Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
I stared at him, certain that my ears deceived me. “What?”
He gestured at my harp. “I crafted that harp while I was interning with elves. Rook was part of that construct I used to enter their ranks. Of course, I was fully spelled to have a more elven appearance, but the basis was Rook. It took a great deal of effort to transform into something with so much less mass, but it is useful for many different occasions.”
“You’re not Rook.”
He smiled and ate a sliver of lamb. “This is perfectly done. Driver is one of my inspirations. He can do absolutely anything, including cook the most delicate elven dish, so why couldn’t other ogres? Particularly me. I always had a moderately good ear, but it took a century to develop a good tone. Ogres have too many vocal chords, so tone is a challenge.”
I stared at him. “You aren’t Rook.”
He pointed at me. “You spelled me to speak the truth, did you not?”
“But Rook…” I twisted my hands while I stared at him, searching for signs of the genius luthier who I’d slept with. This guy was so perfectly ogre, from his tusks made for goring to his hands made for ripping heads off bodies and bowling with them.
“Rook wrote the piece you played while he was living among the elves, playing the role so he could learn all their secrets.”
“An ogre spy? That was your motivation? Not making music?”
He smiled, and those teeth made the idea seem ridiculous. What ogre would hide among elves for the music of it? “Rook wrote the piece you played in the shop to demonstrate your abilities, and I was unable to resist the song. Do you understand?”
I frowned at him. “No, I don’t understand. Why would some Prince heir run around pretending to be a luthier? Can’t you hire people for that? How could you make instruments like that if you don’t like music?”
“I love music. Rook wrote the piece you played for him, for me, and I sang my part with you.”
He kept repeating, like Rook…Wait! Rook wrote the most obscure, difficult piece of elven music known, well, barely known to man? He’d written it? “You’re a composer? What else did Luthiel Slandriil write? Cantabile for spring? You’re saying that you wrote that too?” It was one of the most popular elven musical pieces for the quartet.
He hesitated, then nodded, lips slightly tilted, like I was amusing him. Of course I was. He was just some prince heir who ran around spying on musicians and then out musicianing them. I stood up and started pacing. Well, if that’s what the ogre prince was, some genius composer and luthier, then maybe me being an ogre wasn’t that big of a deal. Clearly, people just didn’t understand what ogres really were, so all my fear at being an ogre was simply based on a lack of knowledge.
He stood up and moved slowly towards me, eyes gleaming while he studied me. This wasn’t the truth I wanted, no, but it was too late to be picky. I stopped my pacing to stare up at him. “You’re saying that Driver spelled me when I was a child, like you’re spelled to become Rook? Am I actually some seven foot tall, green-skinned female?”
“No. The skin, yes, your skin would not be quite so golden, but the shape and size of you were not altered. That would have been an impossible spelling considering children and growth patterns. You should eat more.” He snagged some sushi and held it to my lips.
I mean, it was sushi. I opened my mouth and let him feed me. Rook’s monster form was just as careful and precise as his other one. “I have green skin?”
“Where your skin is most pale, it has a green cast, like a shimmer of pearlescent, not matte like…” he held up his own hand so we could stare at the pale blue.
“I’d think the prince heir’s skin would be darker blue. You’re much paler.”
“The darkness of the green, or blue, does not indicate how much of an ogre he is. It does show the tribe, though.”
“Ah. So, Driver is a different tribe than you?”
“Yes, although his original tribe was absorbed by several others.”
I nodded, like that made sense, but my thoughts were still spinning. “You aren’t Rook.”
“I am, and Rook wrote the song you played, so compellingly, so perfectly, that I could not resist singing my part.”
I stared at him. That was the fourth time he mentioned composing that piece. Why did he think that was important? Wasn’t there some tribe that had some traditions about heart songs? I stumbled away from him while the enormity of the situation lurked around the corners of my mind.
“I played your heart song?” I whispered.
He nodded soberly. “And I could not resist. You played very, very well, Mirabel. I’ve never heard anyone capture every perfect subtle nuance nearly so well as you. And more. You infused it with emotion from the depths of your heart, your soul, the strength and courage of the angel, the complex dynamics and understanding of the elf, and the raw truth and sincerity of the ogre. You played my heart’s song, and I accepted it.”
My heart was roiling in my chest, like an electric eel had gotten loose in my chest cavity, zapping everything right and left. “Hirtox? That’s your tribe?”
