“My lord, I’ll do my best!” A gurgle sounded from my unfed stomach. I closed my eyes, feeling abruptly overcome by it all.
“There are details you’ve kept from me?”
My mouth twisted with the need to frame the wordno. “Yes, my lord.”
“Then you’ll tell me everything now, and if afterwards I ask that question again and receive the same answer, my good friend Benedict will have the time of his wooden life in your mouth, and no amount of ‘please, my lord’s will stop it.” The sorcerer seemed to enjoy mimicking my voice, though there was no way I sounded that high-pitched.
With reluctant nausea, I relayed everything that Glenda had shared the previous morning. I even included the bit about my eyelashes. At the end of it, the mad sorcerer assumed a thoughtful, distant look. His jaw moved as he chewed the inside of his cheek. “And that’s everything?”
“It is,” I confirmed warily.
Merulo surprised me first by giggling, then convulsing with shrill laughter. He wiped at his eye with a long, pale finger. “So I don’t need you alive at all.”
“Oh, that is entirely the wrong conclusion,” I cried, spine rigid against the stone wall. “My lord, here you have a strapping young knight, completely ostracized from everyone who might oppose you, at your beck and call. I’d be loyal until the day I die because, quite frankly, everyone else wants to slit my throat and sculpt me a statue! And I have no strong feelings about statues, all that time and effort for something birds shit on, no thanks, so please, consider allowing me to assist in your assault on God.”
Time passed with torturous slowness as the sorcerer stared into nothing, his eye flashing, muttering instructions under his breath. When he returned to me, Merulo’s voice sounded distracted, dismissive. “You’d betray your comrades, your family, your . . . entire world and civilization? Even that elf girl, what’s her name—Glenda?”
“Absolutely.” I nodded with enthusiasm, dismissing thoughts of my animal-loving brother.
“Then there’s a situation in which you’d betray me. It probably wouldn’t take much. Answer me now,” he commanded, “or I’ll bring Benedict into the conversation.”
I grimaced and spoke in as quiet a voice as the seal would allow. “I would . . . betray you. To save myself.”
“Then we’re done talking.” He swirled that expensive black cloak and marched to the door.
Metal cut into my wrists and ankles as I pulled, frantic. “No, no, come on—Merulo, please, you owe me, they would have defeated ‘the mad sorcerer’ but I came to you instead, you OWE ME!”
Merulo halted. He may have been genuinely moved by my invocation of ‘tit for tat,’ but I suspected it was pre-planned fordramatic effect. This suspicion strengthened as his sickly face turned in the fire-lit gloom, and I saw nothing but malice. “Well. I can’t exactly send you back into the woods as you are. Hmm.” He smiled then, all oily and pleased with himself, and I felt sick to my stomach. “Your physical description, in this vision of the future, came quite detailed. Down to the ‘girlish’ eyelashes. I can’t help but think . . .”
CHAPTER 6
In Which Glenda the Elf Has a Lovely Cup of Tea at Her Friend’s Cottage and Most Certainly Isn’t a Bigot Regardless of What Anyone Says, because Honestly, That’s Such a Serious Word to Throw Around, and Anyone Who Understands the Situation Would Recognize It Was Unwarranted, and Really, She Should Just Stop Thinking About It because She Doesn’t Need that Stress in Her Life Right Now.
And then he called me a bigot,” Glenda said in a hushed voice. “Can you believe it?”
Her elven companion raised a teacup to her lips and slurped delicately. “That’s so stupid. People are attracted to the sort of people they grow up around, and like, can we help being raised with other elves?”
“Exactly!” Glenda slammed an open palm on the table, rattling her own teacup. Sunlight pooled honey-like beneath the cottage window, illuminating the veins in her pale blue skin. “And what’s wrong with having a preference? If he said ‘Oh, I only like girls with brown hair,’ nobody would give a crap. But publicly state you don’t date humans, and people lose their minds!”
“You can’t help who you’re attracted to,” Cerulina soothed, silver bracelets tinkling as she took another sip. “And it’s not like we think they’re inferior.”
“Right, right. Like, I have so many human friends. You can think people are different from you without it being a negative thing. Like, take education.” The elf’s ringed fingers hovered over the plate of sugared biscuits that rested on the table between them.
“Education!” Cerulina echoed. “It’s not their fault, obviously, but how can we be expected to relate to someone who can’t play a single woodwind instrument? Like, at least string a lyre or something.”
“I don’t want to be rude, but the guy is barely literate.” Glenda lowered her voice to a whisper. “He can’t readanyof the forbidden languages. I asked him once, and get this, he said, ‘Which ones are forbidden again?’”
Cerulina brought a hand to her mouth in faux shock. “Oh my God, he didn’t. That is hilarious.”
“Right? Like, for attraction, there needs to be some level of . . . of feeling like you’re with a peer. Not that I think any less of humans,” Glenda added hurriedly.
“Of course not.”
Both elves sipped their tea. In the calm cottage air, far enough from the outpost village to keep noise to a minimum, but close enough for morning walks to the market, birds cackled and sang.
“It’s not their fault. It’s just how things are. And that doesn’t make me a bigot, for God’s sake.” Glenda considered the confectionaries. The plate was cleverly shaped like a leaf, and this time she chose a biscuit from its stem. She nibbledat it, a hand cupped underneath her chin to catch crumbs.
“Of course not. That was a stupid, stupid thing for him to say.” Cerulina lowered her teacup to the table with a clink, scrunching her brow in exaggerated concern. “So, how’s . . . ?”
