Page 18 of I Destroyed the Elf Prince's Harem

“They removed all our weapons while we were unconscious,” Nylian said before I could finish.

“Well, since you’re out of options…” an unfamiliar female voice drawled from somewhere above us. I flopped around like a landed fish, trying to locate the speaker, but I was still having trouble rolling over. “How much would you be willing to pay for us to get you out of here?”

“A hundred gold pieces,” Nylian shot at our possible savior without a breath of hesitation.

“Five,” the woman countered.

“Two-fifty.”

“Are you fucking serious? Why are you negotiating?” I hissed. I scooted along the ground until I was next to Nylian and hit my forehead on his hip. “Just agree, so we can get out of here.”

“Rogues, who would charge for a rescue rather than gracefully accepting a reward after the fact, should not be paid their initial asking price,” Nylian replied in a stiff and prim tone.

“Four,” the voice from the trees stated.

“Three-fifty and that’s my final offer,” Nylian stated with a little extra bite.

There was a long sigh. The sound grew closer to us as our would-be savior climbed down the tree. “Fine, but if you get yourself captured again as we’re trying to get away, you’re on your own.”

“That will be a problem for Lockhart, I’m sure.”

“Fuck off, elf,” I growled. Not that he was wrong. I was the troublemaker. “I believe that nonsense at the inn was your mess. Not mine. I saved your ass.”

“Good to know we’re taking turns.”

There was a soft rustle behind me and a tug on the ropes at my wrists. I jerked around to see who was there, but before I could get a good view, my hands were free and I was falling onto my back. Above me, with a wide grin and short, floppy brown hair, was a woman with enormous dark eyes and round cheeks like plums. She winked at me and moved to my ankles, where she cut away the rope binding me.

“How are we coming, Jasper?” she called out in a low voice as she stepped over my legs to cut off the rope at Nylian’s ankles.

“Um…well…maybe not as good as I’d hoped,” someone stammered somewhere in the blackness behind me. There was the sudden sound of pages being turned frantically. “Maybe…maybe we should try to get out of here more quickly, Addie.”

The woman paused as she moved toward Nylian’s bound wrists, closed her eyes, and shook her head as if she were praying for some kind of inner strength to see her through. I didn’t recognize the names right off, but I honestly didn’t care who they were.

I shoved upright and rubbed my wrists, wincing as a rush of pins and needles accompanied the sudden renewed blood flow into my limbs. The splitting headache I’d been cringing through was now playing second fiddle to other aches and pains cropping up.

“Have you seen our weapons?” Nylian demanded, hopping to his feet the moment the woman finished cutting away his bindings. My hopping attempts were more of a stagger. The pins and needles that had invaded my arms were now flowing south to my hips and legs. In a second, I would feel nothing but pain. Fucking ogres.

“Over there, near the mouth of the cave.” The woman pointed as an angry roar rushed out of the dark opening, followed by the pounding of footsteps. “Shit! Time’s up. Jasper, you’re gonna have to do something. Anything!”

While Nylian darted to the cave to steal our weapons back, I turned at the sound of someone moving through the woods behind me to see a young man who couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen dressed in a baggy purple robe. He awkwardly balanced a giant book on his left hand while he flipped through the pages.

Holy shit, Jasper was a wizard!

“I think…maybe…this…” He mumbled, squinting at the print in the shitty light cast by a tiny white ball that floated over his shoulder.

Or, more accurately, a wizard in training. I wasn’t entirely sure if our luck had improved. We were free, but the ogres were racing toward us and our “saviors” were a sneaky woman and a newbie wizard.

The first ogre emerged from the cave and wildly swung his cudgel at Nylian. The elf easily slid under it and kept running at me. He tossed me my cloak wrapped around my sword, not stopping for a breath.

“We’ll leave the ogres to you!” Nylian called out. “Let’s go, Lockhart!”

I pivoted on the balls of my feet and chased after him, narrowly dodging trees in the growing darkness. “We’re just leaving them?”

“They’ve got to earn their three hundred and fifty gold pieces somehow.”

Okay, I couldn’t argue with that, but Jasper was still a kid, and that Addie didn’t appear to be a lot older. How were they going to beat a group of ogres?

The thought had barely crossed my mind when an enormous explosion sent a tremor through the forest floor and knocked me forward under its force. I glanced over my shoulder to see what the fuck had happened, only to run directly into Nylian, who’d stopped. The elf caught me, and we spun briefly, clinging to each other as we attempted to keep our feet rather than hitting the ground yet again.

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