by Abella Ward
The heat climbed higher into my cheeks. I ducked my head and tried not to show how pleased I was at his attentions. "It wasn't an insult. It just caught me off guard, you know? I overreacted. Maybe once this is all done, we can go out for a drink or something."
He nodded. "I would like that."
I grinned, but before I could say another word, the ground beneath me shifted. With a yelp I fell, arms windmilling about. I grabbed Victor's cuff and dragged him down after me. We hit the ground hard in a pit five feet deep. A loud crack sounded as white-hot pain jolted through my leg and I screamed.
I panted as sweat broke out over my face. Victor rolled off me and grasped my shoulders. "Are you okay?"
I tried to move my leg. More pain. My stomach churned, and I was only just able to choke it down. I shook my head. There was no way I was getting anywhere on this leg.
"Leg's broken. Here." I pulled out my gun and pressed it into his hands. "Take this. And my cell phone. You'll have to go get Charlotte back yourself. Just go to town and send somebody back out for me."
"No. I'm not leaving you here."
As touched as I was by his concerned, I shook my head firmly. "This is a troll pit. I know how to deal with them, but they'll tear your pretty face off."
The grin that broke over his face was the first I'd seen. "You think I'm pretty?"
My face flushed as Victor brushed a strand of hair from my face. "Ugh. Just go before I shoot you."
He sobered quickly. "No. If your Owen is as good as you say, we have time. And if not… I need you. I can't navigate technology. I never learned how to use it."
"I'm not going anywhere with this busted leg."
His hands cupped my leg, making me wince, but his touch was gentle as he probed. "It's not a bad break. I can splint it, and then we can go to a healing mud springs. I need you, Eloise. So no more arguing."
I wanted to keep arguing just because he told me not to, but a wave of pain washed over me again and I nodded. I didn't have the energy to fight. I'd heard about the elves' healing mud pits and they were meant to do miracles. If my leg could be healed… I just hoped Owen wasn't somewhere, counting on me to get to him quickly.
Chapter Five
It took us a few hours to get to the mud pit, but it felt like an eternity. Victor's splint helped to ease the pain of my broken leg, but I still threw up a few times on our way. By the time we reached our destination, my head was spinning and Victor practically had to carry me. Fortunately, there was a small stream near the pit we could use to rehydrate. It was a mineral spring and tasted terrible, but I sucked it up gratefully.
The mud pit itself was only a couple meters wide. The mud was a rich black color and a skim of water lay on the surface, stained yellow from sulfur. Victor stirred it in with a stick, then knelt at the edge and mumbled what sounded like a prayer in a language I didn't know.
"Do you need help undressing?" he asked, turning to me.
I jolted. "Undressing?"
"Of course." Victor stripped off his pants. My eyes went huge as more of his tanned skin was exposed. "We can't get our clothes muddy, can we?"
There was a part of me that wondered – hoped – that he had actually brought me here to seduce me. But that was just my brain being loopy from pain and dehydration. There was no way that he would be thinking about that while his sister was out there in the hands of trolls, was there? No… He was too good a man for that.
Victor left on his boxers as he slipped into the mud, and after a moment's hesitation, I stripped down to my panties and bra. I climbed in, sinking low into the pit before he could see that I wasn't wearing my cute undies. Not that it mattered.
The mud was warm and soothing as it enveloped me. My leg felt better almost instantly. I groaned in relief. "So are these healing as in magical or healing as in perpetrated to be healing?"
"Magic. It's a sacred place among the Elves. If anybody knew I had brought you here, I would be in serious trouble."
I snorted. "What, you mean like they'd ground their prince?"
"More like kill me. Oh, it wouldn’t be official, and there would be some elves that would take the fall and go away for murder, but everybody would know that it was because I showed an outsider where to find this place."
At first, I snorted, thinking he was just being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic. But when his expression didn't change, my amusement died away. My eyes widened. He couldn't be serious, could he? People didn't go around killing other people because of mud pits. There was nothing about him that indicated that he was lying, though.
