The Saintess and the Villainess

Chapter 74

Elyon sighed and shook his head. "Zaos, I told you that if you wanted to tag along you'd have to play nice."

"What?" said Zaos, looking offended. "How is that not nice? I welcomed them!"

"Yeah, while grinning at them like you were about to eat them," said Elyon.

"But this is my nicest smile!" said Zaos. He smiled again, while pointing at his face. Somehow his smile gave the impression of a tiger baring its fangs, about to leap. "See? So friendly!"

Elyon just shook his head again before turning to address the visiting party. "I apologize for Prince Zaos," he said. "He arrived at the Royal Guard camp last night to exchange tactical information and when I mentioned this meeting to him he insisted that he wanted to meet our sister, the Saintess."

"Ah, well," said Anne, glancing around at the others. Corvina shrugged at her. "Thanks for the interest? I guess?" said Anne. "It's nice to meet you."

"Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you," said Zaos, waving a hand dismissively. "I wanted to ask why you're wasting your time with the humans. You know that Goddess they worship was originally an elf, right? I was alive before they started cutting the ears off all their statues of her. You should just move back to the Forest and start doing your miracles for us instead. Hey, can you show us a miracle right now?"

"Um..." said Anne. "I kind of suspected as much about the Goddess, so that's cool to have that confirmed, but the miracles don't really work on demand like that... and I can't really just up and move. I've got stuff to do out there. And I do actually care about some of the humans, too..."

"What?" said Zaos, his brows furrowed in genuine confusion. "Why?"

"Why?" repeated Anne. "Because they're my friends!"

"But you're an elf!" countered Zaos.

"Yeah, but..." Anne tried to come up with reasoning that might get through to this... very overwhelming elf man. "I might be half-human too, right? I don't know who my mother is, but if she dropped me off at a human church for them to raise me, I'm probably only half-elf, right?"

Zaos shook his head adamantly. "You're not a half-elf," said Zaos.

"How could you know that, though?" said Anne.

Zaos tapped his own ears twice. "You have long pointed ears. A half-elf would have short pointed ears, almost like a human's."

"So... my mother was an elf?" said Anne. She wasn't sure how to take this. The whole time she'd been reading The Foundling's Wings she was assuming the Saintess was half-elf. It made more sense with her backstory, and thematically it positioned her as a symbolic bridge between the humans and the elves. But she was a full-blooded elf the whole time? Why did her mother drop her off at a human church then?

Eva placed a hand on her shoulder and whispered to her. "It doesn't matter where you came from," she said. "What matters is who you are now."

Anne nodded. "Thank you," she whispered back.

Despite some of the recent weirdness in their relationship, it was still nice to have a supportive friend like Eva around.

Zaos paid no attention to Eva. Or to Anne's feelings, really. He just kept going with what he was saying. "If you join our army, the humans will lose morale. And with the power of your miracles on our side, then we can finally turn the tide of the war and—"

Zaos suddenly fell silent and cocked his head, like he was listening for something. Then he narrowed his eyes.

"Is this your whole group?" he asked, his voice lowered. "Was anyone else lagging behind?"