Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
I woke up to angels singing, specifically one, right next to me, and it was the same song he’d sung to wake me up as long as I could remember.
I reached over and put my hand over my brother’s mouth, trying to stop the sound, but he just gave me a high five, and then squeezed my fingers painfully enough that I sat up, awake. I’d been having the nicest dream about Rook, picnicking on a mountain with a beautiful waterfall on the left, birds singing, me playing my harp while he lay, head propped on his elbow, and wrote music that I’d get to play before anyone else.
Waking up to my brother lounging on my bed was incredibly annoying. Also sweet, and brought back so many memories. He was singing, so I joined in my traditional part about wanting to go back to sleep while he sang about all the wonderful things to do today. Rabbits to chase, waterfalls to leap through, and, of course, music to play. By the end of the song, my part shifted to take his tune while he shifted to the overlay. Thinking about doing all of that made him sleepy while I was awake and ready to go.
It ended with him falling on his face and snoring loudly into my pillow. Laughing, I hit him with my other pillow.
“You’re so immature.”
He sat up and smiled his perfect angelic smile at me. “I am. That’s why I need you, my wise, sober, responsible younger sister. Seriously, I’m here to offer you a deal.”
I held my breath for a second while I studied him. “What kind of deal?” It could be anything, from offering to dispose of my ogre suitor along with the rest of his people, to directing the goblin choir.
“Hm. You have so much to do today, so I shouldn’t beat around the bush, but it’s so fun to tease you. I guess I’ll have to tease you twice as much later to make up for the lack of time today. When you left the lions, was it because Gavriel rejected you?”
I stared at him. How was this a deal? His eyes were piercing, but serious. Very serious. He really was putting off the teasing until tomorrow. “Yes.” Was it? My answer surprised myself, but he only nodded like that’s what he expected.
“Right. That’s what it looked like. The thing is, last night, I saw the way you looked at the ogre. Everyone saw the way that you looked at the ogre. I’m hearing wedding bells, if I’m not mistaken. The thing is, ogres don’t do wedding bells. They do war cannons. You know this better than anyone else, but you’re lost in the foggy soup of love, or lust, or both, heaven help you. Ogres aren’t known for their vows of enduring love, probably because they don’t believe in it. So, if this relationship you seem intent on pursuing ends in betrayal and misery, I want you to come home instead of running off to another lost cause that you can resurrect. That’s my deal. I will support you in this recklessness if you swear to come back when it ends.”
I stared at him while my heart pounded. Did I care about having my brother’s support? Of course I did. I’d absolutely idolized him my whole life, and running away from home had been the hardest, most bleak and miserable time in my life, but I was stubborn, like him. “Rich, I’m a quarter ogre.”
He nodded like he knew that, too.
“You knew?” I hit him with the pillow, harder that time.
He laughed and caught the pillow, throwing it out the window. Ah, the open window was how he got in. How had he got rid of Lanise? Angels were so tricky. “Of course I knew. I was there when you were born, all peaches and green. You were so pretty, and of course your mom was all green and tusked at the end without her glamour. She screamed a lot. I was hiding behind the curtains, so I saw her die, saw dad cut you out of her, and the way he looked at you, like you were a holy miracle, he hasn’t ever stopped looking at you like that. You broke his heart when you disappeared. Losing your mom was hard enough on him, but having his miracle, it kept him functioning. Now he's just an empty husk of a man.”
“His war record is more pristine than ever. It’s like without me to distract him, he can focus on strategy.”
He knuckled my hair. “No, it’s like he doesn’t have anything else to keep living for.”
“Your melodrama never stops.”
“Mira, seriously, he misses you. He loved having you home between your harping and your running away to be an iterant musician. I miss you. When I told him I found you, that you were safe, I think it added five years to his life. Just promise that you’ll come home if this romancing the ogre ends in disaster, and you’ll have my complete support.”
“It’s not going to end in disaster.” What else could it possibly be?
“Then you don’t have to worry about it.”
“I don’t want to get married off to a lion. I’m an ogre. I don’t belong with one of your golden friends.”
“Mm. Quarter ogre doesn’t make you an ogre. You’re more angelic than most of the ranks of HOST, speaking purely of bloodlines, because heaven knows that you’re the most stubborn, mischievous, music-obsessed creature ever to crawl the earth.”
“Now I’m crawling? You knew this whole time that I was an ogre?”
He pulled an orange out of his shirt and started peeling it. “Sure. Why do you think I defended them every time you came storming in from a battle where one of them had dared sniff you instead of being properly cowed by your magnificent fierceness? They were smelling the ogre in you. They couldn’t help it.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Of course not. You always felt like you didn’t fit in. You actually get that from our dad. He never feels like he fits in anywhere, which is why he’s such an excellent commander. Having that position of authority, isolation, it’s fine because he’s a weird-shaped island that only lets his family close. We are his family, so promise.”