"Your parents would do that to you?"
He shook his head. "They'd try to protect me. But they would fail. Even if it took fifty years, somebody would kill me for it. We don't take our traditions lightly."
I felt light-headed at that. He was risking his life for my leg? "Okay… Then we should leave as soon as possible. How long will it take for me to heal?"
Victor considered for a moment. "It wasn't a bad break, but walking would have aggravated it. I'd say a couple hours at least, to be certain."
I didn't like the idea of staying here that long, but we really didn't have much of a choice. I sank a little lower, up to my shoulders, and tried to think of another topic of conversation. If we were stuck here, I might as well get to know the prince better.
I frowned. An elvish prince. No way there could be anything lasting between him and a half-dwarf girl like me. Probably why he propositioned me in a dingy little hotel, instead of asking for a date. He had agreed to drinks, though.
This was too confusing. I had to talk about something else. "So why exactly did you hire the dwarves' guild as protectors? I mean, you obviously have a lot going on, so why not trust your own people?"
"Because I don’t trust my own people." Victor frowned. "Charlotte arranged her own marriage. She is outspoken against our people's reluctance to use technology. She has argued that not all of us can weave cloth or knap arrowheads. If these are still alright for us to own, why not other things that we could learn to make with our own hands? Everything in a car has to be made somehow. If some of us can make it, all of us could learn. If we can learn, perhaps that is enough to own. Her ideas are radical – maybe even dangerous."
I rolled my eyes. "Driving a car isn't more dangerous than drinking untreated water."
"Perhaps, but our people are slow to change. I want the best for my sister, and I needed to make sure she had the best protection possible."
"And what about you? Where do you fall in all of this?"
Victor gave me a small smile. "I told you."
"No, you said something about wanting your independence, but not where you fall politically. Wanting to have sex with a dwarf doesn't mean you want to change your society."
The smile disappeared. I almost regretted asking, but it was important to know. I didn't want to be the one-stop rebellion. Or maybe I didn't care… It was difficult to say. In any case, nothing could happen until after we got Charlotte back and this whole mess was figured out. I lifted my leg out of the mud to test my pain levels.
"It's feeling a lot better. I bet we can get going," I said. "Dwarves are hardy and we heal twice as fast as humans. Bet it's all fixed up with this healing mud."
"Let me see."
Victor didn't waste time wrapping his hands around my leg. I held in a yelp as his long fingers began probing. With the hot mud, it felt more like a massage. I closed my eyes, sighing in contentment as his hands worked from my ankle to my knee and back down. It was a silly thing to think, but nobody had ever touched my leg like that before.
"Hmmm. Want to join Owen and me on our team?" I asked. "We could use massages after a long day."
Victor paused, hands on my knee. I pushed my leg, trying to get him to start again, and his hands ended up on my thigh. I flushed but didn't move. The prince kept staring at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking and licked my lips.
"Uh… What did I say?"
"Yes."
"Yes, I would like to join you and Owen. I have wanted to leave Raindrop, and the elvish way of life, for a long time. I just didn't know how. But if you will help me—"
"I—" Oh, boy. I didn't know how to respond to that.
"Yes?" he pressed, leaning forward.
"I wasn't exactly… I mean, it's not that I don't think you're great, but I was just joking. There are a lot of different things you'd have to do to get accepted into the guild and—"
Victor laughed, surprising me. "You are so serious."
So he was joking? "Huh?"
He lowered my leg back into the mud and leaned forward. His hands clasped my hips and he pulled me over. Heat flared through me as skin met skin and I barely suppressed a shiver. His grin drew me in, and before I knew it, his mouth was over mine. His mouth was ferocious, his hands strong as he brought me even closer.
Fireworks sparked through my brain, and I threw my arms around him. If it wasn't for the mud we were in, I might have been tempted to take things further. I didn't enjoy the thought of mud going into certain locations, though. His hands wrapped around my ass, and I pulled away, shaking my head.