“My mother’s, yes. That’s where I get my good ear. You really have done research.”
“Yes, I was trying to understand the shirt thing.” I stared at him. “I still don’t understand the shirt thing.”
“Many females have worn my clothing in hopes of gaining my heart.”
“Gaining your heart? Sounds like sushi. Goes right to my heart.” I rubbed my own chest while I stared at the sushi boat. “So, you pinned them to the door and bit their necks, like you did to me? To show that they didn’t get your heart?”
“I ran away and tried to keep my clothing in a more secure location.”
“Ah.” I stared at the enormous ogre, who was somehow once again much closer to me than he should be. “You’re afraid of women?”
He nodded soberly. “They are terrifying. One moment you have a political cause that gives you purpose along with music, which gives you pleasure, and then one female starts playing your heart song and your entire world shifts until that one, terrifyingly vulnerable creature is absolutely everything.”
I stared at him. He stared back.
“Um,” I started, but I had no idea what to say. “So, you accidentally got caught up in some tradition that you don’t want? Time to make a new tradition.” I nodded my head firmly.
He smiled. “I am open to any traditions that you would like to make with me.” His low voice was definitely a seductive rumble. Definitely. My one-quarter ogre was in a puddle on the floor, but I had a lot of other conflicting feelings.
Happily, I had other concerns that I couldn’t forget about, however weird things were. “You’ve been using me for propaganda since I was five, so all these attacks on my life are from your enemies?”
He hesitated. “Possibly.”
“Possibly? Who else could it be?”
He rubbed his chin. “There are other factions among your father’s enemies, as well as…” He eyed me. “You’re beautiful. Perfect precisely as you are, but some elves would be appalled at your existence, the existence of you mother, half elf, half ogre, particularly if the elf parent in question was someone in a position of authority that he would lose if it were known how he spent his time with his captive ogre warrior princess.”
I stared at him while all these new horrifying ideas crashed around inside my brain. My mom’s father, the elf in me, might want me dead? “Ogre princess? You know who my grandma is?”
He nodded soberly. “She wore my shirt once.”
I blinked at him. “You ran away from her.”
“Very quickly.”
“She didn’t want my mother, or she would have been raised with ogres instead of dumping her at the casino where she was born.”
“It is still the tradition in some tribes to abandon small children, but there is also some anti-elf sentiment that may have come into play.”
I nodded while my heart ached for my mom, rejected by both of her parents, both of her kind. And my dad, when he found out she’d been hiding the ogre half of her… “She must have had a lot of magic to be able to hide her ogre for so long.”
“Yes. I believe your grandfather is one of the most gifted elven magic users.”
I stared at him. “You know who he is.”
“Yes. Only one warlord took an ogre princess captive.”
“Who is he?”
He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not? You’ve been eager to tell me everything else. I didn’t need to enspell you at all, did I?”
“Of course you did. It goes against my ethics as well as my interest in your well-being to keep painful truths from you.”
“So, you think that knowing who my grandfather is would be a painful truth? Is it Tiago?”
He blinked at me. “Was he a warlord? I was unaware.”
I shoved his chest, but instead of him moving anywhere, his hands slid over mine, pinning them in place while his eyes burned down into me, like he was looking at my soul, memorizing every piece of it so he could compose something brilliant.
He was really one of the greatest elven composers of all time? My heart beat faster as I stared at him. His heart beat faster as my palms pressed against them, as he gazed at me, his head lowering, those enormous tusks…
I broke away and turned to the side. “I can’t?—“
He lunged at me, so fast, his body covering mine as he knocked me to the ground.
The taste of blood filled my mouth as I bit my tongue, but then Driver darted past us, roaring an ogre attack roar, which was soon echoed by other ogres.
“So sorry,” the ogre who thought he was Rook rumbled as he sank more of his weight on top of me. His words were already slurring. This was definitely not an attack on my virtue, but of another assassin trying to kill me.
I gritted my teeth and twisted, slipping out from under him. His pale blue was going gray very rapidly, spreading from the silver metal sticking out of his back. It was elven, poisoned and spelled, sucking his life and energy out of him even as it infected him with a very fast-acting poison.
And Magr-Rook had taken that arrow to save me. Rage ripped through me, making my mind clear for the first time in a week. How much of my spelled food had he eaten? I’d never used magic to compel him to truth. He’d just spoke of his own volition, so there should be threads of my magic still woven through his large body. My grandfather, who might be the one hiring assassins to kill me, was a great magic user.
