That evening, a convoy rolled slowly out of the brightly lit Palace Garden.
Olin and her Knights were still escorting them.
"You're taking them to the Moonlight Opera House? You've done even better than I imagined..." Olin rode alongside the Carriage. She had thought Annan might hit it off with one envoy at most. She hadn't expected him to win over every Elf.
"I couldn't betray your 'trust,' could I?" Annan said with a bitter laugh, stressing the word.
Olin pretended not to hear and rode ahead of the convoy.
"Annan, aren't you going to introduce me?" The blue-haired Elf wore a faint, teasing smile. The Elves beside her looked at him in surprise.
"This is Olin Monte Montreal."
Her surname said it all.
"So you approached us for the same reason?" a young Elf in the carriage asked coldly.
Annan said nothing, but the blue-haired Elf spoke up for him. "Annan isn't that kind of person... right?"
"We're simply friends, just like you and I." To keep the Elves from treating Burr and Sailita Dena as enemies, Annan added, "As it happens, I have some new friends to introduce to you."
"Are they all girls?"
"Of course not! Why would you think that?"
Annan meant that Burr and Sailita Dena were Ghosts, so they didn't count as girls.
Perhaps because two other Elves were still in the carriage, the Elf Mentor did not press him.
The convoy carrying the Elf envoys traveled down from the hilltop to the middle district and stopped at the edge of the pitch-black Sorendor Ruins.
"I didn't expect your Imperial Capital to have a place like this."
"A piece of royal history."
Annan gestured toward the only lit building beside the dark ruins. "That's the Moonlight Opera House."
Pamela had gone home to rest,