"Um, no," I said, panting a little. Victor's face filled my vision. A streak of mud was on his cheek, his tanned skin flushed, eyes bright. I wanted to throw myself at him again. "Nope. This is not happening."
"What isn't?"
I squirmed, trying to free myself, but our positions made my movements… do something else. I stilled, my face beet-red. "This isn't. Okay, yeah, it was a nice kiss and all, but I don't date clients. It's against guild rules. And my own."
A sly grin crossed his face and he brushed his lips against mine again. "So when I ask you if you'll allow me to bed you, you threaten to shoot me but it wasn't an insult. Now when we kiss a little, you consider it dating? Hmm… I enjoy trying to figure you out. But I am going to take you up on your offer for drinks after… and here's hoping there will be more."
He kissed me again.
"What blasphemy is this?" a voice growled from above us.
Both of us jumped. We glanced up to see an elf standing over us. He was as big as a moose, with hair streaked with black mud and shoulders almost as broad as Owen's. He carried a crudely-made bronze sword in one hand. He glared down at us as though we had kicked his dog. Behind him were half a dozen other elves. I recognized some of them as the ones that had attacked us on the road.
"Blasphemy?" I repeated, blinking. My heart pounded. My gun was still in my clothes, out of reach. This big dude would cut off my arm before I could reach it. "What are you talking about?"
The elf ignored me, the bronze sword flicking out. It pressed against Victor's throat. I hissed in a gasp, hands curling into his shoulders. I hated the sight of the bronze against his pulse. One cut and it would all be over.
"How dare you bring this dwarf to our sacred spot?" The elf spat on the grounds. "Any last words before I take off your head, princeling?"
Chapter Six
Not happening.
I brought a fist up, punching the sword from Victor's throat. The blade cut into my skin but I ignored the biting wound, instead lunging half out of the pit to grab my gun. I aimed it wildly at the big elf with the sword and squeezed the trigger. My shot went wide, but the elf still jumped back. I took the opportunity to drag my body from the mud. He brought his sword down at me; Victor shouted, and a clash of metal rang as one of his knives deflected the sword.
The mud slowed my movements, but I still managed to get to my feet and press the base of my gun against the big elf's chin while he defended against Victor. The elf tensed. He lifted his sword, but I shook my head
"Only do that if you don't want to keep your head," I threatened. "And that goes for all of you. Even the quickest of your methods of killing me won't be immediate. I'll have time to pull this trigger."
I didn't glance around to make sure they were lowering their weapons. Doing so would leave me vulnerable to attack. The mud sucked down at Victor's body as he climbed out of the mud pit. He grabbed one of his knives and grabbed the head elf, putting the knife to his throat.
"Where is my sister?" the prince snarled.
I turned so our backs were together and aimed the gun at the other elves, making them back away.
"Your sister?" the big elf asked. "Charlotte is missing?"
"Don't pretend that you don't know where she is, Damien." This giant elf fathered Charlotte's baby? Whoa. I saw the draw – he was a monster. Too bad he wanted to kidnap her now. "Did you hire a human to take her, or did you have one of your men break the laws you cherish so much and drive that truck?"
"Truck?" Damien laughed. "What are you on about, Victor? If you've lost Charlotte, it's not my doing. That's what you get for trusting a dwarf to protect your sister instead of your own kin."
I grunted. "This dwarf has a nasty temper. I'll start shooting if you don't tell us where she is."
Damien's voice was low when he answered. "I did not take her. If I had, I'd have taken her back to Raindrop, not wander out here, tracking you. I thought you meant to throw us off the trail."
"Then why follow?" Victor demanded.
"I thought I'd use you to keep Charlotte from meeting that spineless prince she intends to bind herself to."
I snorted, but to my surprise, Victor released Damien. As I made a noise of protest in my throat, he turned to me. He grabbed my wrist and lowered the gun. I stared at him, slack-jawed. Was he insane? The elves all pressed in closer with their weapons raised. They were still planning on killing us. But when I tried to raise my gun, Victor's hand gripping my wrist tightly stopped me.
