Curse of the Troll, Emma Hamm [books to read to increase intelligence TXT] 📗

happened. Sometimes I see the same shadows in her eyes when it comes back to her. When she leaves her house and when she wanders without her family beside her. But…she chose to not let it change who she was. And for the longest time, I couldn’t understand that kind of strength.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to kill them.” His hands shook. “I wanted to hunt them down and remove their heads from the bodies the moment she told me. But she was the one who said she didn’t want that. Giving them any more time in her life was a waste, she told me.”

Elva took another swig of the wine bottle. “I don’t think I agree with her.”

“Neither do I.” He held out his hand for the bottle, suddenly needing his own encouragement. “So, are you gonna talk or what?”

She gave the bottle up easily enough. He knew she was staring because he could feel the heat of her gaze, the way she was desperately trying to distract herself from anything and everything in the moment.

Finally, she blew out a breath. “I am Elva of the Seelie Court.”

He waited for her to embellish before he shook his head. “I knew that.”

“Elva,” she repeated herself slowly. “Of the Seelie Court?”

“Yeah, I got that part. Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“How long have you been cursed?” Elva held up a hand. “Sorry. How long has it been since you‘ve been involved in the court system?”

This question wasn’t tied to his curse and, therefore, much easier to answer. Donnacha shrugged. “A couple years?”

“That’s it?”

“It’s felt like a long time,” he muttered. He’d been a bear for years now. That had to count for something.

“You should have heard of me. Or of what happened. You know the Seelie King has been removed from his throne, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and tossed into the human world. What of it?”

She squeezed herself tighter. “I was his wife.”

His jaw fell open in horror. “You’re who?” Oh, gods. He had the previous Seelie King’s wife in his castle? Was that what the Troll Queen had wanted this entire time? She hadn’t been kidding when she said the court system would likely kill him. They would want this woman back in their clutches as soon as possible. He was shocked they hadn’t already come searching for her.

“I’m not part of the court system anymore if that’s what you’re worried about. Give me that.” She swiped the wine and took a deep drink.

“So they aren’t going to knock on the door of the castle, demanding I give you up or I will part with my head?” he asked. The clarification felt rather important in this moment, no matter that she wasn’t worried.

He was.

Elva shook her head. “No. The current king and queen understand that I want to be left alone. I needed to find myself again.”

“After being queen.”

“I wasn’t a queen,” she corrected him, taking another swig of the bottle.

Enough of that. He didn’t want her getting drunk and then forgetting she told him all this. Donnacha reached out for the bottle. “Pampered then? No wonder you’re comfortable here.”

“Oh, I’ve gotten enough of that in my life, thank you very much. I’ll break the bottle over your head if you keep up with the sarcasm.”

Donnacha wrangled the wine bottle from her hands. The woman would not drink away her issues on his watch, no matter how much she wanted to. He put it on the other side of him, far away from her hands, and then turned back to her. “So he was the one that…?”

“Not like you’re thinking,” she muttered. She tilted her body away from him, back to staring at the carved ice flames. “Look, when it all started, I was very much in love with him. Fionn was a good man. Charming, entertaining, he promised me a life that I had wanted since I was a child. It seemed like the best choice at the time.”

“You loved him or you wanted what he could give you?”

She shrugged. “A little of both? He was the first man I was ever interested in. First love, I guess. He wanted the best for me, no matter if I wanted it or not. And that was when the problems started. I realized I didn’t want all the pretty things, but he thought I had to have them. He wanted to put me on a pedestal and tell me what I wanted.”

That explained why she was so independent. For a woman who had been essentially a queen, Elva was still very much a gritty warrior. He didn’t know many women who could switch positions like that. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the arm of his chair, staring at her profile. “All right. So he wanted what was best for you. What’s wrong with that?”

“He didn’t listen to what I wanted. He told me what I should want because that’s what everyone else wanted. Fionn was all smoke and mirrors when it boiled down to it. He didn’t know who he was, what he wanted out of life, anything other than the throne. Even that he’d only taken because his twin had it first.”

Donnacha had known men like that before. He wasn’t particularly fond of them, but they seemed to do well in life. Their wives were always happy, but Elva wasn’t the kind of woman to settle for mere happiness when bliss was just out of her reach.. “And?”

“And eventually I realized the man I was sleeping with had turned into someone else,” she replied. She turned toward him, looking him dead in the eyes with a cold gaze. “I didn’t tell him. Any of it. I didn’t tell him that I’d fallen out of love or I didn’t want him to touch me anymore. I endured. That’s what women are supposed to do, aren’t they? I endured for years.”

“Until you couldn’t take it anymore.”

She shook her head, nothing but dull cold reflecting her eyes. “No. Someone else