Page 66 of Minotaur's Secret Baby

My blood thrums violently as I survey her, and it hits me all at once. I felt it the moment I laid eyes on her, but I'm only now beginning to understand this feeling she's awakened in me.

Yes, there's curiosity, but I want her. I feel like she should be mine. Yes. I will keep her. I'm sure I can find other uses for her than just staring at her, though that alone is something I feel I could do for a long time.

She really is beautiful. A treasure.

"Is that..." I hear Kazhir's voice behind me as he enters the tent.

"Yes, general. A human."

He draws closer, but I hold my arm out, stopping his advance.

She's mine. He doesn't know it yet, so I'll forgive the impertinence.

"I don't want curiosity to become a distraction. Let our people know that we've found a human. I'll be taking care of it. If she was found at the bottom of the cliffs, perhaps she has seen the orcs near there and might have useful information."

"Yes, sir."

Talking to her seems like a reasonable place to start, but my mind is already at work thinking of what else I might do with her. There are so many possibilities for such a fascinating and alluring creature such as this.

33

JEMMA

Istartle awake, and the sudden movement makes me wince. I feel everywhere that I hit a branch on the way to the ground. I'm stiff and sore, but I appear whole as I look over my body. And I've been given some form of treatment for my wounds.

There are some bandages on my arm. I lift the edge to peek under them and see they're holding some sort of salve or something against a rough series of scrapes, but it appears to be healing.

I'm guessing if I'm injured, I haven't moved onto some form of afterlife. Perhaps in some sort of torment maybe, but the wound doesn't hurt at all. Maybe whatever has been put on them has some sort of numbing quality.

But this bed I'm lying in, that might be some form of heavenly reward. I've spent years sleeping on the streets, but even when I've been able to beg, borrow, or steal a bed, nothing has ever felt this good.

The linens are smooth, maybe silk. But that's only a word I've heard. I've heard things described as smooth as silk, but I've never actually touched the material. So, it could be something else entirely. And the mattress is firm but pliant and not a lumpy mess. I don't know what it is stuffed with, but there aren't uncomfortable bits of straw poking out, making me itch.

I could lay here forever and just enjoy the sensation of this bed. Maybe this is my reward for a life well-lived. But my insistent need to know is getting in the way of my ability to just enjoy laying here. There's the nagging sense that I could also still be in danger.

Just because something feels good doesn't mean it is good. Dark elves are painfully beautiful creatures, and every single one of them is an evil, manipulative bastard that would skin you alive just because they felt like it. So, even though I'm more comfortable now than I have ever been, I need to get up and find out where I am.

I finally sit up and take a good look around the room. The room is simple and sparse but still elegant. There are large glass windows overlooking a balcony. Perhaps a peek outside will help me figure out where this place is. I slide to the edge of the bed, enjoying how the material feels against my skin. It's almost enough to make me want to discard my rags just to feel what this is like against my bare flesh.

But getting completely naked in a strange environment seems like a poor choice.

When I try to stand up from the bed, a sharp pain in my left ankle makes me stumble back, landing on the soft mattress. Okay, if I fell from a cliff and the worst I have is a sprained ankle, I'll count myself lucky.

It must have taken a miracle for me to survive. As I was falling, hitting all those branches didn't feel good, but it must have been enough to slow my fall. The temporary pain is worth not going splat at the bottom.

Being a bit more careful this time, I use the wall, so I don't put too much weight on my left foot. I make my way to the balcony, each step making it so I need the wall less and less.

When I get to the edge of the balcony, I stumble back again. This time it has nothing to do with my ankle, but instead, with the sudden dizziness I felt looking over another cliff. Before it felt like the world was tilting sideways, the trees had looked similar as well. The air doesn't taste any different here, either. So, I couldn't have gone far.

I hobble back into the room. There's one more door that must lead out into the rest of whatever building I'm in. I start to limp towards it. I've figured out I haven't gone far, but I'm obviously no longer in orc territory, and the architecture here doesn't carry with it the opulence most dark elf buildings have.

That leaves some options, but I can't help but feel a secret hope that this could be some kind of human settlement. There are stories of free humans living and thriving on Protheka, but it's always "somewhere," and it's never certain how many.

As I near the door, though, I get a cold sense of dread when I hear hissing and the sound of something large gliding against the stone floor. I look back to the balcony. There's no way I'd be able to climb out of it to see if there's anywhere else to go. Not with my ankle, all messed up.

And I don't want to test my luck by hurling myself over a cliff edge again.

I think I'm limited to one miracle per way to die.