“Suppose you wouldn’t know, would you?”
She smacked his shoulder.
“Oi, that’s enough yappin’, ye two.” Thraigg reappeared at their side, a mug in each hand and a precariously balanced platter of cinder cakes propped against his chest. “Ye couldn’t make yerselves useful and find us a table? Do I have to doeverythingaround here?”
“See, now this is just impressive,” Elyria said, taking the platter from the dwarf. “How’d you get these so quickly?”
“Gaia’s tits. Ye always underestimate dwarven charm.”
She pursed her lips. “You charmed them so much they forgot you are Arcanian, did you?”
Thraigg took a swig from the mug in his right hand, simultaneously shoving the one in his left toward Ollie. “Ha! It may have been many a year since my boots last graced the streets here, but the attitudes toward us little folk haven’t changed much.”
Confusion drew the corners of Elyria’s mouth into a frown as Ollie pulled her toward the back corner of the tavern, Thraigg following behind.
“With dwarven-made goods valuable as ever, and the traders who hawk them coming and going through both realms as they please, dwarves are more common in these parts than you might have believed.” Ollie raised his mug in the direction of the bartender, a buxom young woman in a loose gray tunic who was speaking with?—
“There’s another dwarf here?” Surprise colored her tone as Elyria took in the thick red braids twisting down the dwarven woman’s back, her full lips parted with laughter, her deep russet skin glowing in the lantern light.
Thraigg loosed a spluttering laugh into his mug. “We ain’t fuckin’ endangered, lass.”
“I know, but...” She couldn’t help but picture the faces she’d been seeing day in and day out since they’d arrived in Kingshelm—the looks of disdain, of disapproval. She thought of all the times those looks had been directed at Thraigg, Tenebris Nox, and Young Shep—how they seemed especially sharp when landing on the most visually different amongst the delegation.
In reality, she supposed that it was simply the dwarf’s proximity to the nocterrian and sylvan that had led her to assume the humans’ ire was for them all.
But Thraigg had been happily flitting about the human capital all week, hadn’t he? Even at the welcome ball, his spirits had certainly not been hampered by the judgment oozing through the room. Elyria’s brow furrowed with realization. She had been making a lot of assumptions lately.
“...the benefits of dwarven neutrality,” Thraigg finished, and Elyria realized too late that he’d been speaking the entire time she was lost in thought. “We stay out of yer wars, and we get to stay in everybody’s business.”
He said the line so casually, with a smilebehind his clear blue eyes, and Elyria knew the dwarf hadn’t meant anything by it. Still, that knowledge didn’t stop her heart from racing, her pulse blaring in her ears. Oh, to have the privilegeof neutrality. What abenefitto be a dwarf during a war between fae and humans. The War of Two Realms was long over, Malakar long since vanquished, but the shadows simmering just under Elyria’s skin were proof that its impact still lingered. That it would, perhaps, forever.
She cleared her throat, pushing down the tirade that threatened to spill forth in response to Thraigg’s callous remark. “Yes, well, perhaps that’s a conversation for another time,” she finally said, and if for nothing else, at least the dwarf looked somewhat chastened, as if belatedly realizing what he had said.
“I was promised the best cider in the city,” continued Elyria, “so why don’t you go and put my money where your mouth is, Oleander?”
“Right,” said Ollie, a mischievous glint in his tawny eyes. “That I did. Sidle into that booth over there, and I’ll return shortly.”
Elyria turned toward the dimly lit booth Ollie had pointed at, her mouth popping open in protest when she realized it was, in fact, already occupied.
It closed just as fast when, with a jolt running through her chest—that thread being twanged like the string of a fiddle—she realized whoexactlyoccupied it.
19
RUMORS AND REVELRY
ELYRIA
Of course.
Of fucking course.
Cedric Thorne’s chestnut hair was flat against his head, the typically tousled waves deflated, as though, just like Elyria, his hair had been pressed into place by the hood of his cloak.
That hood wasn’t up now though. No, his cowl was pooled around the back of his head, his token peeking out from beneath the gray fabric fastened over his clavicle.
Elbows on the table, the knight was hunched over a tankard, mouth in a tight line as he circled the rim with the pad of his finger. Across from him, Tristan was spread out on the other side of the booth, feet kicked up on the corner of the wooden table, golden hairflopping over one eye.
Elyria was frozen in place, the platter of cinder cakes still balanced on one hand, a thousand thoughts overlapping in her mind. It took entirely too long for them to coalesce into anything even remotely resembling words, and by then, it was too late.
