Chapter 26
I don’t remember sprinting across campus. I don’t remember the sidewalk, the street, the gates, the doorways. For all I know, I ran straight through them. One minute, I’m in my dorm, staring into honey-gold eyes in the mirror, words roaring through my head.
LIGHTBEARER
SACRIFICE
The next—
“Liar!”
The door to Daerios’s bedroom slams open, shaking the vines that hang above his bed. Seated at his desk, he snaps to attention, eyes wide. I can imagine how I look: curls wild, teeth bared, nails flying as I go straight for his throat.
“You filthy, lying, murderous—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” In one swoop, Daerios is up and has his hands on either of my shoulders. I hate those hands. I hate their warmth, their familiarity. How could I ever have thought I was falling for him? I hate him. I hate him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I know everything. Everything.” With every word, I punch his stomach. “I know why you took an interest in me. Why you followed me around campus.” My voice trembles, and I wish I could steady it the way I would a rocking boat. “Why y-you took me upstate. Why you slept with me.”
“Quinn. Quinn.” Daerios, ever patient, holds me at arm’s length. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I took you upstate because—”
“Because you were watching me.” Tears now clog my eyes—those treacherous, hateful things—as I claw at him. “Because you were waiting. Waiting to see if I’m it. The One.” I choke. “The Palasolaeva.”
Under my punching fists, Daerios goes completely still.
I take advantage of his stillness, using both hands to shove him away. He stumbles backward, knocking into the wall.
“I figured it out.” I heave air in and out, fists clenched at my side. “I figured it all out. Why the elves are on Earth. What they’re looking for. Because it isn’t a what at all, is it? It’s a who. Someone with golden eyes. Someone containing a powerful light, whose sacrifice can save your realm.”
Daerios’s jaw opens and closes, as if he wants to deny it. But he can’t. I know he can’t.
“That’s why you only took an interest in me after I marched up to you in the library. It was the first time you saw my eyes.”
“I—”
“Well?” I demand, advancing on him. “Am I wrong?”
“No. You’re not wrong, but—”
“I knew it. I fucking knew it.” I step back, shaking my head. “God. I’m so fucking stupid. This whole time, I let myself believe you actually liked me. Even after I heard the conversation between you and Saechon. Even after you said you had a new lead—”
“Wait.” Daerios holds up a hand. “How can you know that?” His eyes narrow, seeming to take in the packed muscle of my arms and legs. A body able to scale walls and squeeze into tight places. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Of course I’ve been spying on you, you self-righteous idiot.
” At this point, I’m practically screaming.
No doubt Berendir can hear me next door.
No doubt the entire campus can. I don’t care.
Red streaks my vision, clouding out any wiser impulse toward strategy and secrecy.
“Your kind murdered my father and took my brother. They destroyed the only family I’ll ever have. ”
Daerios’s eyes widen. “What are you—”
“Oh, spare me the innocence charade, Daerios. Fucking spare me. Michael had golden eyes, just like me. That’s why they took him. And you expect me to believe that a member of the royal family had no idea about such a promising lead?”
“I didn’t—”
“And me, like the idiot that I am, I believed you. I convinced myself that it was Shadow Elves that took my brother—”
“Wait, wait, what? Shadow Elves?”
“—and that we could work together to save him. That you could help me save my brother, and I could help you save Elaerion. I truly believed that. I truly wanted to. That’s how stupid I am.” I shake my head. “Little did I know, I was part of your plan to save Elaerion all along.”
Anger drove me here, propelled my feet and my fists and my mouth.
I didn’t come with a plan outside of finding out the truth.
But I probably should have, considering that Daerios is a 163-year-old elven prince, and I’m a puny human who, apparently, is at risk of becoming sliced deli meat for the sake of saving another planet.
And I walked right into his room and announced that I know everything.
It’s only then that I think to feel afraid.
But it’s too late, now. Too late to turn around. This is what I get for trusting an elf. For ignoring both my mother and my better judgment.
I think I love him.
“And the worst part was that I, I ate it up.” My voice wobbles. “All of it. The entire act.” I swallow thickly. Wipe away the tears streaming down my cheeks. “I fell for you, Daerios.”
His eyes snap back to mine, widening with surprise and something else. Something soft and breakable, like fear—or hope.
I step backward. “But it was all a lie.”
A dozen other emotions pass across his face—confusion, hurt, anger, searching. His hands lift, as if he wants to reach for me, then drop limply back to his sides. “Quinn,” he says. “Please. Just let me exp—”
But at that moment, the door to his room opens again. I turn, insults at the ready, thinking it will be Berendir telling us to take our marital spat elsewhere.
Instead, I find Saechon.
