“I should stay…” Forest Moss started.
“No, you need to go.” It had been the one qualifier Prince True Flame put on their union: Forest Moss had to continue his duties. “The oni know nothing about me. They don’t know my name or what I look like. I can mix into any group of humans and disappear.”
His eyebrows quirked as he considered it.
She leaned against him, lending her strength to him. “I will be fine. You need to do your duties.”
He needed to be useful or the Wyverns would kill him.
Forest Moss wrapped his arms around her and they stood while he grew calm with the assurance that she would be safe.
She thought that the Wyverns would take all the royal marines with them. To pacify Forest Moss, however, they left all twenty of the marines with her. There was no way she could blend in followed by a flood of red. Yes, she could go shopping with them in tow, but she’d hoped that she could see a doctor for a prenatal exam. She suspected that a pelvic exam with the circus in tow could be dangerous for the doctor’s health, but she wasn’t completely sure.
She set to work cleaning, hoping that they’d go exploring again. Within an hour, they’d scattered throughout the building. They’d figured out the various access points to the twentieth floor and were guarding them in rotating shifts. What they didn’t realize was that they’d missed one. Children’s Literature had once spanned two floors with an ample library on the floor below. Hidden behind a panel in one corner was a dumbwaiter to ferry book trucks between the two. It was a tight squeeze, but she could fit inside.
She took with her one of the elf bullion coins that Forest Moss had given to her. She left the machine gun behind because humans with guns drew attention, especially when they visited banks. She meant it when she said that she could easily blend in with the general population. She’d been doing it for weeks.
Olivia was waiting on the corner for the downtown bus, elf-free for the first time in days. She was reading the newspaper with her hair up in a bun and her reading glasses on. It felt good to be able to blend in with the crowd of other humans waiting for the next PAT bus to come lumbering down Fifth Avenue. Did Superman ever feel like this? The relief of being just like everyone else?
She recognized the wave of change go through the crowd before even looking up. The quick scuffling and inward breaths of fear. Wyverns were coming. What now? She looked up as a familiar number of Fire Clan red bodies came marching up the street, but she didn’t know any of the faces. This wasn’t the group that had gone out with Forest Moss.
How did they even find her?
Were they even looking for her?
For a moment she thought they were going to walk past her but then they stopped a few feet past her.
“There you are,” a female voice said in Elvish.
The female was short for an elf, dusky-skinned and dark-eyed like Forest Moss. Her dark brown hair had been hacked short so it stood up in uneven tufts. She gave Olivia a predatory grin.
Oh, joy, another crazy elf.
They stood for a few minutes, taking study of each other. The female wore a bright yellow high-low dress that was cut above the knees in the front but trailed down the back to almost the ground. It nicely showed off her little slouch boots of black and silver snake leather. Her bare arms and legs were covered with fading bruises. She looked like someone had dragged her through hell and back.
After the third or fourth minute of staring silently at Olivia, the female raised a finger and tapped it downward, ending with a point at Olivia’s chest. “Right. You have no idea how to act. When you meet someone for the first time, you tell them your name.”
“But you know my name, because you were looking for me.” What name did the elf expect her to give? Red? Olive Branch?
“Consider it practice,” the female said.
Freaking crazy elves.
“Why aren’t you telling me your name?” Olivia asked.
“Practice,” the female repeated. “If you don’t learn, everyone will think you’re uncivilized.”
“What if I don’t care what any of you think?”
The female reacted as if she never considered the possibility. The bus came trundling down the street.
“I’m getting on this.” Olivia pointed at the incoming bus as she had no idea what the Elvish word for it was. Did elves even have a word? They lived like fairy-tale people with swords and horses and massive flying fishes.
“Where are we going?” the female asked.
“We?” Olivia put away her reading glasses and took out her coin purse.
“I’ve sought you out in order to speak with you.”
The bus rumbled to a stop with a growl and hiss of hydraulic brakes. The door opened. All the people waiting on the corner froze in place, waiting to see what Olivia decided.
“Oh, hell.” She muttered in English and stomped up the steps of the bus. The driver’s eyes widened as the Wyverns and then the battered female elf boarded after Olivia. There was a sudden mass exodus via the back door of the bus. None of the other humans waiting at the corner got on.
Olivia fed quarters into the coin box. “Can I have a transfer?”
“Are they with you?” the driver murmured.
“No.” Olivia took the slip of paper that the bus driver handed her and slumped into one of the bench seats a few feet back. As she dreaded but expected, the female settled beside her and the Wyverns took up stations around them.
The handful of brave humans still on the bus clustered in the back.
“Do you really not care what the others think of you?” the female asked.
“No,” Olivia said as calmly as she could.
“They can kill you,” the female said.
“Why would they?” Olivia believed the elves would but she needed to know the triggers. She had never been totally sure that Troy would kill her, but she’d learned what would drive him to dangerous rage. “I’m unarmed and much smaller and younger than any of your people.”
“Our people,” the female corrected her. “You are to be considered one of us now that Forest Moss has marked you.”
Joys of marriage, or whatever the elves called it. Fine, Olivia would stick to this female’s semantics. “Are there no laws against killing?”
“There are laws,” the female said. “But if you’re challenged to a duel and do not fight, they will call you a coward.”
“Fine,” Olivia said.
“Have you no pride?” the female asked.
Pride was her biggest flaw, according to Olivia’s mother. “I pride myself at being much stronger-willed than the bullies that seek to dominate me. I would be shamed if I sink to their level where violence is necessary to display my character.”
“If you’re to be domi,” the female stated, “you must protect those you hold.”
Olivia wasn’t sure if they had totally strayed from the point or not. It seemed like playground-level mentality. Did the elves do double dog dares? “If someone attacks me, it is my fault for being weak, and not theirs for being cruel?”
“But how can you protect your people if you do not fight?”
“Are we discussing what other elves think of me,” Olivia said, “or the oni attacking me?”
“Elves,” the female said.
“And why would elves attack elves? Aren’t the oni the enemy?”
The female stared at her, head tilted in confusion. Considering the fact that she was hundreds of years older than Olivia, it took all of Olivia’s willpower to keep the practiced “just trying to clarify” look on her face. Really, years of defending her vision of Christianity had made this an easy exercise.