Page 44 of Ogres Don't Play

Yam brains were even worse coming up than going down, but somehow I kept my focus, and pulled more and more poison out of him. He kept throwing up, until my magic went out, and he finally collapsed, not quite in the poisonous brain pudding.

Driver and his men gathered around.

I pointed at the prince heir who must have personality crises on a regular basis. “Carry him to my bed.”

Driver moved at once to take the massive ogre’s shoulder, grunting at the effort. Three other ogres stepped up, hauling him up, and then moving past me to my room. I followed quickly. That balcony should have been impermeable to assassin attacks, but the arrow had gone right through my shield. I didn’t need to worry, because glancing back, my balcony was lined with ogres, a physical barrier that would stop a bomb.

Good.

The bed creaked when Driver and the others dropped the ogre prince to the bed. I went to check his pulse, but the world spun around me dizzyingly. I needed to find my own bed to crawl into. I turned to leave, but he snatched my wrist and pulled me so I sprawled over his back, still blistering and oozing like you’d expect from someone who’d had an elven assassin arrow burned out of him.

I scrambled, trying to find purchase on his large, smooth skin without getting my hair into his open wound. He needed someone to dress it. Some ogres didn’t believe in treating wounds, but I assumed the prince heir wouldn’t deny something as practical as getting help to heal if he composed pretentious elven music. Finally, I rolled off him on the side of the bed that he wasn’t fully occupying. Somehow, he didn’t take up the whole thing. I knew that it had felt too big for only one person.

He was looking at me, even though he made no effort to move, and his eyes were slightly glazed. “Rest. Magic tired. Stay.” He put one arm over me and then closed his eyes, probably passing out. That was the sensible thing to do when you’d had an assassin’s arrow burned out of you.

You couldn’t pull out an elven weapon. They were almost always spelled to explode into shrapnel if you tried. Good thing I’d spent time in weapons history classes learning all about it. Iclosed my eyes. What if my elven grandfather was really trying to kill me? Magr’d never told me his name, and he’d been shot right before he’d gotten the chance. Did it really make that much difference? What’s in a name?

Rook the Luthier. Had I actually played out courtship rituals with the prince heir in his clever disguise? “At least you never told me you liked my scent,” I mumbled.

He tightened his arm around me. “Like scent,” he rumbled low, apparently not entirely passed out, but close.

I giggled because this was just so impossibly ludicrous. Lanise came in and started cutting the flesh out of the prince heir’s back. He didn’t scream, didn’t grunt, even though he was conscious. She was incredibly capable at meticulous surgery, and then she ordered her assistant, some faceless ogre I didn’t know, to give her various oils, potions, and herbs, that she treated his wound with before packing it with herbs and then bandaging it. Her bandage was a miracle of neatness.

She turned her gaze to me, and I felt guilty for absolutely no reason. She was the reason I hadn’t died from the goblin attack. Well, her and Rook. She was a really competent medic, doctor, whatever you called an ogre who specialized in healing. Irritated. You called her irritated.

“Rest. Stay.”

“Sure thing. Lanise, did you ever put on Rook’s shirt?”

Her eyes widened in shock and horror before she narrowed her gaze and bared her tusks and teeth at me. “Uncle. Not court.”

“He’s your uncle, hm? That’s so…”

She knocked me out. I’m not sure how, but one second I’m having a perfectly enjoyable conversation, and the next I’m floating on dreams of music mixed with sushi. And ogre. My ogre.

Chapter

Sixteen

The last time I’d gone to sleep with Rook, I’d been so glowing and happy when I woke up, no doubt from whatever drugs Lanise used on me to help with the pain and healing. This time I woke up, and one: I felt like I’d been assaulted by a tree-size slug, all slimy and shivery, and two: there was no Rook the ogre in my bed, or a prince heir for that matter. Nope, I was alone, and his three quarters of the bed, no, more like seven eighths, was cold. It was also blood-specked. The only thing there was an elven bracelet, but not just any bracelet, no, it was my mother’s, the one that had been stolen, the one I’d been so heartsick about losing.

I frowned and stared at the swirls of silver filigree with gold inset. Was it poisonous? Spelled to put me in a permanent coma? Had the assassin come into my room and left it there for me to stupidly put on?

“Awake. Eat,” Lanise said, putting a large tray on my lap, even though I was on my side and couldn’t eat from that position.

“Lanise, what is that?” I said, staring at the bracelet and ignoring the hot bacon that sang its song of endless deliciousness.

“Pretty.”

I squinted at it and then at her. “Why is the pretty in my bed?”

“Arrook put.”

“Arrook?” I carefully reached out and touched my mother’s bracelet. It flared warm and bright, greeting me like a long-lost friend. I gasped and then carefully picked it up, cradling it in my hands. “Where did Arrook get my mother’s bracelet?”

“Driver track. Best. Arrook find first.”

“First? Why was he tracking me? Oh, right, for propaganda.”

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