Chapter 15
In Linguistics the next day, I nod to Daerios and Berendir as I pass, headed for my usual seat at the back of the classroom. Before I make it even one step up, however, a hand wraps around my wrist, tugging me into one of the desks in the front row.
I land with a grunt.
“What the hell?” I growl at Berendir, who withdraws his hand. He shrugs innocently. I glance around him at Daerios, who keeps his gaze forward with an unreadable expression.
“You know what?” Berendir announces. “I can’t see the lecture well from here.” He turns to me. “Quinn, will you switch seats with me?”
“We’re in the front row,” I say. “Every desk can see the lecture well.”
“I don’t like this angle,” he insists.
I’m going to kill him.
Not wanting to cause any more of a scene, I grit my teeth. “Fine.”
By the time we’ve settled into our new seats—me squarely between the two elves—Dr. Infix has begun his lecture on how to identify cultural crossover via abnormal morphemes. I slide out my notebook and pen, ready to take notes. As I do, Daerios’s knee brushes mine.
I freeze. When I glance over at him, he stares forward as if nothing happened. My eyes dart down to my notebook, where I blindly copy down what Dr. Infix is saying: the remnants of Proto-Turkic in Azerbaijani, such as good God Sheila how many times have I told you not to…
It’s only halfway through the sentence that I realize I’m now writing down Dr. Infix berating our TA.
My pen jerks back from the page, and before I can cross out the words, I hear a snort to my left. When I look at Berendir, his eyes are forward, but a suppressed smirk plays at his lips.
I tear the paper out of my notebook, ball it up, and toss it at the side of his face.
Like an unexpected breeze, Daerios starts appearing everywhere I go on campus.
On the river during my afternoon walk. In the booth beside mine at Starbucks.
In Cabot Library as I read Mohsin Hamid or Gabriel García Márquez, a tall plastic cup of cold brew from Clover in my hand, drinking until the words start to quiver.
I’ll start up Weeks Bridge, or glance up from a page, and there he is—out for his own walk, ordering his own drink.
I never approach him. I don’t have to. Every time, he walks right up to me and asks the same thing. “May I join you?”
Impeccable manners, for a raging asshole.
I’m still spying on the final clubs, of course. It’s the only part of my routine Daerios hasn’t yet infiltrated. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I dress in all black, salute Cara on my way out the door, and slip off into the night.
For the past few weeks, I’ve spied on no one but the Ikarith. Not the Rui, or the Kavie, or the Kiilis—a word that means snowfall in English, which makes sense, as it is the headquarters of the Snow Elves. They may be brilliant, but no one said they were creative.
I used to rotate between the clubs, to keep my search as wide as possible, but now, I find myself drawn only to Linden Street.
I tell myself it’s because they’re the only club who has given me any real information in the last year.
I refuse to admit that there might be any other reason.
I refuse to admit that I go to hear one certain voice.
In the daylight, I don’t bother saying no to his requests to join me anymore. Instead, as he sits in the armchair next to mine, cozied up against my favorite window of Cabot, I eye his steaming paper tea cup and ask, “Do elves not drink coffee?”
“Not particularly.”
“No coffee beans on Elaerion?”
“No, there are. But we are taught that coffee races the heart and unsteadies the hand.” He holds up his left and turns it in the air. “Good bowmanship requires steady hands.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I don’t use a bow.” I hold up my half-empty cold brew and shake it twice. “Because I wouldn’t graduate without coffee.”
My eyes flit out to the rest of the library, and there they are—the sea of now-familiar eyes that follow Daerios and me wherever we go. The shock and confusion at seeing an elf and a human in casual conversation.
“What are you looking at?” he asks.
Daerios never seems to notice all the eyes. Maybe he’s pretending. Or maybe, as a prince, human fascination is the only life he’s ever known.
“Nothing,” I say. Then I stick out the oil-black cup of cold brew. “Here. Try it.”
“No, thank you.”
“Don’t be a little bitch, Daerios.”
A pause. The corner of his mouth twitches. “Only if you try my anaimean root tea.”
I make a face. “Is that even a real thing?”
“It’s not on the regular menu.” He winks and holds out the cup.
I hate to admit it, but I love this part of our relationship.
The challenges. The back-and-forth. At night, I burrow my head into my pillow and replay our conversations.
