Chapter 25
We walk through the door to applause.
The ride home was far more pleasant than the ride there.
I adjusted to Vorrok’s rhythm, no longer afraid to lean back into Daerios as he led the stallion through winding Massachusetts streets.
The happiness that lulled me to sleep seemed to carry over into the next morning, as I took in the fall colors and the early morning sunlight. Gentle ripples on the Charles River.
After we made it to the stables, Daerios walked me back to my dorm room. We walked hand in hand, existing inside this bubble of contentedness. Nothing could disrupt it. Not the wind. Not the people on the street who shot us surprised looks to see an elf and a human together. Nothing.
That is, until we make it to Quincy House.
Cara and Berendir burst off the sofa, hands clapping as fervently as if they’ve just witnessed the most unbelievable Broadway production of their lives. Daerios and I freeze in the doorway, hands still twined together. One of my shoulders holds the door open.
“What the hell?” Daerios asks.
“You did it!” they yell in unison, rushing forward. I notice, just before I’m absorbed by Berendir’s lanky arms, that he’s holding flowers.
“We did what?” I ask, voice muffled by the wool of Berendir’s cloak.
Berendir pulls back and shoves the flowers into my arms. Carnations.
Light and dark red. “We thought it would never happen,” he says, pretending to wipe a tear away.
He wraps one arm around Cara’s waist, placing the other over his heart.
Together, they look like proud parents. “We thought we’d have to bear the repressed sexual tension forever. ”
“Oh, my God.” I try to bury my face in my hands, but it ends up in the carnations, instead.
Cara speaks next. “I bet on it not happening. When I heard Daer forced Q onto a horse, I figured he’d come home with no balls at all. But then you never came home—”
I lower the flowers beneath my eyes. “I’m literally going to murder you.”
She pouts. “Who will you live with, then?”
“Out.” I whack Berendir with the carnations. He laughs and skitters over to Daerios, who is holding a hand over his mouth. I point at the prince. “And you—not even a hint of a laugh, or you really will go home without balls.”
“Alas.” Berendir slings an arm over Daerios’s shoulders. “That was a short honeymoon.”
“Good-bye.” I slam the door in their face. Deep laughter seeps through the frame.
I whirl on Cara. “What the hell was that?”
“Tell me everything.” She dances forward, completely unphased by my anger, and grabs my hands. “Did you guys sleep in the woods? Did you have sex in the woods? In public? God, that’s hot. And so scandalous—”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up.” I tear my hands away and flap them next to my head. “I’m not telling you anything.”
“Come on. I’m your best friend. I deserve at least a few sordid details.”
I sigh.
“At least tell me this—” She grins. “Was it good?
I can’t help it. A smile sneaks onto my face. “It was good.”
She hops up and down, clapping as eagerly as when we walked in. I roll my eyes. I’m about to turn around, to stalk through my bedroom door, when she says, “Oh! One more piece of good news—I cracked the code in that paper.”
“You what?” I whirl around. “What did it say?”
“No idea. It’s all in one of those elf languages you speak.
Looks like gibberish to me.” She retreats into her bedroom, then reemerges with a printed piece of paper.
“Here. The code I wrote should be able to parse out any messages that have been hidden in that same manner. I’ll send you the file so you can use it on your own. ”
“Thank you.” I look down at the message typed in Maevish. My heart hiccups with nerves. “Thank you so much. You’re an angel.”
“That’s much better.” She grins. “Now go rest up, lovebird. I’m sure you need it.”
I don’t rest. Not a chance. As soon as my bedroom door is shut behind me, I sit down at my desk and start to translate.
My stomach bottoms out as soon as I read the first line.
SEARCH FOR THE ONE
I inhale, remembering Daerios’s words from last night: We do marry—but only in rare cases. Only when we are absolutely certain that the person when we’ve found is the one. This message cannot really be talking about marriage, can it? How absurd to hide that in the folds of academia.
I keep translating.
SEARCH FOR THE ONE
OXFORD
COMPLETE - ALL RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS, A – L
NO SIGN OF LIGHT
No sign of light? What the hell?
This message clearly has nothing to do with love; as far as I know, such is not to be found in recently published works.
I’m going to need more messages.
I download every paper I can find in Harvard’s database that contains the trigger, Zolae Aldar.
As soon as the document completes downloading, I run it through the code-cracking file that Cara sent to my email earlier that morning.
