Chapter 4
This is a bad idea.
That’s what I was thinking as I watched Daerios vanish down the main staircase of Sever Hall.
That’s what I was thinking as I went through the motions of the rest of my day: class, homework in Lamont Library, dinner in Quincy dining hall, and now, lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and questioning every decision I’ve ever made.
This is a really, really, really bad idea.
The whole point of me coming to Harvard was to investigate the elves subtly. To make myself small, draw as little attention as possible while slowly digging into their secrets.
Not to go to a ball with the fucking Prince of Darkness.
My problem is that I was born with my foot on the gas.
It’s what my dad always used to say, and he was right.
I was. I am naturally inclined to push myself harder, faster, too hard, too fast. To crave perfection.
To be willing to bend myself into impossible positions to get there.
It’s what made me a great linguist. It’s the reason I was able to get into Harvard.
Now, it’s going to get me killed.
On my bedside table, my phone buzzes. I roll over and pick it up, checking the notification on the screen.
UNKNOWN: Hi, QUINN! Congratulations! You won our GRAND PRIZE for…
I stop reading. Spam. Of course. The only people who text me are Cara, my mother, and bots trying to steal my personal information. No, thank you.
I’m about to click off my phone when I notice the time: 10:27 p.m.
I smile.
Time for my favorite part of the week.
Harvard University smells like piss.
That’s what I’m thinking as I slip down Mt. Auburn Street, clad in black leggings and a black long-sleeved shirt, hair folded up into a black beanie: how, when I arrived here my freshman year, I expected to be overwhelmed by the perfume of old books, cigar smoke, fine scotch, and history.
Instead, I smelled garbage and human urine, just like I would in any other major metropolitan area.
You’d think that with the elves running the show now, everything would smell like parchment and wisdom and freshly turned earth.
Guess what? It doesn’t. It’s still Cambridge, and it still smells like piss.
Spying on the Ikarith is easy. By now, I’ve done it more times than I can count. All I have to do is skirt down the side path, the one bordering Adams House, and climb the series of fire escapes leading up Adams’s dormitory windows. Then it’s one quick leap and I’m on the Ikarith’s roof.
The Ikarith final club has three stories, plus a back courtyard they use for throwing parties. Blindingly attractive creatures guzzle niru and trade stories on whose father or mother served in which of the Elemental Wars.
I should know. I’ve listened in on many of them from the roof.
Just above the courtyard, on the third floor, is the library.
All four walls of the room are lined with books—dusty old tomes that are regularly replaced with new dusty old tomes from the bowels of Widener.
Every Tuesday night, the Punches gather around the wooden table at the center of the room and read.
Club members stack books at their sides.
When the Punches finish one book, they pick another up from the stack and keep going.
Human hazing involves standing naked in a dark basement with a bag over your head. Elvish hazing is reading.
Figures.
I peer through the window just below the roof. Tonight, twelve Punches—male and female—cluster around the table at the center of the room, with four members browsing the surrounding shelves, hands clasped behind their backs.
The clubs are no longer divided by gender, the way they were a hundred years ago, but they are divided by species: Water Elves in the Kavie, Fire Elves in the Rui, and so on. Sun Elves, like Daerios and Berendir, always join the Ikarith.
Sure enough, there they are, seated at the far end of the table, a fire blazing in the hearth behind them.
I pull my head back up before anyone can spot me.
I’m playing a dangerous game. If the elves catch a human trespassing in one of their off-limits clubs, especially on a night when they’re carrying out the search… Well. I have no idea what will happen to me. I imagine it will involve public beheading.
I turn onto my back, wiggling my shoulders to get cozy on the shingles. My ears perk up, ready for any chatter that might drift out of the crack at the top of the window.
Inside, they’re speaking Elvish—Maevish, not Lukkarin. No humans around, which means there’s no need for English. Doubtless it’s also a precaution against any prying ears.
Too bad I speak it fluently.
The night sky in Cambridge isn’t much to look at. The bright lights and smog of Harvard Square dull any stars trying to twinkle through. It doesn’t do much to hold my attention. In fact, my eyes are getting heavy… Very heavy… I’m just about to doze off when—
The sound of horses.
I sit up. Too fast—a shingle breaks loose and skitters down the roof. Shit, shit. I scamper after it, careful not to clop too loudly on the roof, and grab the shingle before it falls off entirely.
“Did you hear that?” asks a husky voice inside.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Hear what?”
“It sounds like there’s something on the roof.”
“Probably just the horses outside.”
“I don’t think so.”
A head pops out into the night. A long red mane, knotted at the back with a black ribbon. The head does a quick search of the balcony, then starts to turn around. There’s his pointy ear, his sharp chin, and there goes my life, flashing before my very—
“Magrion!” says a voice inside, and the head—thank God—turns to look back through the window.
“What?”
“It’s Saechon.”
Magrion’s eyes bug out. “He’s here?”
“He is.”
Magrion ducks back into the Ikarith, muttering Maevish curses under his breath.
I exhale. That was—God, that was far too close.
But then the elf’s words register. It’s Saechon. And I realize, too late, that I am now in far more danger than I was before.