answered a moment later from the other side of the dense stand of spruces and pines.
The troll prince halted her a few yards short of the trees. He spoke with a thick accent, but the troll dialect was still close enough to elvish to be understandable. “I don’t believe the guard post will be a problem.”
That meant the trolls had crossed the border and killed the elves at the post. A raid. The very thing she had sacrificed Farrendel to the trolls to prevent.
Melantha yanked her arm free of his grip. “You promised peace. You promised no more raids.”
“Once we had Laesornysh.” Prince Rharreth crossed his arms. “We are not in Kostaria yet.”
She glared. That was not the bargain she had struck, and he knew it.
The tramping of boots came from the forest a moment before a line of trolls marched from the trees. At their head strode a tall troll wearing a circlet formed of carved deer antlers gilt with gold.
Melantha stumbled back a step. What was the troll king doing here at the head of a small army? This was not at all what she had bargained for.
The troll king’s gaze snapped to Prince Rharreth. “Did you secure him?”
“Yes.” Prince Rharreth motioned behind him.
One of the remaining trolls who had traveled with Prince Rharreth hauled Farrendel’s limp form from the train, his hands bound with stone behind his back. The stone wrapped around his arms up to his shoulders. The troll dumped him on the ground in front of the troll king.
The only reaction from Farrendel was a moan. The trolls had used a chemical they had been given by the humans to keep him unconscious during the train ride across Tarenhiel.
Melantha looked away. The pang in her chest could not be guilt. She refused to let it be guilt.
It had been far easier to agree to this plan when she had thought she would simply walk away at the Tarenhieli-Escarlish border, and Farrendel would just be...gone.
The last surviving troll marched Thanfardil from the train. Thanfardil’s dark blond hair was still spattered with dirt and the blood from a shrapnel cut along his scalp. Thanfardil had been the elf in charge of the train schedules in all of Tarenhiel. He had recruited Melantha for this mission and convinced her that the trolls would leave Tarenhiel alone once they had been avenged.
King Charvod of the trolls swept his gaze over them. He did not remark on the fact that he had sent a force of twelve trolls, and only three had returned. Perhaps, as they had been sent to capture Laesornysh, three was more than the troll king had been expecting to return. “Have you already disposed of the human princess?”
Melantha grimaced. Farrendel’s human wife—a second cause of scandal—had gotten away. She was not supposed to. She, even more than Farrendel, was supposed to be dead.
Prince Rharreth bowed his head. “Laesornysh was not taken down easily. During the fight, she got away.”
“I see.” King Charvod’s thick brow lowered, his dark eyes flashing against his pale, gray skin.
Melantha swallowed. She needed to get out of here while she still could. She straightened her spine. “You have Laesornysh, as we agreed. If that will be all, I will take my leave.”
She spun on her heels, intending to march off into the forest if she had to. As the train was still filled with the dead trolls Prince Rharreth had insisted on taking with them, she could not take that, even if Thanfardil could also get away to conduct it for her.
A hand closed over her arm, yanking her back to Prince Rharreth’s side. He glared at her. “Where do you believe you are going? Your brother knows you betrayed your kingdom. You have nowhere left to go.”
Surely that was not the case. Would Weylind really believe the word of a human over Melantha?
But this was Farrendel. Weylind was oddly attached, considering Farrendel’s inconvenient existence continued to taint his reign and their father’s legacy.
“Then their identities have been compromised.” King Charvod gestured from her to Thanfardil. “They are no further use to us.”
Wait, what did that—
King Charvod grabbed a rifle from the troll nearest him, pointed it at Thanfardil, and fired.
Even as the gunshot echoed, Thanfardil staggered, blood blossoming. He collapsed in a limp heap on the ground.
Melantha pressed her hand over her mouth, unable to completely stifle her shriek. When she glanced up from Thanfardil toward King Charvod, she found the black, smoking muzzle of the gun pointed at her.
Her heart