?”

“Summon the damned jinni in that ring and hope for the best. If he screws us over, he has only centuries more in this city to look forward to.”

Together, they sprinted to the end of the corridor and down a level, unable to descend farther to the lowest floor. Whether through eccentric design or accident, the deceased king’s palace created a deadly maze, and Victoria couldn’t remember their location to retrace their steps.

The first troll appeared at the end of the hall, too enormous to stand upright. It moved on all fours and sniffed the air, resembling a hound on the scent trail. Bright scarlet blood dripped from several gashes to its chest. It must have been the one to shatter the window and scurry inside.

Victoria ducked beneath a small doorway into a gallery of portraits and elegant oil paintings. Once Ramsay squeezed in behind her, he slammed the door shut and they rushed into the next room as the troll smashed through behind them. Due to its bulk and superior strength, it didn’t need doors—it crashed through the frames, creating its own. Hot on their heels, it pursued the pair into the next hall.

A second, smaller troll approached from the other direction.

It could have only been a troll juvenile, lacking the powerful muscle and dense bone of an adult.

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