“What’s the promise of an ogre?”
He raised a brow at me.
“Fine. I swear on my angel blood that I will come home if my situation here ends in disaster.”
He cut my hand with a huge dagger, then his own, and we were doing the blood brother thing. Never mind that we weren’t brothers. After the promise I’d made on my burning blood was sealed, literally, our wounds healing up instantaneously, he handed me half of his peeled orange and rolled off the bed.
“Good. I thought you’d go on and on about how your love was eternal and he’d never betray you, because he was heaven on earth, but you’re sensible.”
“Of course.”
He grinned at me. “Good luck with the Jubilee today. You’re going to have a migraine by the time it’s over.”
He was not wrong. As soon as he left, Lanise barged into my room, eyes shooting fire at the window. “Vile angel.”
“Did you let your guard down because he’s so pretty? Let that be a lesson for you, Lanise. All that glitters is not gold, and just because it has wings doesn’t mean it’s an angel.”
She growled and set my breakfast tray next to me on my bed before wandering off, muttering to herself like a crazy ogre.
I ate quickly, and soon enough Driver was taking our car through the heavy traffic until we reached the area around the stadium. I saw vampires beneath parasols and goblins in suits, as well as werewolves on skateboards. They weren’t waiting for nightfall to come and celebrate.
At ten a.m. I was on the platform with the mayor while the reporter he was blackmailing took photos, then there was the small mixed choir singing Singsong city’s theme, but a new version, the one that had won the composition competition I’d thrown together a week ago. A cute werewolf girl had won, but there had only been three submissions. Hers was the most legible. Still, it was fun to hear a more aggressive take on the theme, with some electric guitars and drums to follow up Balry’s extremely classical concert the night before. Yes, we were serious about including Song in the festivities.
After that, the mayor gave a speech while I left the stage to check on the next group of musicians, young elves that Tiago had been giving private lessons to, but who had been pushed into a public performance by their parents.
One of the girls was distraught because she’d broken a string on her violin. I pulled one of the extra instruments tucked under the main platform for the purpose and got her set up. The rest of the day went like that, small disasters, like broken strings, and large disasters, like a fairy girl who was part of a dance troupe that would perform while the orchestra played, punched a goblin, and the two girls had to be pulled apart by an ogre. The ogre casually cracked their heads together and tossed them away. Of course, fairies and goblins had notoriously hard heads, but the way they were reeling afterwards, and the fact that the fairy girl didn’t do so great at her dance, showed that the ogre used too much force. Still, it set the tone. We would not tolerate violence. Ogres kept the peace very well, however ironic it was to use ogre and peace in one sentence.
All day, Rich’s words kept playing through my head. The only time it completely stopped was when I stood with the crowd at the edge of Rook the Luthier’s large booth while he demonstrated how he crafted a drum. I watched his hands, listened to his voice, and all the seeds of doubt Rich had planted were swept away.
The first goblin performance was extremely notable, mostly in their absolute technical perfection, and their absolute lack of emotional expression. It didn’t help that the piece was the most monotonous thing they could have picked. The adult elves performed after the goblins, and it was so breathtakingly emotional, pulling at all the variations of feelings through tone and mood.
The Goblin Authority stood beside me, arms crossed as he glared at the elves. “They aren’t as accurate.”
“Even though they are incredibly pretentious and picked that piece just to showcase their trills and arpeggios, they know how to manipulate emotion. Elves are masters of manipulating emotion, and when it comes down to it, that’s what entertainment is about, fueling emotions.”
He glanced at me, nodded slightly and went back to studying the musicians.
“It’s all right to express emotions sometimes,” I said.
He jerked his head. “The priority is maintaining control. When your ogres sing with some expression, then I’ll know that we’re going to war.”
I’d heard Rook sing with more than some expression, and he hadn’t been going to war. Unless I was the war he was trying to win. Why would he want to? Yes, he needed to keep the face of his cause alive, but he could have delegated Driver to watch my back in the first place. He’d personally taken that wall for me. Did he not realize that I’d be at the mayor’s office on that fateful day?
By the last concert, I was buzzing with music and with irritation. I was performing with Tiago and three other musicians from the music hall who had truly gone above and beyond, as far as getting out of their comfort zone. Teaching werewolves to sing was not for the timid.
The singing teacher, Macky, a brownie or gnome, something like that, and I wasn’t going to ask, gave me a tight smile. We hadn’t rehearsed as much as she’d like, and she didn’t trust my ability to duet with her adequately. My philosophy of making it up if worst came to worst probably didn’t help. All the musicians had different philosophies, different styles, but it wouldn’t matter. It would come together.