The code is rudimentary—Don’t judge me, Cara said, I was working under a deadline—which means it takes several minutes to parse through the document in question, but I don’t care.
It works. That’s the only part that matters.
Every message begins the same: SEARCH FOR THE ONE
And, in a majority of cases, ends the same: NO SIGN OF LIGHT
The middle is always different. After running six documents through Cara’s code, I paste the Maevish translations into a single word document and compare their contents.
SEARCH FOR THE ONE
NEW LEAD: CARRIE DAELISH
24, BIRMINGHAM, UK
OXFORD TO FOLLOW UP
And, from a journal article published at Oxford two weeks later:
SEARCH FOR THE ONE
FOLLOW UP: CARRIE DAELISH
VERIFIED
NO SIGN OF LIGHT
A similar message appears at in a short story published at the University of Shanghai several years later.
SEARCH FOR THE ONE
NEW LEAD: LIU QIANG
35, BEIJING, CHINA
BEIJING TO FOLLOW UP
And, in another short story, several weeks later:
SEARCH FOR THE ONE
FOLLOW UP: LIU QIANG
VERIFIED
NO SIGN OF LIGHT
Over and over, message after message, failure after failure.
NO SIGN OF LIGHT
NO SIGN OF LIGHT
NO SIGN OF LIGHT
The pieces start to come together. The elves aren’t looking for something—they’re looking for someone. A human. A human with signs of… light? I have no clue what that means.
I keep digging.
Several articles later, the message changes. It begins the same, but does not appear to deal with one specific lead.
SEARCH FOR THE ONE
PROGRESS REPORT ON SHADOW INFESTATION
NO CHANGE ON ELA?RION
NO SIGN OF PALASOLAEVA
It takes me several minutes to translate that last word. I’ve never seen it before, and I play around with several English options before I settle on the one that feels the most accurate. Carrier of Light? Holder of Light? Bearer of Light?
Yes. That feels right. Bearer of Light. Lightbearer.
That’s the human they’re looking for on Earth. The Palasolaeva.
An idea occurs to me, then. All of these messages have been published relatively recently.
They’re status updates, given whenever the elves unearth a new lead on the potential Palasolaeva.
What if, by returning to an earlier date, shortly after the elves arrived on Earth, I might find messages that reveal more?
That explain their tactics, their method of search, maybe even lay out what they plan to do with the Lightbearer once they find them.
After all, there are thousands of elves on Earth.
Maybe even millions. King Ariar would have needed a way to brief them all at once, and I doubt he had time to do so when they were fleeing for their lives.
I fiddle with the settings on my database search, setting the date range to 1925. The year they arrived.
Four publications appear. The very first came from Harvard itself, published by a prominent Elvish professor is still in residency at the school.
THERE IS A WAY BACK
FIND THE LIGHTBEARER
A HUMAN CONTAINING LIGHT
WHOSE SACRIFICE WILL DISPEL THE SHADOWS
SYMPTOM: GOLDEN EYES
SIGN OF LIGHT: SLICE WITH ELA?RION STEEL
SEARCH THE GLOBE
REPORT FINDINGS, VERIFY
WE WILL SAVE ELA?RION
WE WILL GO HOME
I try to reread the message, to retranslate it, to make sure I got it right, but the words swim before me, a sea of terror and confusion and understanding, all wrapped into one.
LIGHTBEARER
SACRIFICE
LIGHTBEARER
SACRIFICE
They’re looking for a human.
A human containing a light that they believe will dispel the shadows on Elaerion.
A human they will sacrifice.
A human with golden eyes.
Doctors used to tell my mother how rare my eye color was. How special. My mother would smile and smooth down my curls. “Just as unique as she is.”
The room blurs. Tilts sideways. October sunlight blends with papers blends with wood floors blends with coffee, all shivers before me in a mess of sight and smell. A roaring in my ears. Darkness at the edges of my vision.
SACRIFICE
LIGHTBEARER
I jerk backward, tipping my chair sideways. I try to scramble to my feet, but my legs get tangling in the falling chair. I land on the floor with a thunk.
I think I’m falling for him.
I think I’m falling for him.
I stumble over to the mirror. A hand presses to either side of the wall as I stare at my face. An image I’ve seen thousands of times. Red curls. Smattering of freckles. Thick lips.
Golden eyes.