Page 43 of Ogres Don't Play

“Possibly? Who else could it be?”

He rubbed his chin. “There are other factions among your father’s enemies, as well as…” He eyed me. “You’re beautiful. Perfect precisely as you are, but some elves would be appalled at your existence, the existence of you mother, half elf, half ogre, particularly if the elf parent in question was someone in a position of authority that he would lose if it were known how he spent his time with his captive ogre warrior princess.”

I stared at him while all these new horrifying ideas crashed around inside my brain. My mom’s father, the elf in me, might want me dead? “Ogre princess? You know who my grandma is?”

He nodded soberly. “She wore my shirt once.”

I blinked at him. “You ran away from her.”

“Very quickly.”

“She didn’t want my mother, or she would have been raised with ogres instead of dumping her at the casino where she was born.”

“It is still the tradition in some tribes to abandon small children, but there is also some anti-elf sentiment that may have come into play.”

I nodded while my heart ached for my mom, rejected by both of her parents, both of her kind. And my dad, when he found out she’d been hiding the ogre half of her… “She must have had a lot of magic to be able to hide her ogre for so long.”

“Yes. I believe your grandfather is one of the most gifted elven magic users.”

I stared at him. “You know who he is.”

“Yes. Only one warlord took an ogre princess captive.”

“Who is he?”

He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why not? You’ve been eager to tell me everything else. I didn’t need to enspell you at all, did I?”

“Of course you did. It goes against my ethics as well as my interest in your well-being to keep painful truths from you.”

“So, you think that knowing who my grandfather is would be a painful truth? Is it Tiago?”

He blinked at me. “Was he a warlord? I was unaware.”

I shoved his chest, but instead of him moving anywhere, his hands slid over mine, pinning them in place while his eyes burned down into me, like he was looking at my soul, memorizing every piece of it so he could compose something brilliant.

He was really one of the greatest elven composers of all time? My heart beat faster as I stared at him. His heart beat faster as my palms pressed against them, as he gazed at me, his head lowering, those enormous tusks…

I broke away and turned to the side. “I can’t?—“

He lunged at me, so fast, his body covering mine as he knocked me to the ground.

The taste of blood filled my mouth as I bit my tongue, but then Driver darted past us, roaring an ogre attack roar, which was soon echoed by other ogres.

“So sorry,” the ogre who thought he was Rook rumbled as he sank more of his weight on top of me. His words were already slurring. This was definitely not an attack on my virtue, but of another assassin trying to kill me.

I gritted my teeth and twisted, slipping out from under him. His pale blue was going gray very rapidly, spreading from the silver metal sticking out of his back. It was elven, poisoned andspelled, sucking his life and energy out of him even as it infected him with a very fast-acting poison.

And Magr-Rook had taken that arrow to save me. Rage ripped through me, making my mind clear for the first time in a week. How much of my spelled food had he eaten? I’d never used magic to compel him to truth. He’d just spoke of his own volition, so there should be threads of my magic still woven through his large body. My grandfather, who might be the one hiring assassins to kill me, was a great magic user.

I grabbed my harp, cut my palm deep until my blood dripped onto the strings, and then I plucked as hard as I could. The sound came to life, and I held it there, hovering above me, pulling it into shape, gold, fluid, raw energy of sound made real. I willed that golden sound mixed with my blood down to splat on his back over the dagger.

Flames erupted from his back, burning the weapon and the poison out of him.

He screamed, because being burned like that was apparently painful, even for an ogre. Good. That meant he wasn’t dead. I pulled on the magic threads inside of him, squeezing the cells until his gasps took the place of screams.

I sang the poison out of his veins while the fire in his back sputtered and went out, having burned the weapon to dust. That dust would probably give him a rash, but there were worse things. He curled up in the fetal position, moaning while I pulled the poison from his veins, agonizing pain until finally, he threw up.

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