Page 110 of The Demon Tide

I’m an impossible creature, is what I am, Mora archly considers as she flips through the pages.

A chapter heading catches her eye.Smaragdalfar Courtship Traditions.

The pang of Fyon’s aloof distance still achingly fresh, Mora skims the section, her eyes widening as her attention hooks on the last paragraph.

It is traditional, in Smaragdalfar society, for the man, interested in initiating a courtship, to request tea from his object of interest. No expression of interest may be allowed except for this—it is forbidden to speak of it or act on it in any way. If the woman returns his interest, she will offer him thirty cups of tea on thirty different occasions. Only after the thirty cups of tea have been offered, is he then free to express interest in courting her.

Mora goes breathless, her heartbeat tripping into a faster rhythm as she considers Fyon’s odd tea fixation ever since he got back. Ever since they laid eyes on each other again. She considers his last words to her this evening as he took a step away when she was yearning for him to lean in for a kiss.I’ll come by tomorrow for more tea.

Mora tries to count how many cups of tea they’ve had. Twenty-nine? It has to be close to thirty occasions at this point. A giddy happiness bursts into being inside Mora, her heart taking flight.Well, we’ll just have to step up that tea-drinking, Mora considers, a laugh escaping her.

“Mora’lee?”

She turns toward the unsure voice to find Olilly standing there in the moonlight.

“Hello, lovely,” Mora says, beaming at the young teen and beckoning her nearer.

Olilly returns her smile with a bashful one of her own, and Mora’s heart aches again at the sight of the ragged tips of Olilly’s ears. At the idea of a mob holding this child down...

Hurry up, Xishlon moon, Mora prays to the Compassionate Vo and the Compassionate Oo’na, both.We need Your healing, loving light.

“Are you finding the room to your liking?” she asks, hopeful, having purposefully given Olilly a room on the port side overlooking the Vo River. So she can bask in the full effect when its waters are transformed into an astonishingly beautiful purple by the Xishlon moon.

“I like it very much,” Olilly replies with a broader smile.

Mora remembers something from earlier. She fishes a small, purple-parchment-wrapped package out of her pocket that Bleddyn dropped off between shifts for Olilly. “This is for you,” she says as she hands it to her, finding Bleddyn’s maternal protectiveness toward Olilly to be touchingly kind, brash as Bleddyn can be. “It’s from Bleddyn. She said to tell you that ‘you’re beautiful either way.’ She told me it was important for you to know that.”

Olilly shyly opens the package, then gasps as she views the paper box’s contents. Mora pulls in a hard breath as well, immediately realizing what this is.

Ear ornaments.

The kind the Wyvern-shifters wear during Xishlon. Silver sleeves to fit over their ear points, the Xishlon ear-cuffs covered in a riot of amethyst gems.

Tears pool in Olilly’s purple-lashed eyes. She wipes them away with a trembling hand. “Can you put them on me?” she asks in a rough whisper.

Mora feels the tears brimming in her own eyes as she fastens the ear-cuffs to Olilly’s ears, restoring the points with a resplendent purple glimmer. “I have a mirror,” Mora says. She ducks into her room and retrieves her hand mirror, then holds it up for Olilly to view.

Olilly pulls in a quavering breath, her fingers coming to the points, then down over her trembling mouth. “They helped me, you know,” she finally says as the tears spill over, face tensing.

“Who did?”

“Elloren Gardner and her brothers. Along with Bleddyn and the others. That night...the night they cut my ears.”

Mora considers the surprising actions of the first Black Witch’s progeny. “Bleddyn told me a little about that,” she says somberly. “You know, Trystan Gardner helped to rescue Ghor’li from drowning in the Zonor. I heard he almost drowned himself.”

“They’re not what people think,” Olilly insists, growing impassioned. “But...now Elloren’s in danger. I’ve seen the postings of her face. The Vu Trin are hunting her. But they shouldn’t be. She brought me medicine for the Grippe. Then she helped me get out of the West. My sister too. I was scared of her at first, but...she’s against Vogel, just like everyone here.”

“Olilly, they just want her brought to the Vu Trin if she’s found—”

“No,” Olilly counters, emphatic. “They don’t. I can tell. They’rehuntingher.” Olilly’s violet eyes blaze with concern. “They’re hunting for her so they can kill her.”

CHAPTER TWO

EVILWITCH

Elloren Grey

Voloi, Noilaan

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