Page 11 of I Destroyed the Elf Prince's Harem

My big mouth was not helping my cause, but I had to keep pushing forward. “I might be useless in the typical ways, but I think I can prove helpful in unexpected ways. You never know.”

“Do you even listen to the nonsense that’s coming out of your mouth?”

I grinned at my companion. “Not generally. It slows me down.” I took a deep drink of my wine. Between the scalding stew and the bitter wine, my tastebuds were dead now. I refilled my glass and shook the empty bottle at the elf. “My first useful task is to get us another bottle of wine. You sit here and think about how nice it would be to have an amusing, useful friend along on this journey rather than endless days of unrelenting silence and boredom.”

With a hop, I was out of my seat and winding my way through the tavern, between the crowded tables. Most of the customers were crusty and rough men in coarse clothes or leather armor, drinking and cursing. However, there were a good number of women among them in leathers, with swords and knives at their sides. Jack would have been at home here, cursing, drinking, and laughing loudly. Georgie wouldn’t have cared for it, but she would have braved it for her girlfriend.

A pang of longing echoed through my chest for them. I wasn’t as close to Jack as I was to Georgie, but they were both my friends. Did they think I was dead? Were they hurting right now for me? Or was Georgie cursing my name because I flaked on our lunch date? If I had to choose, I would prefer to think she was angry at me. As soon as I found my way home, I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to her and Jack. I’d become an outdoor human who socialized and walked in the sunlight.

Thankfully, I had no other family to worry over me since my mom had died. My dad had disappeared from my life before I was even born, and I had no siblings to speak of.

Did my readers even care that I was missing? Well, probably not so much about me, but more about the lack of daily updates to my story. It was likely I’d been fricasseed online for my extended absence. They were going to hate me even more when I returned and changed my story completely. Things were not at all working out the way I’d originally plotted them.

But for now, I was stuck here, and I needed to make the best of it.

At the bar, I ordered another bottle of wine and paid, being careful not to use the cursed coin.

Turning back, I started toward the table I shared with Nylian, but I didn’t get more than a few steps. The elf had disappeared. Not from the room. From sight. He was lost somewhere behind a crowd of eight gigantic men who were surrounding our table.

Heart in my throat, I edged closer, trying to ignore the sudden weakness in my knees. My stomach twisted, stirring up the bad wine and overcooked stew I’d dumped in there to make a very toxic combination. When I was a few feet away, half-hidden behind a support beam, I could make out what the ringleader was saying over the general chatter of the gathered crowd.

“Your kind aren’t welcome in Misty Pass. Who do you think you are, coming through here, eating our food?” the man snarled. “Misty Pass belongs to Edros. It belongs to the humans. It’s never going to be part of Wolfrest.”

I couldn’t see Nylian through the press of meaty human flesh, but the elf didn’t say a word.

“You know, Butch,” interjected a weaselly voice near the leader. “I heard that the elf king of Wolfrest kicked out one of the princes because he killed his brother. How do we know he’s not that exiled prince? Wouldn’t we be doing the royal family a favor by getting rid of him?”

“I’m not interested in doing any elf a favor,” Butch snapped. There was a heavy pause, and I swallowed hard. “But our town don’t need no killers running around. Getting rid of this elf would make everyone safer.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Nylian was a skilled fighter, but he was surrounded and outnumbered. Of course, I’d try to help him, but as he’d so eloquently pointed out, I was useless with a sword. I didn’t want to test this body’s muscle memory when it came to fighting under these circumstances. The surrounding crowd had noticed something was wrong. There had to be at least forty people in this tavern. If a fight broke out, it was going to be pure chaos. I needed to come up with a distraction that dissolved the tension in an instant and created an opening for Nylian to escape.

My gaze searched the room for options and landed on the piano. A whine escaped my throat and my shoulders slumped. Really? This was my best option? The ghost of my sweet mother was clapping and crowing about how those years of piano lessons were finally going to pay off.

I cut across the room as fast as I could manage, jumped onto the stage, slammed the wine bottle I was still carrying on the top of the piano, and slid onto the small stool. My fingers danced across the black and yellowish-white keys, causing my eye to twitch in a few places as several of the notes were painfully off-key. At least the damn thing worked.

The noise in the room dropped in half with those few notes, but it wasn’t enough. I needed everyone’s complete attention. While my fingers aimlessly wandered across the keys, I frantically riffled through the list of songs that I could recall. It had been years since I’d played anything. The only reason I’d kept up with my piano playing in high school and college had been to impress girls. That meant my collection of memorized songs were ballads or silly, fun songs. Now was not the time for “November Rain.” This didn’t seem like a weepy-ballad crowd, and it wasn’t nearly as impressive without Slash here to back me up with a kickass guitar solo.

No, I settled on a song that was a lively drinking song that these people could probably relate to. I’d have to pray they could overlook the words that would mean nothing to them, like “movie star” and “microphone.”

After sending up a silent prayer for Billy Joel and his lawyers to never hear about my terrible cover, I lifted my voice above the last of the talking while picking out the opening notes.

“Good evening! I hope you don’t mind me singing you an old song that’s unique to my hometown, but I thought we could all use some entertainment.”

I fell into the song with more gusto than skill, grateful that my usually useless brain continued to hold all the lyrics to this song while I couldn’t remember anything that resembled important names, dates, phone numbers, and other necessities of life. The crowd grew quieter as I made it through the first verse and chorus. By the second set of la’s and chorus, people sang along with me.

This was crazy. They liked it! They really liked the song. Geez, these people were desperate for any kind of entertainment if they were willing to put up with my lackluster singing voice and fumbling fingers. My heart flipped over and heat suffused my cheeks as my fear for Nylian faded. They were all watching and singing now. Fingers danced with more skill than I thought they possessed, and no one seemed to care that the piano was horribly out of key. We were all singing at the tops of our lungs at each chorus.

Okay, so maybe this was why Billy had written this song. I got it now. The immediate gratification and feedback were addictive.

But was it so different from why I wrote books? To bring together people, make them forget about their troubles, and let them escape into something beautiful, if only for a minute?

The song itself was just over five minutes long, but it felt like it all passed in the blink of an eye. As I played the last few notes, I briefly considered slipping into some “Sweet Caroline,” but I doubted I’d get the same response out of these people as it would most Americans. Besides, distraction achieved, I hoped.

Jumping up from my seat, I twisted to find all the men who’d been harassing Nylian were watching me, and Nylian’s seat was now empty. The elf had escaped!

I snagged the bottle of wine and held it over my head in triumph, basking for a heartbeat in the thunderous applause and demands for another song. But there would be no encore. If Nylian was smart, he’d be making a break for it right now and I couldn’t let the elf ditch me.

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