"Let me go," I said.
"Never mind them. You said that you received threats from trolls."
I flinched. "Uh… yeah, I did say that."
Victor narrowed his eyes at me.
"It was late, I was tired, Owen was tired. You were being all 'let's drive through the night'. I spent good money booking that motel, and if we didn't use it I'd be out the cash. Maybe that's not so important to you, but I can barely make rent since the guild bumped the team to a higher bracket. Nobody wants to pay that much for a half-dwarf and her male partner."
"You lied to me," Victor hissed. "Why didn't you just tell the truth?"
I shook him off. "Because in my experience, telling clients something they don't want to hear with just the truth doesn't work. We can't keep driving because we're tired? 'Why are you tired? I thought dwarves could go for weeks without sleep?' 'What do you mean you have to take a bathroom break? Why are you drinking so much water that you have to pee once every five hours?' It's exhausting."
"Eloise—"
Damien cleared his throat. "As amusing as this is, let's not drag on the inevitable."
He gestured, and two elves leaped at me. My lingering distraction allowed them to yank both of my hands behind my back. Victor ducked under a fist that swung at him and punched one of the elves that held me in the face with his knife handle.
I growled in my throat. "Just stab him!"
The prince ignored me, dropping the knife altogether to jab two stiff fingers into the other elf's throat. When Damien stepped forward, Victor raised his hands. I rose the gun, and he twisted it from my hand and tossed it away.
If I still had my gun, I'd shoot him. "Are you crazy?"
"This does not have to end in death," Victor said.
Damien shook his head. "You brought this half-dwarf to a sacred place. You know you will die for this. I'll at least make it quick. I'll tell Charlotte you died bravely."
"I brought Eloise here, yes." Victor's arm snaked around my middle and pulled me tight against him. "But don't call her 'half-dwarf' as though that is all there is to her. She is also my wife-to-be."
I squeaked. My expression surely gave away the lie, but Damien didn't even glance in my direction. Instead, his gaze remained on Victor's face. A heavy frown creased his brows. The other elves glanced at each other nervo
usly. So if I married an elf, I was allowed in the sacred mud pit? I tried not to look as shocked as I felt.
"You are going to marry a half-dwarf?" Damien pressed. "You, a prince of Raindrop? Your parents—"
"My parents don't know yet, but they will soon. She will be joined to the elves by marriage and blood. Already she carries my child." Victor lovingly caressed my stomach. Which, though covered in mud, was still naked. I shivered, wanting to hide. My face burned. "Elf, dwarf and human joined in one bloodline. What better significance for the future?"
All eyes fixed on my belly then. I curled inward, wrapping my arms around myself. "Okay, that is enough. I'm not pregnant!"
Damien chuckled, his expression clearing. He put away his weapon and bowed towards Victor. "I would expect something like this from Charlotte. But it seems you are more driven to progression than I realized, your highness. Congratulations on your coming child."
"I'm not pregnant," I insisted. "We haven't even had sex!"
"I would expect a dwarf to make such claims," Damien said, nodding towards me. "Your restrictive customs around sexuality are barbaric."
"Whatever! I'm not—"
He ignored me as he turned to Victor. "Was the child the reason you hired her to escort you and Charlotte?"
"I wanted to spend more time with my wife-to-be, yes," Victor replied coolly.
My eyes were slits by this time. I hissed a string of curses under my breath and reached for my shirt. One of the other elves offered me a handkerchief. Glaring at him and it, I took it and began wiping off the mud. Well, at least they weren’t going to kill us anymore. And it seemed like this pit really was magical. Not only did my leg feel better, but the cut on my hand was already scabbed over.
"Somebody still stole Charlotte," Victor said, starting to wipe the mud off himself as well. "Damien, can I count on your help to retrieve her?"
