Page 24 of The Broken Elf King
“I’m the greatest healer in the realm. There is no one who can match my power. That’s how elvin healing works. Someone inferior to your healing power cannot heal you. It’s why I’m brought in to the hardest cases and the smaller ones are left with the less capable healers who still need wands.”
I’d seen the healing wands and wondered why he didn’t use one. I guessed he didn’t need to.
I frowned, treading water more slowly now that I knew I wasn’t going to drop to the bottom of however deep this pool went.
“So if you fell ill? A palace healer couldn’t help you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t even have a palace healer for that reason. If my staff falls ill, I heal them.”
Shock ripped through me. “I didn’t know that. Is that well known?”
He eyed me curiously. “No, I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
That stung a little, but I knew what he meant.
“How’s your backside?” he asked. “Still sore?”
It wasn’t. I felt amazing, truth be told. “No, but you could have healed it,” I told him.
He smirked. “Would you have let me?”
No. No, I wouldn’t have. I would have said I was fine and then suffered. He knew that? Such little time together and already he knew how I worked? Was that why he came here? For me? Surely not, surely for himself as well.
“It didn’t hurt that bad,” I lied, and then regretted it, forgetting he could tell.
He shook his head. “Two lies. Shall I start keeping count? We might rack up quite a few over the next five years.”
I sighed. “Sometimes lies are good. You don’t want to know what I was thinking earlier.”
That intrigued him; an eyebrow raised and his lips curled. “Oh, I most certainly do.”
Okay, he wanted the truth, he could have it.
“I was wondering about the woman you bedded this morning and if you did that often to many women,” I said boldly. “If you were going to get married and continue to do it.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “You’re right, some lies serve their purpose,” was all he said.
He wasn’t going to answer me and that was okay, he wasn’t entitled to. I opened my mouth to speak when he cleared his throat.
“I would never bed another while married. Dara is a friend that I had an agreement with,” he said plainly.
A bedding agreement? I suddenly wanted a male friend who looked like he did to have an agreement with.
Had, he saidhad.
“Had?” I raised an eyebrow.
He sighed. “I’m looking for a wife now, so when Dara came into my room this morning and woke me, I told her the agreement was over.”
Jealously flared to life inside of me so strongly I was shocked by it. She woke him for sex? That meant she had access to his room and did that on a regular basis. That also must have been why she was crying. Oh how I wished I could smell a lie!
“Would you like to interrogate me further about my private life?” he asked stonily.
Oops. I’d forgotten I was talking to the king of the elves. I did that often. He just seemed so normal.
“So,” I went for a change in topic, “were you always the greatest healer of your family?” I diverted to hopefully a safer topic, but instantly knew I’d done wrong when I saw a storm brew in his gaze.
Hades!Why did I bring up his dead family? It was just the first thing that I thought of and I was trying not to ask him any more sex questions.
