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Chapter Twelve

The reason for all of the dense layers of fabric was very clear—one might even say too clear, as he was practically glowing.

The person before us was Alric, of that there was no doubt. But unlike the familiar black-haired, green-eyed human male, we were being watched by a white-blond haired, emerald-eyed elf. Not just any elf, judging by the inhuman beauty and the faint tattoo scroll accenting his left cheekbone. Alric was an elven lord.

It was so silent after he disclosed his situation that I swore I could hear the heartbeats of the faeries sleeping in their castle.

An elven lord. I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Had I known him at all? All we had been through and he never even gave a hint of who and what he really was. “Is this a joke? Someone made you look like that?” I waved my hand toward him as he all but fell into the sofa. Harlan slid over a bit but didn’t leave. He also didn’t take his eyes off of him.

Alric dropped his face into his hands and just sat there for a few moments. That white-blond hair was almost alive as it tumbled over his hands. No wonder he’d dyed it, and no wonder it looked crappy all of the time.

“No one made me look like this. I was born this way. What someone did was make it so everyone will know it.” He lifted his head and closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t have any magic. Whoever took me from here last night managed to take all of my magic, even my ability to glamour.”

Harlan still hadn’t said anything but he was studying Alric as closely as anything he would have found in the ruins. And his whiskers were twitching faster than I’d ever seen.

Something wasn’t quite right. “Wait a minute, you cast an anti-glamour spell on my apartment after Nirtha went to pieces there. How come it didn’t expose you then?”

Alric shook his head. “I couldn’t very well have you know what I really was, so I set it to exclude me. If I had any magic at all you wouldn’t be seeing this.” He waved one long graceful hand in front of his face and pointed at the thin elaborate lines marking his left cheek. Then he pulled open his tunic. “And also this. Betcha no one told you about these markings, Harlan.” He didn’t stand, to be honest I wasn’t sure if he could, he looked exhausted. The rough looking tunic he wore was thin and shabby but it pulled back from his chest easily enough.

A slightly thicker, but still faint, marking covered the right side of his chest. “I know both of you have a lot of questions. Let me head off a few comments though. Yes, I am sorry I never told you who I am. Yes, abandoning you after the battle wasn’t a good thing. Both of which I would do again in an instant under similar circumstances.”

I found it really hard to look at him. Part of it was the extreme betrayal. Of course he’d been able to figure out Covey’s scrolls, it was his original language after all. The other problem was that he was simply that beautiful. I never thought of any man as beautiful, and he still had a ruggedness to his stubborn jaw, but he was simply breathtaking.

“Talk. First, who did this and where have you been? Then work backward until I tell you to stop.”

Alric shrugged. “I have no idea.” He held up one hand and winced as both Harlan and I started to argue. “Seriously. I don’t. That’s one of the reasons I came here, it was the last place I recalled being at.”

“You didn’t look like that when I left you last night. Someone had beat the crap out of you, but you looked normal.”

Alric winced again and I got the impression that he didn’t like how he looked either. Poor thing, too pretty for his own good.

“You recall nothing at all of what happened?” Harlan’s voice was still low, but he was peering into Alric’s eyes as he spoke. “I could hypnotize you, it has worked on others. Back in the day—”

“You’re not going to hypnotize him. It doesn’t work and just gives you a headache.”

“So,
what
do you remember?” I pointedly ignored Harlan’s hurt look and moved back to Alric.

He shrugged and weirded me out. His mannerisms, stance, voice everything was Alric. And he sort of looked like himself, but not enough to not give me the hebbie-jeebies.

“I went to find you at the Shimmering Dewdrop two nights ago. I was about to approach you when that damn assassin showed up. Then you were chasing me out and that barmaid threw me into a trash bin. Some thugs I’d never seen before grabbed me and dragged me down by the river. They kept asking where their cut was.” He shook his head and I realized all the bruising from the night before was gone.

“They kept me overnight, then dumped me further down the river when I didn’t give them the answers they wanted.”

I shook my head. “I’ve seen you fight, Alric. Even before I knew you were some high magic muckity-muck. You are one hell of a fighter. And you still had your magic at that point. Are you saying a few thugs got the better of you?”

One thing about his natural coloring, his blush showed really well. He wasn’t as pale as I imagined elven high lords and ladies to be, but he was fairer than he’d been when I thought he was human.

“There were more than just a few, and I was trying to keep my cover so I didn’t fight back at first. By the time I realized they were looking for someone else, they already had the upper hand. I made my way here last night in hopes you could shelter me until I could find out who jumped me. They took off most of my disguise so I knew they knew what I really looked like.”

I gave a very pointed cough.

“What I
did
look like. I felt far more at ease as you knew me than I ever did as this.” He waved to encompass his entire self. If he was looking for sympathy he was barking up the wrong fence post. I didn’t feel sorry for the poor little elven princeling. I had a lot of emotions going on about him—hurt, anger, betrayal—but sympathy was not one of them.

“I collapsed on your sofa and that was it. I don’t remember anything after that except for escaping from someplace in the woods and walking here an hour ago.” He shook his head as Harlan took a breath to launch his verbal attack. “Before you ask, no, I don’t know where I was, nor how I escaped. Until I got to the edges of the city, I really didn’t have much to go on. I was just walking.”

I also waved Harlan off. “You escaped with no injuries, from people who were able to take your magic? Which, I have to think if you elven lords are as powerful as the myths say, would be pretty damn hard.”

“It should be impossible.” He shrugged and collapsed back into the sofa. “I can’t explain it. But no one followed me when I escaped so maybe they left Beccia after they took my magic?”

