Page 3 of Morel Dilemma

“You’d better find a bush to hide under.”

“I will.” Sylin headed not for the path down from the peak but toward the steep shrub-covered slope on the far side.

“One not adjacent to your coffee shop.”

Sylin cast her an anguished look before pulling her hood lower over her eyes and disappearing from view.

Logically, the arrival of elven royalty shouldn’t have any impact on Rylana’s life, but she had a feeling it would. Possibly not for the better.

Grimacing, she headed back to the diner.

2

By the time Rylana reached the Dragon Diner, having passed but fortunately not been accosted by numerous elves, the rain had stopped. As she’d walked downhill toward Acorn Street, which lay only a block inland from the waterfront, she’d frequently had views of the piers and docks that extended into Lumi Lake. Some were still in the process of being repaired after the damage from the troll-god curse, but the largest of the public mooring platforms were again in good working order. Despite that, the elven ship—the floating elven island—hadn’t pulled up to a dock. Maybe it was too large for that. Or maybe the elves wanted to send security details ahead before bringing their queen ashore.

“Nothing that will have anything to do with me,” Rylana said with more confidence than she felt as she slipped into the diner through the storeroom carriage doors in the back.

As she dug into her pack for dry clothes, Rylana hoped Sylin left the city. Even if exotic beans were on the way to their favorite coffee shop, Sylin could try the new brews later. After the elven queen departed.

Rylana looked around the corner of the storeroom that Jildarin had grudgingly granted her when she’d first come to work as his bookkeeper. There wasn’t any furniture, the floor was made from cement, and her camp blanket over a thin pad she’d scrounged up was all she had for a bed.

Why she still slept there, she didn’t know. As a partner in a business that she’d helped turn profitable, she would receive money at the end of every month, enough to afford rent for a room. She could even buy groceries if she wished, though Jildarin was such a wonderful chef that it was hard to imagine wanting to eat somewhere else. He wasn’t even that bad of a roommate, hardly ever growling and thwacking crates with his tail in his sleep. Further, as grudging as he’d been when he’d first allowed her use of the corner, he didn’t seem to mind her presence in his lair anymore. He’d even told her that he wanted her to sleep there after she’d spent a night at her family’s castle.

Yes, told. Despite her suggestion that requests were more appropriate when asking business partners to do things, he tended to issue commands. A dragon habit when dealing with lesser species, as they considered all other species.

“Rylana?” called the half-elf server, Zalani, from the hallway. “Are you back there?”

“Yes, I’m coming.”

Rylana tugged a dry shirt over her head, wishing her corner nook came with a private wash tub, though such luxuries were rare, even in rented rooms in hostels. When she had time, she usually cleaned up at the public baths two blocks away. The diner’s lavatory had a sink, enough for sparse washings.

“Is the breakfast hour busy?” Rylana guessed Zalani wanted help in the dining room. Either that, or Rolf was trying to extort customers into paying large goblin tips, and Zalani needed a hand keeping him in line.

“Oh, yes.” Zalani sounded more pleased than frazzled, probably because her tips had also improved a great deal, despite her less aggressive means of acquiring them. She employed the time-tested method of offering good service accompanied by friendly flirting. “There’s a table filled with university students who star on the satyr pitch team.”

“Are they being trouble?” Scraping her hair into a semblance of order, Rylana joined Zalani in the hall. She inhaled with appreciation scents of bacon, poached eggs, and was that the basil hollandaise sauce Jildarin had been working on perfecting? Her mouth watered.

“Trouble?” Zalani unbuttoned the top two fasteners of her blouse and winked. “Not yet.”

“Ah.”

“Chef Jildarin wants you in the kitchen.”

“In a platonic business manner, I assume.”

“I think that’s the only way he knows how to want people, and yes. The elven plant master has arrived and is interested in your input.”

“Oh, good.” Rylana hurried to the kitchen while Zalani sashayed into the dining room to ensure the presumably handsome university athletes didn’t lack anything.

Rylana almost walked into a large illusion floating between the ovens and the pantry, a barely recognizable image of the diner’s flat rooftop. It had been altered so that wrought-iron stairs ran up the side of the building with the rails and treads shaped in leaf-, vine-, and branch-inspired patterns. The rooftop itself was covered in slate tiles, the crevices sprouting moss. Potted trees spread their branches artistically, casting dappled shade over tables and chairs featuring the same patterns as the stair treads. The seating areas were placed to look past the roofs of the bakery, coffee shop, and tavern and out toward the lake. Bird feeders and nesting boxes hung from some of the branches while a fountain and fire pit offered ambiance. The illusion was so real that Rylana heard the water gurgling and the flames crackling.

“How beautiful,” she breathed.

“It is very busy.” Jildarin stood before an oven, shirtless as he spooned bacon and eggs onto a plate. “And will those branches protect our diners if it rains? It rains a lot here. Even in the summer. A cave would be more practical.”

An older lady with pointed ears poking through her silver-streaked pale-blue hair, Plant Master Chalora, whom Rylana had met briefly before, pursed her lips and looked through the illusion at her. Her expression said she hoped Rylana would be more reasonable—and might talk Jildarin into being so as well. Since their landlord had only relented in allowing them to add the rooftop seating area when he’d learned the esteemed elven plant master would handle the design, Rylana didn’t want her partner’s gruffness to drive Chalora away.

“You can’t get permits to build a cave on the roof of a building in the city,” Rylana told him, not letting her gaze linger too long on the magnificence of his physique revealed by the missing shirt. How did dragons keep from getting flabby when they rarely exercised, except when they shifted forms and went on hunts? Magic, no doubt. “They’re too heavy to put up there anyway. As it is, we might need to add reinforcements for those slate tiles and big pots.”