I grabbed my harp, cut my palm deep until my blood dripped onto the strings, and then I plucked as hard as I could. The sound came to life, and I held it there, hovering above me, pulling it into shape, gold, fluid, raw energy of sound made real. I willed that golden sound mixed with my blood down to splat on his back over the dagger.
Flames erupted from his back, burning the weapon and the poison out of him.
He screamed, because being burned like that was apparently painful, even for an ogre. Good. That meant he wasn’t dead. I pulled on the magic threads inside of him, squeezing the cells until his gasps took the place of screams.
I sang the poison out of his veins while the fire in his back sputtered and went out, having burned the weapon to dust. That dust would probably give him a rash, but there were worse things. He curled up in the fetal position, moaning while I pulled the poison from his veins, agonizing pain until finally, he threw up.
Yam brains were even worse coming up than going down, but somehow I kept my focus, and pulled more and more poison out of him. He kept throwing up, until my magic went out, and he finally collapsed, not quite in the poisonous brain pudding.
Driver and his men gathered around.
I pointed at the prince heir who must have personality crises on a regular basis. “Carry him to my bed.”
Driver moved at once to take the massive ogre’s shoulder, grunting at the effort. Three other ogres stepped up, hauling him up, and then moving past me to my room. I followed quickly. That balcony should have been impermeable to assassin attacks, but the arrow had gone right through my shield. I didn’t need to worry, because glancing back, my balcony was lined with ogres, a physical barrier that would stop a bomb.
Good.
The bed creaked when Driver and the others dropped the ogre prince to the bed. I went to check his pulse, but the world spun around me dizzyingly. I needed to find my own bed to crawl into. I turned to leave, but he snatched my wrist and pulled me so I sprawled over his back, still blistering and oozing like you’d expect from someone who’d had an elven assassin arrow burned out of him.
I scrambled, trying to find purchase on his large, smooth skin without getting my hair into his open wound. He needed someone to dress it. Some ogres didn’t believe in treating wounds, but I assumed the prince heir wouldn’t deny something as practical as getting help to heal if he composed pretentious elven music. Finally, I rolled off him on the side of the bed that he wasn’t fully occupying. Somehow, he didn’t take up the whole thing. I knew that it had felt too big for only one person.
He was looking at me, even though he made no effort to move, and his eyes were slightly glazed. “Rest. Magic tired. Stay.” He put one arm over me and then closed his eyes, probably passing out. That was the sensible thing to do when you’d had an assassin’s arrow burned out of you.
You couldn’t pull out an elven weapon. They were almost always spelled to explode into shrapnel if you tried. Good thing I’d spent time in weapons history classes learning all about it. I closed my eyes. What if my elven grandfather was really trying to kill me? Magr’d never told me his name, and he’d been shot right before he’d gotten the chance. Did it really make that much difference? What’s in a name?
Rook the Luthier. Had I actually played out courtship rituals with the prince heir in his clever disguise? “At least you never told me you liked my scent,” I mumbled.
He tightened his arm around me. “Like scent,” he rumbled low, apparently not entirely passed out, but close.
I giggled because this was just so impossibly ludicrous. Lanise came in and started cutting the flesh out of the prince heir’s back. He didn’t scream, didn’t grunt, even though he was conscious. She was incredibly capable at meticulous surgery, and then she ordered her assistant, some faceless ogre I didn’t know, to give her various oils, potions, and herbs, that she treated his wound with before packing it with herbs and then bandaging it. Her bandage was a miracle of neatness.
She turned her gaze to me, and I felt guilty for absolutely no reason. She was the reason I hadn’t died from the goblin attack. Well, her and Rook. She was a really competent medic, doctor, whatever you called an ogre who specialized in healing. Irritated. You called her irritated.
“Rest. Stay.”
“Sure thing. Lanise, did you ever put on Rook’s shirt?”
Her eyes widened in shock and horror before she narrowed her gaze and bared her tusks and teeth at me. “Uncle. Not court.”
“He’s your uncle, hm? That’s so…”
She knocked me out. I’m not sure how, but one second I’m having a perfectly enjoyable conversation, and the next I’m floating on dreams of music mixed with sushi. And ogre. My ogre.