I pick them apart word by word, looking for holes in his logic into which I could have dug further.
I invent new insults. Try to guess how he’ll respond. File it all away for later use.
This doesn’t mean I have feelings for him, of course. I can’t. Even if thinking about him leaves me feeling strangely light, like I’m floating atop my bedspread.
“Fine.” I snatch the tea out of his hand. He accepts the coffee gingerly in return. I press the rim of the tea to my lips and take a sip.
“You know, on Elaerion, the exchanging of cups is part of our marriage ritual.”
I spit out the liquid. “Excuse me?” My voice veers upward.
Daerios glances out at the rest of the library. “Shhh. People are staring.”
“Now you care about people staring?” I don’t bother to lower my voice. “You sneaky bastard. What did you just do?”
He puts a hand to his mouth to cover his grin. “Relax, Kallister. We aren’t married now. I was simply making an observation.” His smile widens. “Though it’s good to know how violently you react to the idea of marriage to me.”
“You’re a prick, Daerios.”
“You haven’t tried the tea.”
I sigh, then toss the cup back, drinking deeply.
“You might not want—”
I down half the cup in one go, just to make a point.
“Oh, dear.” Daerios puts his long fingers to his lips again.
“What?” I demand. “What did I—”
Shadows start to close in around the edges of my vision. A gathering storm of black that appears from nowhere and seems to push down upon me, to weight every limb of my body.
“What did—” My voice wobbles.
Alarmed, Daerios pushes himself up from his chair, closing the space between us in half a breath. His arms curl around me, his shoulder a basket for my drooping head.
“Whass goinn—”
The shadows close entirely, and the world turns to black.
I awake in an unfamiliar dorm room. When my eyes peel open, I see three blurry figures above me which, with rapid blinking, take the forms of Daerios, Berendir, and Cara.
Before any of them can react to my consciousness, I drive one hand upward and grab the lapel of Daerios’s cloak. “What the hell,” I croak, “did you do to me?”
The prince’s lips twitch. “Good morning to you, too, sunshine.”
“Thank fuck.” Cara sighs loudly. “She’s awake.”
Still gripping Daerios’s collar, I glance around the dorm room. It’s a large single with vines crawling down one wall and a Rolling Stones poster over the bed. What the hell? “Where am I?”
“You have the honor,” says Berendir, “of being in His Royal Exquisiteness’ own chambers.”
Figures.
“How long have I been out?”
“Just an hour or two,” Daerios says.
“An hour?” I whip my head back to look at him. “Are you joking?”
“An hour is nothing, given how much of that anaimean root tea you drank. Especially for a human.” He pauses, then adds, “You must be pretty strong.”
I briefly consider punching him in the face.
Instead, I mumble something about where Daerios can shove that backhanded compliment, which Cara and Berendir take as their cue to leave.
“I’ll see you back at the room?” Cara asks.
I nod. On the way out the door, Berendir sings, “Don’t do drugs, kids!
” Then the hinges creak, and Daerios and I are alone yet again.
I push myself up onto my elbows. The bed undulates beneath me, and I realize for the first time how soft it is. Sheesh. Even elvish mattresses are superior to our own.
Adjusted, I glare squarely at Daerios. “What,” I ask, “exactly, is anaimean root?”
“It’s a flowering herb that grows on both Earth and Elaerion. Elves harvest it for its abilities to relax both the body and mind. It’s completely natural,” he adds quickly, as if this fact should comfort me.
“And you handed it over to me, knowing full well what it would do.”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to chug the thing.”
“But you drink that,” I say, “for fun.”
His lips twitch. “Not for fun. For its relaxation and anti-anxiety properties.”
“Anti-anxiety,” I repeat. “What could a Prince of the Sun possibly have to be anxious about?”
The corners of his eyes tighten, though his smirk stays in place. “You’d be surprised.”
Maybe it’s the lingering effects of the anaimean root.
Maybe I’m groggy and incapable of making rational decisions.
That is all I can think of to explain why the next words out of my mouth are: “Such as the mysterious search for the mysterious book that has kept elves on Earth for over a hundred years?”
I regret the question as soon as I ask it.