“Daerios,” the eldest Elf Prince says, “I need to—”
But when his gaze settles upon me, he freezes. I do too, inhaling a sudden gust of terror that fills every corner of my body. My eyes flit between the two elvish guards flanking Saechon, blocking the exit.
“Quinn Kallister,” Saechon murmurs, stepping forward. In person, he’s even more beautiful than in the pictures and videos I’ve seen: tall, lithe, silk-straight black hair pulled back with double braids. A beauty mark above his lip. “What gorgeous eyes you have.”
“They’re nothing special,” I say, inching back, bumping into Daerios.
“I would beg to differ.”
“Sae.” Daerios moves in front of me, one hand blocking my chest. “Don’t—”
“Out of the way, little brother.” He sweeps forward, cloak flapping behind him, and brushes Daerios away. “There’s no need to protect the human. If you’ve found what I think you’ve found, you’ll be saving an entire planet.”
I glance over at Daerios, who doesn’t move to push Saechon away from me. Just watches us with a mixture of horror and fascination.
Traitor.
Bastard.
Scum of Elaerion.
Saechon lays two fingers beneath my chin and tilts my face upward. His eyes rove my cheeks, my nose, my lips, the line of my hair. “Mmm.” He nods. “Just as beautiful as the High Mage said you would be.”
“The wh-who?”
Saechon ignores me, instead reaching into his belt and pulling out a knife.
That’s when I run.
I make it less than half a step before Daerios grabs me, restraining my arms behind my back. I struggle. Lift one knee and jab my foot backward into his groin. Daerios doubles over, groaning, but doesn’t release my arms. In an instant the other guards are on me.
“Feisty.” Saechon presses the knife’s point to his finger to test its sharpness. “Relax, dear, this won’t hurt a bit.”
“Please. Don’t kill me.” I hate the plea in my voice, its wobble of weakness. “You have the wrong person. I’m not the Lightbearer. I’m no one.”
Saechon pauses, lifting his finger from the blade. His eyes flit to Daerios. “Someone has been telling stories.”
“I’ve told her nothing.” Daerios’s voice is flat. Almost dead. “I’ve no idea how she figured it out.”
Saechon tilts his head, considering his brother. After a moment, he nods and looks back to me. “How did you figure it out?”
“I broke your stupid code. The one in the publications.”
His eyebrows raise. “Did you, now?”
I spit on the bedroom floor. “It wasn’t even hard.”
“Hard enough to withstand nearly a century’s scrutiny.” Saechon turns to Daerios. “I understand your fascination with this one, brother. She’s clearly brilliant. And if we’re right about what she is, she’s also one of the most powerful beings to walk this planet.”
One of the most powerful beings to walk this planet?
“Her palm, Rad.”
The guard on my right unhooks my arm and extends it toward Saechon. I keep my fist squeezed shut, but Rad pries it open and holds it there. Saechon presses the tip of the blade to my open palm and, after a measured inhale and exhale, drags it backward.
I’m ready for red. Ready for the beaded blood of my insides to spill forth. Ready to grimace, to yank my hand back, to smear the evidence of this wrongdoing all over his stupid grey cloak.
What I’m not ready for is a beam of light.
What I’m not ready for is my skin to split open and, as if it were a door held ajar in the night, reveal a sliver of brilliance that shoots straight to the ceiling.
I’m not ready for my stomach to bottom out. For the room to spin. For me to forget everything I thought I knew about myself as I stare at something utterly impossible.
I tear my gaze away from the beam of light shining from my sliced palm.
I take in the faces of the elves surrounding me.
No one speaks. The guards are transfixed.
Daerios looks caught somewhere between amazed and horrified.
And Saechon—he smiles like a hungry panther.
Like a starved creature come upon a feast at last.
“We found it,” Daerios whispers.
And those words—those words more than anything—are what break me from my shock. We found it. As if I were not a human but a prize dug up from the sand. In the guards’ distraction, I tug loose my arms and lunge at Daerios. I go straight for his throat.
“Qui—” But his words cut off as my fingers wrap around his throat. The light vanishes. I don’t care if it burns him. I don’t even know if it does anything. I just want him to suffer. For lying to me. For trapping me. For calling his brother and handing me over to my death.
For making me fall for him first.
Before I can do any real damage, the guards are on me.
They pull me off Daerios, who gasps in a breath of air.
Light still pours from my palm, sweeping across the floor as my arm swings back and forth.
I ignore it, instead glaring at the gasping elf before me.
Dimly, I’m aware of Saechon telling the guards to subdue me.
As a faint tingle enters my body where the guards’ hands touch me, as it begins to spread through every inch of me, carrying with it a deep tug toward oblivion, I look Daerios right in the eyes, and seethe.
“I will never forgive you.”