Page 33 of Ogres Don't Play

I would not be distracted by flattery. “Even enemies of your kind?”

“Particularly enemies of my kind. You’d be surprised how many wars I’ve averted with the timely gift of a fine instrument.”

“No, actually, that makes total sense. And you were watching me in case I became one of the leaders and could be manipulated by your incredibly skilled hands.” Hm. His incredibly skilled hand was still at the base of my skull, massaging the stress out of me. Maybe I shouldn’t have used those exact words.

“You owe me a life-debt.” His voice was so low, close, and I really, really wanted him to sing something. ‘You owe me a life-debt,’ could be his refrain.

“Um, yeah, but I wasn’t actually…”

He lowered his head and took my neck in his jaws.

I tensed up and then relaxed as he picked me up and carried me somewhere I didn’t care about because I lost consciousness from the pressure of his mouth. Not teeth, because he didn’t so much as scratch my skin, and his teeth were as sharp as you’d expect an ogre’s to be.

I expected to wake up tied to his bed with Lanise glaring at me, but instead I woke up back in the Music Hall, with Lanise glaring at me. Also, Yaga squawked as I sat up, fluttering her wings at me for being rude enough to wake her up from her peaceful night’s sleep.

The tap tap tap was distant but audible in spite of the darkness outside the window.

Lanise stood up and placed her large fists on her generous hips as she scowled at me. “You stay.”

“Tell me what you’re really doing in my hall.”

“Learn music.”

“And keep me safe. Why?”

“You want die?”

“No. You were there when the goblin asked me that. Surely you know better.”

“You stay.”

I raised my hands in defeat. “I’m just going to the bathroom and into the sitting room to get my books. Okay? Tomorrow I’m going to Song, but in the district near the Luthier’s shop, you know, to talk to some more civilized musical options.”

Her brows lowered in a scowl. “Stay.”

“I can’t stay here forever, Lanise. I’ll take a bunch of ogres with me, okay? The big one I’m making a dinner for, and the driver, the one with white eyes.”

She shook her head, no. “Magr not here. You cook for him?”

Magr was the name of the big ogre? It sounded more like a title than a name. I only smiled brightly. “Of course. Eel soup where the eels are alive? How hard can it be?”

She snorted, but she didn’t stop me from retrieving my books from the sitting room and taking them into the bathroom. I was going to take a nice long bath, so the headache I got from reading angel runes would be mitigated by the warm water.

By the time the water was cold, I knew slightly more than I had previously about the ogre society as a whole. There was a king, but he delegated most of his responsibility to various chieftains who organized the selling of armies as well as managed internal disputes in the kingdom. If the book I was reading was correct, it didn’t seem like the king actually did anything.

I didn’t find any mention of shirt taboos or the tendency to strangle people with your mouth.

I touched my neck for a moment while the memory of his breath, tongue, power made me shiver before I shook it off and got out of the tub. It was the cold water making me shiver, not the memory of Rook, of his voice, his eyes, his hands, and his mouth.

I shivered again as I hurriedly dried off, then carried the book with me to bed, wearing my nightshirt, the one with the pun.

Lanise had a plate of now slightly stale sausage rolls that I took with a smile. “Thanks. You really are an incredible musician, the way that you kept the beat steady no matter what else happened. Impressive.”

“What book?”

I glanced down at the book I had, the one in angel runes, so no ogre would be able to read it. If I had angel blood on both sides, instead of my mom’s human/elf blood, it wouldn’t give me a headache. “History.” I opened the book to a random page and frowned down at it until I could make out the meaning in it.

Ogre Courtship as a whole seems to be based entirely on scent. Once a male compliments a female’s scent, they seem to continue with the other courtship traditions, which vary depending on the various tribes, until they are mated. There are many different traditions, such as in the tribe of the Alabaz, where they must make each other clothing from skins of creatures they personally captured, or the tribe of Milza where the female dresses herself in the male’s clothing, or the tribe of Hirtox which I find most interesting, where the male creates his heart song, and the female plays it for him. Courtship for ogres is rare, since many ogres breed without anything as civilized as marriage, but once they are mated, it is for life, and it only happens once.

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