Chapter 2: I hope we meet again.

Bonnie's POV

Cosplay? I had to admit — whoever this guy was, the makeup was flawless. Those pointed ears in particular were seamless, not a single visible seam where they met the skin.

He was standing in the entrance, visibly lost, his expression blank with disorientation. Streaks of blood-red stage makeup crossed his face, and his white robe was torn in several places — perhaps he was going for a post-battle elven warrior look. That kind of costume, paired with a face that belonged in an oil painting — sharp and beautiful in the same breath — hit the club floor like a lit fuse. I gave it three seconds before the crowd swallowed him whole.

Sure enough, a cluster of women in barely-there dresses made their move. The noise drowned out whatever was being said, but I could read the scene clearly enough: the "elf" was backing away, hands raised, clearly trying to leave, while the women latched onto his arms and waist and dragged him toward the dance floor.

The crowd erupted. The lighting guy caught the commotion and swung a spotlight straight down onto him, flooding that stunning face and those wide, startled green eyes with white light. He looked like a deer who had wandered into oncoming traffic.

The women pressed in close and started dancing against him. A few men drifted over too, drawn in despite themselves, circling with unmistakable intent. The elf flushed almost immediately — cheeks scarlet, the tips of his pointed ears going red as though they might bleed. He twisted and dodged, his lips moving, clearly saying something, but no one was listening. They just wanted a piece of him.

Wait. His ears turned red too? I frowned, something catching in my mind. If those ears were prosthetics, how could they change color with his emotions?

Whatever the answer was, I could see he was in genuine distress.

Something about it pulled at an old memory — the suffocating feeling of being pressed in on all sides with nowhere to go. I didn't stop to think too hard about it. I just shoved through the crowd, grabbed him by the arm, and hauled him out of the dance floor and into the kitchen at the back of the club.

"Nobody's going to bother you in here," I said, running a hand through my hair where the crowd had knocked it loose. I left my mask on.

"Thank you — thank you so much, beautiful lady." He was breathing hard, chest heaving. "That place is terrifying. Why were all those people trying to —" His voice caught. His face was still flushed a deep, embarrassed red. Clearly, he was not someone who handled that kind of attention well.

I looked him over. "This is a nightclub. What they were doing is pretty standard for this kind of place. The real question is — if you can't handle it, why were you here in the first place?"

"My name is Orion," he said, meeting my eyes steadily. "Orion Almeida. I am the Holy Son of the Elven Clan." He paused, as though searching for the right words. "I don't know how I ended up here. One minute I was in the forest, fighting the Dark Elves. I was exhausted, and then I saw a door — an actual door, set into a tree. I opened it, and I was suddenly standing in that room out there."

He looked genuinely troubled by his own story. "If my arrival has caused any trouble, I am truly sorry. I don't understand how any of this happened."

The Elven Clan. Holy Son. I stared at him, half-expecting a camera crew to jump out from behind the freezer. But then those pointed ears twitched — a small, anxious movement — and I felt my certainty waver. No prop department made ears that moved like that.

Then his stomach growled. Loudly.

The color that flooded his face was almost comical. He pressed a hand to his abdomen, his ears flushing red all over again. That, more than anything else, settled it for me. No special effect did that.

But I could sort out the metaphysics later. Right now, as someone who had built her entire life around food, I was not about to let anyone sit hungry in front of me.

"Wait here," I said. "I'll get you something to eat."

The club's owner, Victor Miller, had been riding the coattails of my reputation as "Queen Layla" long enough that we had an understanding — I had the run of his kitchen whenever I needed it, including whatever happened to be in the refrigerator.

I found three honey rolls in the back, stone cold. That was fine. I'd worked with worse.

I brushed the top of the first one with my own honey glaze and slid it into the oven to reheat. The second I sliced and laid into a buttered pan over low heat, letting it go until both sides were golden and crackling at the edges. For the third, I cut off the top like a lid, hollowed out the inside, and cubed the soft crumb. I coated the shell inside and out with a honey-butter wash and put it back in the oven. Once it came out, I nestled the toasted cubes back inside and finished it with a scoop of ice cream — a proper ice cream toast, done in under ten minutes.

Three rolls, three preparations. Even in an emergency, I didn't do sloppy.

I carried everything out, and the smell hit the kitchen before I even set the plate down. Orion's eyes went wide. I watched his throat move as he swallowed.

"Here you are," I said. "And mint green tea to go with it."

He had the manners to nod and thank me before he started, but I could tell he was barely holding himself back. He ate quickly — not desperately, but with the focused efficiency of someone who hadn't eaten in a very long time. The grace he managed to maintain throughout was not something any actor hired for a prank show would have. It was bone-deep.

I sat across from him and watched, chin resting on my hand.

When he finally looked up and caught me staring, the flush came back instantly — face, ears, the whole picture. It was genuinely endearing.

"Forgive me, my lady," he said, with a small, mortified dip of his head. "I was hungrier than I realized, and your food is — it was very difficult to pace myself. I apologize if I was unrefined."

"You weren't," I said, and I meant it. "I was watching because you make eating look elegant. Are you full? I can make more if you need it."

A shy smile crossed his face. "I am quite full. Thank you, truly."

He opened his palm, and a soft green light gathered there. A small drawstring pouch materialized from it. He counted out five gold coins and set them on the table, then unfastened a necklace from around his neck — a jagged, asymmetrical pendant of deep translucent green, like emerald but not quite — and held it out to me.

I stared at it. I had never seen anything cut like that, catching the kitchen's flat overhead light and breaking it into something extraordinary. Against that, the gold coins looked almost quaint.

And stranger still — I felt like I recognized it. Not from memory, exactly. More like the feeling of reaching into a coat pocket and finding something that had always belonged there.

"I can't take that," I said quickly, pulling my hand back. "The food wasn't worth anywhere near —"

Orion caught my hand gently and pressed the pendant into my palm. "Please accept it," he said. "It is not only my gratitude. It is a token of friendship from the Elven Clan. Any elf who sees this will know you are someone I have personally recognized as a friend."

That changed things. A thank-you gift I could refuse. A symbol of alliance between peoples — that was something else. And that persistent sense of familiarity, the feeling that this object already knew me — I couldn't explain it, but I couldn't dismiss it either. I closed my fingers around the pendant and said nothing more.

"I should go," Orion said, rising. He gave me a small, formal bow. "I hope we meet again."

He left through the kitchen's back door. It wasn't until I heard it swing shut that I noticed his coin pouch still sitting on the table beside the gold coins. I snatched it up and pushed through the door after him.

The alley was empty. The street beyond it was empty. There was no trace of him in either direction.

I stood there in the night wind, the pouch in one hand and the pendant in the other.

"Is he actually real?" I murmured to no one. "An elven Holy Son — from another world entirely?"