“Then why not just kill you?”

Harlan stated what I had been thinking. The only magic users who could benefit from stealing magic from another magic user were necromancers, a rarefied group who lived off the deaths of others. Anyone else strong enough to steal magic wouldn’t benefit from it—except they would have just destroyed the abilities of a foe. Which they could have done much more easily by killing him.

“I have no idea.” Alric’s weariness was now washing over his face like a wave about to swallow him.

“There must be a reason. Killing you would have been cleaner.” Another thought struck me. “And someone
is
looking for you. There was a guardsman at the Shimmering Dewdrop tonight looking for an elven high lord. He just about got laughed out of the place.”

Both of them looked like I’d been withholding the secret of the world.

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” Harlan got his words out first, but Alric looked like he was echoing them.

“Because there’s been a bit going on tonight? And until his highness disrobed a bit here, I didn’t think we had one in Beccia. No offense, but I didn’t think you existed at all. Glorinal said you all died.”

“Is that your elf date?” Harlan put as much disapproval into his voice as possible, but I knew it was more annoyance that I had met an elf and not told him than me going on a date.

“Trying to be my date, and yes, he was. He was also the one who saved the entire pub from that crazed troll. Something, sad to say, an elven lord in our midst did not.”

“I couldn’t risk my cover, and he acted before I could do something that wouldn’t lead back to me. But I wouldn’t have let him hurt that dryad or anyone else.” He leaned forward.

“What does he look like up close? Exactly? I didn’t get a good look at him in the pub.” There was a sudden intensity to those emerald eyes that made me believe in all the not-so-nice myths about the high lords.

I got to my feet and stood behind my chair to put some distance between us. I didn’t think he’d hurt me—didn’t think he had the strength right now to hurt me—but I also hadn’t thought he was an elven high lord. “He’s about your height, with black hair that looks natural and silver eyes. He’s handsome and looks like an elf. Has magic, fairly strong from what I could tell. Pointed ears, those wide, tilted eyes you all apparently have. I’d never seen him until that night, and he wasn’t familiar with faeries so I think he just got to town.”

Alric dropped his head back into his hands. “Thank the gods.”

When he didn’t feel the need to expand, Harlan verbally prodded him. “Thank them about what? If you know something about him, you owe it to us to tell us.”

Alric raised his head. “I don’t know anything about him, which is good. He’s not from my clan, but my people splintered after the Breaking and there are rumors of other surviving clans in distant lands. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t one of the Dark.”

“Oh, those are real as well?” Harlan looked concerned enough for the both of us which was good as I had never heard of the Dark.

“Um, someone want to fill me in?”

“The Dark were the destruction of the elvish world.” Alric closed his eyes but whether from relief or fatigue it was hard to tell. “They caused the Breaking, murdered thousands of our people, and almost destroyed the world. This elf couldn’t be one—our elders took all of the survivors’ magic after the Breaking.”

When he didn’t go on, Harlan added, “They were elves who followed a dark god and festered for years before trying to take over everything.”

Alric shook his head. “It was our fault. The elven high lords and ladies. My people were too sure in our power, too confident that we held all the good in the world. We didn’t see them for what they really were until it was almost too late.”

Harlan seemed to be weighing something for a few moments then finally got off the sofa. “You can’t go out like this obviously, and I’m afraid I’ve claimed Taryn’s guest room. But we can make you comfortable right here.” He put together a nice little bed on the sofa. I almost expected him to bring in some warm milk and cookies.

Alric looked surprised, but he still let Harlan push him around until he’d taken over my sofa yet again. Granted, Alric had been getting beaten up a lot as of late, but he practically passed out the moment he was prone.

Harlan and I went down the hall and I followed him into my guest room. “Look, about you staying here—”

“Yes, I think given the current situation I should plan on staying here indefinitely. Never fear, I’m willing to sacrifice in order to keep you and our elf lord out there safe.” He re-folded his long nightshirt for at least the fifth time since we’d come in here.

“What about that lovely apartment you were staying in? I’m sure you’d do better with your work in a place on your own.”

Instead of answering, he wandered over to his pile of luggage. Funny thing, I hadn’t noticed he actually had four bags with him, not just the one I’d seen earlier.

He pointed to all of them with a sigh. “This is all I have left of that place. I was running an experiment on those metal pieces and, well, it blew up.”

“You destroyed the pieces of that sarcophagus?” Life was more important than artifacts, in theory anyway. But clearly Harlan was okay, and if Covey had been injured he would have already told me.

The look he gave me could have stopped a minotaur in a full charge.

“No, of course not.” Then he winced a bit. “Well, mostly no. One piece did get a bit singed but Covey thinks she can repair it enough for us to use.”

I still was very annoyed about Covey, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about her having sole access to an artifact I wanted to study. Rationally I trusted her with my life. I was just so pissed off that I didn’t trust her with anything else.

“Great, hopefully you can get it back soon. As a partner in this enterprise, I need access to those pieces.”

Harlan scowled at that. “Partner? You’re not a partner per se…I mean we don’t want to stress you out….” He dropped off as he realized that his earlier argument for excluding me vanished. Or rather started snoring from out in the living room. Nice to know even high muckity muck elves snored when the need called for it.

I frowned. There was something more going on than he and Covey being worried about my sanity. Granted that was a big thing, but there was something else he wasn’t telling me. Even after finding out that I was completely correct in Alric’s alive status, Harlan still didn’t want me involved.

I stayed silent but let my glare do the talking.

He shrugged. “It’s not my theory. Covey thinks you may be going through a change of some sort. She thinks your reaction to dragon bane is tied in somehow.”