Page 53 of Ogres Don't Play

Waking up to my brother lounging on my bed was incredibly annoying. Also sweet, and brought back so many memories. He was singing, so I joined in my traditional part about wanting to go back to sleep while he sang about all the wonderful things to do today. Rabbits to chase, waterfalls to leap through, and, of course, music to play. By the end of the song, my part shifted to take his tune while he shifted to the overlay. Thinking about doing all of that made him sleepy while I was awake and ready to go.

It ended with him falling on his face and snoring loudly into my pillow. Laughing, I hit him with my other pillow.

“You’re so immature.”

He sat up and smiled his perfect angelic smile at me. “I am. That’s why I need you, my wise, sober, responsible younger sister. Seriously, I’m here to offer you a deal.”

I held my breath for a second while I studied him. “What kind of deal?” It could be anything, from offering to dispose of my ogre suitor along with the rest of his people, to directing the goblin choir.

“Hm. You have so much to do today, so I shouldn’t beat around the bush, but it’s so fun to tease you. I guess I’ll have to tease you twice as much later to make up for the lack of time today. When you left the lions, was it because Gavriel rejected you?”

I stared at him. How was this a deal? His eyes were piercing, but serious. Very serious. He really was putting off the teasing until tomorrow. “Yes.” Was it? My answer surprised myself, but he only nodded like that’s what he expected.

“Right. That’s what it looked like. The thing is, last night, I saw the way you looked at the ogre. Everyone saw the way that you looked at the ogre. I’m hearing wedding bells, if I’m not mistaken. The thing is, ogres don’t do wedding bells. They do war cannons. You know this better than anyone else, but you’re lost in the foggy soup of love, or lust, or both, heaven help you. Ogres aren’t known for their vows of enduring love, probably because they don’t believe in it. So, if this relationship you seem intent on pursuing ends in betrayal and misery, I want you to come home instead of running off to another lost cause that you can resurrect. That’s my deal. I will support you in this recklessness if you swear to come back when it ends.”

I stared at him while my heart pounded. Did I care about having my brother’s support? Of course I did. I’d absolutely idolized him my whole life, and running away from home hadbeen the hardest, most bleak and miserable time in my life, but I was stubborn, like him. “Rich, I’m a quarter ogre.”

He nodded like he knew that, too.

“You knew?” I hit him with the pillow, harder that time.

He laughed and caught the pillow, throwing it out the window. Ah, the open window was how he got in. How had he got rid of Lanise? Angels were so tricky. “Of course I knew. I was there when you were born, all peaches and green. You were so pretty, and of course your mom was all green and tusked at the end without her glamour. She screamed a lot. I was hiding behind the curtains, so I saw her die, saw dad cut you out of her, and the way he looked at you, like you were a holy miracle, he hasn’t ever stopped looking at you like that. You broke his heart when you disappeared. Losing your mom was hard enough on him, but having his miracle, it kept him functioning. Now he's just an empty husk of a man.”

“His war record is more pristine than ever. It’s like without me to distract him, he can focus on strategy.”

He knuckled my hair. “No, it’s like he doesn’t have anything else to keep living for.”

“Your melodrama never stops.”

“Mira, seriously, he misses you. He loved having you home between your harping and your running away to be an iterant musician. I miss you. When I told him I found you, that you were safe, I think it added five years to his life. Just promise that you’ll come home if this romancing the ogre ends in disaster, and you’ll have my complete support.”

“It’s not going to end in disaster.” What else could it possibly be?

“Then you don’t have to worry about it.”

“I don’t want to get married off to a lion. I’m an ogre. I don’t belong with one of your golden friends.”

“Mm. Quarter ogre doesn’t make you an ogre. You’re more angelic than most of the ranks of HOST, speaking purely of bloodlines, because heaven knows that you’re the most stubborn, mischievous, music-obsessed creature ever to crawl the earth.”

“Now I’m crawling? You knew this whole time that I was an ogre?”

He pulled an orange out of his shirt and started peeling it. “Sure. Why do you think I defended them every time you came storming in from a battle where one of them had dared sniff you instead of being properly cowed by your magnificent fierceness? They were smelling the ogre in you. They couldn’t help it.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Of course not. You always felt like you didn’t fit in. You actually get that from our dad. He never feels like he fits in anywhere, which is why he’s such an excellent commander. Having that position of authority, isolation, it’s fine because he’s a weird-shaped island that only lets his family close. We are his family, so promise.”

“What’s the promise of an ogre?”

He raised a brow at me.

“Fine. I swear on my angel blood that I will come home if my situation here ends in disaster.”

He cut my hand with a huge dagger, then his own, and we were doing the blood brother thing. Never mind that we weren’t brothers. After the promise I’d made on my burning blood was sealed, literally, our wounds healing up instantaneously, he handed me half of his peeled orange and rolled off the bed.

“Good. I thought you’d go on and on about how your love was eternal and he’d never betray you, because he was heaven on earth, but you’re sensible.”

“Of course.”

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