Elf Defence (Adventures in Aguillon #2) - Lisa Henry Page 0,77
blinked slowly. That’s very... creative?”
“Thank you!” Benji beamed, pleased. “Now please go and tell Calarian to clear our house of teenagers and guards, because I don’t want to have dinner with a whole bunch of Houses and Humans nerds. They’re all stupid.”
“Hey!” Lars poked him in the ribs. “Calarian is one of those nerds!”
“And he’s stupid too,” Benji said. “But I love him anyway.”
“Make sure the milk doesn’t boil,” Lars said, “and I’ll go and get rid of them.”
Benji took the wooden spoon and stirred the milk. He heard voices in the living room, and then footsteps, and then a loud round of farewells and good wishes as Calarian’s friends tramped outside into the cold.
A moment later slim arms curled around him from behind, and a cold nose was pressed into the back of his neck. “Hot chocolate?”
Benji wriggled around so that he was facing Calarian. “Lars is making it. I’m just in charge of the milk for a bit.”
He set the wooden spoon in the pot and took a moment to tuck Calarian’s mahogany hair behind his ears. Then, satisfied that he was as handsome as ever, he kissed him on the tip of his cold nose.
Calarian laughed.
“I hope that milk’s not boiling,” Lars said, squeezing in between them to check the pot. “You two sit down, and I’ll finish up here.”
Benji and Calarian sat at the small kitchen table, and Benji shared out the gingerbread and failed to wipe the smile off his face. He looked around the cosy kitchen, at the ugly curtains in the windows, at the cow-shaped milk jug on the shelf, and at the two idiots—his idiots—who still made his heart thump in a ridiculous way every time he caught even a glimpse of them.
Ugh.
Tournel was stupid, and domestic bliss was stupid, and everything was stupid, including Benji apparently, because he was stupidly in love.
And he had never been happier in his life.
The Play’s the Thing
The Play’s the Thing is a snippet that fits in between Red Heir and Elf Defence. It was first offered for free for readers in Lisa’s Facebook group, but we’re including it here as a thanks to everyone who loves these ridiculous characters as much as we do.
We hope you enjoy it!
“But you said you liked theatre people,” Quinn reminded Loth in a quiet voice as they took their places in front of the stage.
“I said I liked to fuck minstrels,” Loth corrected through a forced smile for their many friends and admirers. The audience might have been facing the makeshift stage, but he had no doubt that most of them were here to see him and Quinn.
Quinn’s raised eyebrow judged him.
“Before I was happily married,” Loth amended. “Ecstatically married.”
Quinn smiled smugly and took his seat. Loth settled in beside him, and wondered, not for the first time, how the hell he’d ended up here, in a castle, as a king, married to Quinn. He was fairly certain that was not supposed to be the moral of his story, but he wasn’t enough of an idiot to question his luck.
“I actually hate the theatre,” Loth said. “It’s tedious. I’d rather masturbate vigorously with a cheese grater than sit through some playwright’s awful attempt at comedy. This is a comedy, right? At least the tragedies are usually funny.”
“It’s a history, I believe,” Quinn said.
“Fuck everything,” Loth said through his fixed smile. "What poor bastard’s life are they butchering this time?”
Quinn was suspiciously silent. Loth turned to look at him, just in time to see Cal and Benji plop down in the seats next to Quinn. “Ugh. They’d better not have written us as stupid,” Benji complained, flicking his hair over his shoulders and settling in with a bag of peanuts.
“Wait.” A horrible suspicion formed in Loth’s mind. “What did you say this was called again?”
“I didn’t,” Quinn said. “It's called the Ginger Princes.” His eyes gleamed with merriment.
“Is this about us?” Loth hissed.
Quinn bit his lip, a smirk threatening. “Maybe.”
Calarian leaned over and poked at Quinn. “You didn’t tell him?” he turned his attention to Loth. “Scott wrote a play about our adventures. I think he’s trying to make people forget about Dave’s ballad.”
Loth smirked at that. Dave’s ballad had taken off, despite the dubious lyrics and barely-there tune, and Loth had heard more than one guardsman singing, ‘got a crap beard and uneven balls,’ casually as they went about their daily business.
Still. “And we’ve let Scott write this and perform it why, exactly?”