All the air vanishes from the room at once, as if the vines sucked it up into their leaves. With the air goes any trace of a smile from Daerios’s face. His eyes darken. Sink to twin pits of swirling grey shadow.
Whenever I approached this topic in the past, I did so with the utmost delicacy, tip-toeing toward the subject matter as if it were a bomb that would detonate at the slightest movement.
What I just did was the opposite of tip-toeing.
That was diving straight at the bomb and slamming my stomach on top.
When Daerios speaks, it is with deadly calm. “Who said we were looking for a book?”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I’m not supposed to know it’s a book. I heard that when I was flat-bellied on the roof of the Ikarith. I need to fake a way out of this. Now.
“When the elves came to Earth, they targeted libraries and universities,” I say. Then I muster up my best version of a scoff. “It wasn’t that far of a leap to guess you’re looking for a book.”
“We could be looking for anything. A document. A photograph. A recipe. Even one simple sentence from one specific text.” He leans forward, voice lowering to a whisper.
“Maybe we aren’t looking for something physical at all.
Maybe all we need is a fact, a clue—one piece of information to lead us to something bigger. ”
At this point, our noses are so close, I could lick the tip of his if I just tilted my head back a bit. I swallow. Try to keep the waver out of my voice. “Is that an admission? That this search is, in fact, leading to something much larger?”
He smirks. “We’ve been here for over a hundred years, Kallister. It isn’t that far of a leap to assume that whatever we’re looking for is nothing short of world-changing.”
I want to hit him for mocking me. Instead, I whisper, “Your world or mine?”
This question is one push too far. His smirk disappears, flattening his entire expression to a detached neutral.
“This subject bores me.” He pulls away, settling back into his chair and throwing one arm over its back.
“Let’s just be glad you didn’t die today, or my brother would have given me one hell of a reaming the next time I saw him. ”
I should want to hit him again. Instead, I want to grab his collar and pull him back towards me. To drown in the parchment-and-red wine scent that follows everywhere he goes.
To distract myself from this thought, I clear my throat and ask, “Which brother?”
“All of them, I assume.”
“That sounds difficult. Having to meet so many people’s expectations, I mean.”
A sigh. “Spare me the Dr. Phil treatment, Kallister. I’m a hundred and sixty-three years old. I don’t need a therapist.”
“Therapy is beneficial for everyone, Daerios. Not just the mentally ill.”
“That’s exactly what they tell the mentally ill to make them feel better about being fucking insane.”
“You’re a real sack of dogshit,” I say. “You know that, right?”
“And you’re a Type A princess who doesn’t know when to mind her own business.”
I stick my tongue out.
He does the same.
Which is how I come to have one of the most powerful beings on the planet staring at me with his tongue hanging out like a lazy dog.
I clap one hand to my face. Then, before I can stop it, I dissolve into laughter.
Daerios’s eyes widen. He watches me with a look that sits somewhere between shock and amazement, and I wonder if this is the first time he’s heard me laugh. I could swear his cheeks turn the slightest bit pink.
“I didn’t mean it,” he says when I stop laughing.
He’s rubbing the back of his head with one hand.
“What I said about therapy. And the mentally ill. We elves don’t do well with emotions.
We prefer facts. Data. Well-documented evidence, and all that.
But if there’s one thing that has been well-documented by the human researchers of our age, it’s the benefits of talk therapy. ”
“Exactly.” I purse my lips. “And, honestly, it sounds like you elves could use a healthy dose of it yourselves. I mean, ‘we just don’t do well with emotions’? Come on. The intake writes itself.”
He laughs. “Can’t argue with you there.”
The sound of his laugh does something to my stomach that I instantly wish I could un-do.
Clearing my throat, I push the blanket off myself and start to get out of his bed. “Well, I’m feeling much better. I should probably get going.”
Daerios sets a hand on my shoulder. “Not yet. You’ve only just awoken; rest a few more minutes before you go.”
“I’m really—”
“I insist.”
There’s a finality to his tone that brokers no argument. Something about it makes me feel strangely hot in the face.
“You sure you can stand to have a human sullying the purity of your bedsheets?” I ask, falling back on our usual routine of poking at one another.
“Quinn,” he says. It’s the first time he’s used my first name, and it frightens me how much I enjoy hearing it on his lips. “There’s no one I’d rather have sully my purity than you.”