The piece was complex, and the voice parts were woven between my harp and Tiago’s classical guitar. I drew the music around me, weaving it with my voice and harp until the air was brighter, beauty, grace, with an underlying playful energy that I leaned into. I needed some fun, so I would have it, whether or not Macky the brownie-gnome approved. I forgot about the audience, the politicians, and became lost under the wave of pure, delightful harmony. I drew it out as long as I could, but eventually the resolution came, and with it, silence.
I sighed heavily as the last note faded into profound silence, and then the crashing applause struck me like a baseball bat. The ogres roared their wall of sound while the general populace added to the furor.
I glanced at Tiago with my brow raised. Hopefully the ogres wouldn’t forget that we weren’t at war right here, right now. I stood along with the other musicians, bowed, and then I tried to leave the stage. I had things to do before I could get to bed, and it was already late. Tiago pulled me back on the stage, where I stood feeling awkward while the crowd applauded.
I gestured at the other musicians, but they were looking at me. Macky had an accusing look in her eyes, like I’d fooled her. Had I? Of course not.
I smiled at the crowd, bowed again and then left the stage, dragging Tiago with me because he wouldn’t let go of my arm.
“Where are you going?” he demanded as I crawled under the stage, searching for the basket I’d put the strings in. It was very dark under there.
I didn’t answer, but found it and pulled it out, turning to Tiago. “Your D string. I need to meet up with Delphi and find out what went wrong and what we can do to fix it, so tomorrow goes more smoothly.”
“But the audience is still applauding,” Tiago pointed out, like I couldn’t hear them. “You’re going to have to go out and do an encore.”
I stared at him in the weird stadium lighting. “That could go on all night.”
“Could it? Then perhaps you shouldn’t put quite so much magic in your music. Come on, Music Master. You mustn’t let down your audience.”
“It’s not my audience,” I protested, but let him nudge me back up the steps and onto the stage.
I waved and then plucked two strings on my harp. The crowd immediately went silent. I glanced at Tiago, and he smiled and nodded encouragingly. I needed to play something that the audience wouldn’t connect to. Usually that was the Dirge of Malevolence, but Rook was in the audience. I wasn’t about to play his heartsong for the world to hear.
Instead, I played his Spring Canticle, and it was as easy to play as to hear. The other musicians played around me, but even though it was popular among elves, Tiago was the only elf in the music hall. He clearly knew the tune and played very well. I tried to stay above the music this time and not get lost in it, but my music hall really had some excellent musicians, and music was my weakness.
I got lost in it, turning the simple thing into an enormous beast of spring that would devour you before it melted into a harmless sweet flower. It was a weird interpretation, but I guess I was in a weird mood, what with ogres telling me we were already mated, but we could get married too, to satisfy the angel in me. Also Rich, and his ‘deal,’ come home instead of running away. Could I really go home without worrying that dad would marry me off to a lion? I missed him. I put my missing him in that song, feeling it with every beat of my heart. He was always calm, kind, and, above all, good. He could be strict, he had to be with Rich, but he also understood so much more than you’d think he could. And he’d loved me more than anyone else in the whole world had loved me.
My feelings were as uncertain and mixed up as spring, but at the same time, by the resolution, I felt better about things. Even if life wasn’t certain, the music was excellent.
I finally lowered my harp, and this time, the silence went on forever. Finally, I shrugged and left the stage, because I had things to do. I’d no sooner touched my foot on the last step but Rook was there, and he picked me up and carried me away, his eyes gleaming, lips looking soft and deliriously sweet.
“What are you doing?” I gasped as the first rumble came out of the audience behind me.
“Taking you home.”
“I can’t go back to the music hall until I’ve made sure everything’s in order.”
“You aren’t going to the music hall. I’m taking you to my shop.”
“Why?”
He glanced at me. “You played my heartsong, and I couldn’t resist. You played everyone’s heart songs tonight. There will be riots in the street for a taste of your music, body, and soul.”
“It was just Spring’s Canticle.”
He smelled so good, and the music had made me a little loopy and drunk. I hesitated and then put my face in his neck and inhaled deeply while he carried me out of the maze of tunnels that led from the back of the main platform and to the outdoors. He smelled amazing, like misty rain, and sawdust, and cozy fires. He smelled like happiness and comfort, peace, and beauty. And music. He smelled like all the best music in the world.
“I’ve never heard it played so compellingly. You put more heart and soul into your music than anything else I’ve heard,” he rumbled, so I could hear it through my whole body.
I smiled as I let him carry me, his scent surrounding me like a blanket, his strong arms holding and protecting me.