Page 37 of Ogres Don't Play

Finally, he put down his fork, having eaten much faster than I had, and focused his dark eyes on me. “I will tell you why. You don’t know what you are? I thought that’s why you ran, but you truly don’t know?”

I stared at him. “What?” I finally asked, feeling like an idiot.

“Your mother, she was half elf, and half ogre.”

I stared at him while he stared back at me. I finally shook my head. “That’s impossible.”

“When I told your father my intentions to make you my betrothed, he showed me your lineage, at least as far as he knew it. What elf was your grandfather and what ogre your grandmother was a mystery until fairly recently.”

I stared at him while my ears buzzed and I felt like maybe someone had dropped a bomb on my lap. “I’m not an ogre. Not possible. My mom was elf and human. Ogres can’t have angel babies. She would have…” Died in childbirth. Which she had. I put a hand on my forehead, wondering if I was feverish andhallucinating this entire conversation. “My father wouldn’t ever have married the enemy.”

“He didn’t know, not until later.”

I gripped the table while a wave of nausea went through me of my dad waking up one morning to discover that the love of his life was an ogre. Not just an ogre, an ogre-elf. He didn’t entirely like either species. Elves were too filled with treachery and deception, while ogres were vicious brutes without any morality whatsoever. He would have killed her, which is exactly what he’d done when he’d knocked her up with his angelic seed. Me. I would have poisoned her from the inside, with my toxic blood.

I shook my head as I studied Gavriel. He was an archangel who never lied, but this was impossible. “Supposing I believe you, not that I doubt your honesty, but you may have misunderstood things. How does my mother’s blood have anything to do with goblin assassins and ogre intervention?”

“You were kidnapped when you were a child, or at least got lost on a battlefield and were found by ogre sentries and taken to their camp, yes? Ever since then, they’ve known that the precious Miracle that the Commander would pay any price to recover is a quarter ogre. Since then, one of the ogre factions has used your existence, an ogre in the ranks of the angels, as propaganda to push his own agenda, that of putting ogres in positions other than war.”

“Rook.” Could any of this be true? Could all of it be true, including my own skin being green or blue right beneath the surface?

“I’ve heard that he’s one of the party, but the leader is someone else.”

“One of the tribe chieftains.”

He flashed a grimace that was more expressive than most things he showed. “Unfortunately, no. The prince heir, which means that he has several chieftains working beneath him.”

“Oh.” My headache from trying to read angel runes came back and hit me hard. Come to think of it, ogre blood would explain my difficulty with angelic runes. I took a deep breath while the world spun around and I put my head down on the table.

Gavriel broke the silence spell the moment before Driver put his hand on the back of my neck, checking my pulse, that I still had one.

“I’m fine,” I said, flapping my hand at him without lifting my head. I wasn’t finished with this conversation. I needed to find out who wanted to kill me. Finding out why ogres didn’t want me to die was just dandy, but it didn’t actually help. And it wasn’t possible. I’d have some signs of being an ogre, but I looked absolutely angelic, with slightly more pointed ears than the average angel, thanks to the elven blood.

“We leave now.” Driver pulled me off the bench and into his arms, carrying me away from Gavriel and out of the bakery.

Gavriel watched me go with a frown on that handsome face that needed a good washing.

Chapter

Fourteen

The next few days passed in a rush of rehearsals as citizens from Sing and Song showed up to represent. Tiago, genius devious elf that he was, had managed to infer that it was a challenge between who was better, Sing, or Song, and since I had ogres and goblins in my lineup, local elves and fairies took the challenge personally. And then there were the local businesses who wanted booths at the festival. I should have started planning this six months ago. I needed to call the city about restroom facilities, as well as the sun shade for the vampires.

Apparently, the mayor was also getting calls, because he sent a city man to come and bother me about it a week after my archangel visitation. I felt like my whole life had restarted from that dreadful day, and now I was caught in this limbo of uncertainty. Happily, I had fifty million things to worry about, so I didn’t have time to dwell on the questions, who I was, and who wanted me dead.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” I said, sweeping into the small classroom where Tiago had directed the mayor’s man, an elf with an air of calm serenity.

He stood and smiled at me demurely. “Not at all. You’re very busy, so I won’t keep you for long. It seems you have ignored the many summons the mayor has given you.”

“He’s not my king. You can’t summon someone in this city unless you have a circle of virgins. All the same, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been puzzling over the location. The park is lovely, and having meandering paths between musical events sounds charming, but the logistics just don’t work. We don’t have that many platforms, the audience is scattered, so fewer people will be able to appreciate fewer events. It does work for the booths, but this is a musical event, or the mayor wouldn’t have asked me to take charge of it.”

He cleared his throat. “That is an excellent point, Music Master. You have indeed taken charge of this event in ways the mayor never foresaw. I believe I heard a werewolf troupe in the hall outside. Remarkable that you have them eating from your hand, but surely they prove a liability in a crowd of tourists. If you had fewer musicians, you wouldn’t need so many platforms. There are always natural limitations to the space and time that can be given to any one group.”

I stared at him. He was here to cut all the musicians from Song. I smiled and leaned back. “The stadium would be the best option, to open up the space and time limitations. With four smaller stages and one large one, we could have a much better chance of serving the musicians and tourists. There are already booths built in on each level, so that will cut down on the traffic down on the floor.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Bringing inhabitants of Song up to mingle in throngs of tourists is a huge liability. The mayor’s office cannot be responsible for it.”

“Is the mayor’s office responsible for anything? I suppose it would be safer for infernal creatures to play their pieces in the mayor’s office instead of in the ridiculously overpriced stadiumthat the tax payers paid for when no major sports teams are in Singsong City. Song pays taxes. Were you aware of that? Every single shop I visited, and it was most of them, charge tax, which goes directly to the city, which does so little to maintain Song, but it can build parks and stadiums in Sing that they aren’t allowed to use.”

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