My audience with Alleria was a lot tenser than I was expecting. Every word that had come out of her mouth she had spoken with a heavy dose of condescension that had put me on edge and made me defensive. I was still feeling the tension from our exchange when we returned to the ship to collect some things before we went on to the residence that Alleria had offered for our use. The others noticed my tension and afforded me the space that I needed to calm myself down and think.

  “Brumli,” I called.

  “Yes Alegra,” he came to me and said.

  “I want you and Ajax to stay here with the ship, Uraia will come with me. I don’t trust our hosts, and we cannot under any circumstances allow them to gain control of the ship; I am trusting you with making sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “You have my word that not one elf will set foot on this ship without your blessing.”

  Knowing that there was no length to which Brumli wouldn’t go to honor his word I left the ship with Uraia and we returned to the carriage where Erevan was waiting for us. Erevan had informed us during our trip back to the ship that there was enough space at the residence to accommodate the phoenixes so Myra and Igor were flying over head and following us.

  “I’m curious about the rocs that you mentioned earlier; will I get the chance to see one before we leave?” I asked Erevan.

  “Sure, that can be easily arranged, in fact we’d be interested in seeing how they fair in the air against your birds.”

  “I should warn you that there was a prince in our realm who challenged my Myra with his gryphon and it ended up not being a contest at all.”

  “You have gryphons in your realm as well?”

  “There are many interesting creatures in our realm.”

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  “What about dragons? Do you have dragons?”

  “No, all of the dragons were poached to extinction many years ago. Do you have dragons here?” I asked, being careful not to betray my knowledge about Saraya.

  “There’s one dragon that we see flying in the sky from time to time, but it’s the only one that we’ve seen in a long time.”

  “What about wolves like Anbu here?” I asked, scratching the top of Anbu’s head.

  “We have wolves; they’re quite a bit bigger than him though.”

  “That I have to see.”

  The residence that we were taken to was an estate located within the city that was not too dissimilar from the nobles’ estates in Glendale. Unlike the nobles’ estates the grounds were not meticulously manicured; the plants on the grounds, which I had never seen growing in our realm, were allowed to grow wild throughout the estate, as was the case in much of the city. The grounds were big enough for Myra and Igor, and the residence was more than large enough for me and Uraia.

  Our carriage pulled up to the entrance to the residence and when we got out of the carriage we were greeted by the staff of the residence. To my shock, the servants were all dark elves.

  “The staff here at the residence will attend to all of your needs during your stay; if there is anything that you need don’t hesitate to ask them for assistance,” Erevan said to me.

  “Thank you Erevan, I’m sure we’ll be perfectly comfortable here,” I responded.

  Erevan left in the carriage and Uraia and I were escorted into the residence by the servants. We followed them into the foyer where the servants introduced themselves to us.

  “Welcome, my name is Aniira, I will be the chief attendant during your stay here; this is Elara, Neara, and Syann; we’ll start with a tour of the residence, then we’ll get you settled into your sleeping quarters.”

  “Okay, I responded.

  While Aniira showed us through the residence I thought about whether it would be smart to ask her about Saraya, deciding ultimately that doing so would be dangerous because I didn’t fully understand the nature of the relationship between the dark elves and the white elves and I didn’t know where these women’s loyalties lay.

  “That’s everything that there is to know about the residence; if you need anything call into one of the voice tubes and one of us will be up to assist you,” Aniira said.

  “Thank you Aniira; for now we’d just like to freshen up, it’s been a long journey.”

  Aniira and the other servants left us and went down to the ground level where their rooms were located.