Deidre huffed with annoyance.“You know I hate it when you do that,” she muttered and smoothed her braid with a hand.“I’m not a child.”
“Then don’t act like one.”His tone was no longer so firm, and his body finally relaxed into a normal stance.At Deidre’s subsequent exaggerated pout, he went as far as to smile a fraction.
She shot him a tiny smirk.“At least the arrow is out of yourbutt now.”
“Butt?Whose butt are you talking about?”a male voice boomed from nearby.Then the biggest elf I had ever encountered appeared in the doorway.
My eyes widened as I regarded him.He had waist-long green hair the color of peas.He was dressed in nothing but a tiny drape of what resembled algae over his groin, leaving fully exposed a bodybuilder-like physique that looked nothing like an elf’s.
The giant stared right back through wide-open black eyes.“Jesus, who’s this?”
“Jesus ain’t gonna save your butt, Tisvali,” Deidre quipped.“You made us wait this long and you’re still not dressed?What have you been doing since we rang the bell?”
Mr.Olympia snorted.“I was showering.How else could I wake up in the middle of the day?I fell asleep immediately after the guard told me to come over to Karim’s.”
“Go and get dressed,” Karim ordered, his serious expression back.“Now we know we will be waiting ten more minutes.”
“You don’t have to–if the Lake Lady braids my hair, I’ll be done in a jiffy.”The giant flashed Deidre a toothy smile.
She glared at him.“Borella is in there, ain’t she?”
He chortled.
“Of course.Just dying to watch us fight again, huh?”Deidre poked his left bicep with a finger bent in the middle, probably to avoid stabbing him with her extra sharp nail.“Idiot.”
“Fight?”Karim chimed in.“What have I missed?”
They seemed to have totally forgotten about me, lost in their friendly banter.Maybe I could have easily bailed, were I not so engrossed in their conversation.Then again, where could I possibly find escape in this underground maze?
“Borella found Deidre braiding my hair the other day,” Tisvali explained, his eyes sparkling with amusement.“I told her that Deidre and I have been doing this since we were much younger than thecherry seedling in the Great Cavern.But my Borella wasn’t having any of it.”
Deidre rolled her eyes.“Tisvali barely told her anything.He just stood there, laughing his hair off, while she was chasing me around with a pair of scissors.”
“You let her threaten your hair?”Karim sounded incredulous and amused at the same time.
“I was trying to explain to her what her idiot of a moss partner was supposed to tell her.”A smug smile tugged at Deidre’s lips before she added, “When trying didn’t work, I twisted the pair of scissors out of Borella’s inept hand to improve her hearing.Me shoving her face in Tisvali’s moss might have helped, too.”
“In the moss?”The corners of Karim’s mouth curled ever so slightly.“You were gentler than usual.”
Deidre shrugged.“Tisvali would have been grumpy had I introduced her face to the wall.This way I kept her nose intact so she could smell that I hadn’t been anywhere near her partner’s gross moss.”
Yet another snort from Tisvali.“I keep my moss perfectly fresh and soft, Lake Lady.You’re just jealous because yours is getting dry and cold.”
One of Deidre’s eyebrows shot up.“Maybe I should invite Kassium to freshen it up for me?”
“Sabati,sabati.” Karim shook his head, but that fraction of a smile was still there.
I found myself staring at the upward curve of his dark silvery lips despite the fact that there was a hunk of a half-naked male right in front of me.
“Go get dressed for the surface, Tisvali,” Karim instructed, “and have Borella help with your hair.We’ve wasted an hour of daylight already.”
“We’re going outside while the sun is up?Jesus… I can’t wait.”With an ecstatic look on his face, the green-haired giant went backinside.
“See, Jasmine?”Deidre noted with a smile.“Idiot.”
I couldn’t help but smile back.
She winked.Karim sighed yet again, but his expression softened as his gaze lingered on me.
