Chapter 29
How many ways can you avoid one person when living in a two-bedroom apartment together for a week?
I am now an expert in this subject, so let me give you the answer.
For the most part, you cannot escape their physical presence, especially when you have mandatory daily meetings on how to rescue your captured brother on a different planet. You can, however, do the following:
Refuse to make eye contact.
Never speak directly to them.
Never say their name.
Eat all of your meals in the bedroom you share with your roommate.
Maintain a minimum physical distance of at least five feet at all times.
On the off-chance that you do have to speak to or otherwise acknowledge said person, you can simply fill your voice with as much detached malice as possible.
None of us are allowed to leave L?th’s apartment.
It’s too risky. The King has scouts all over the city; every elf we see on the street, moving like graceful ants from our position twenty stories up, is probably on the lookout.
Daerios orders all of our groceries, coffee, and necessities for delivery.
We spend the week training. I toy with the light in my body, making small incisions on my palms with elven steel and watching the beam dance across the walls.
It’s almost unfathomable to me, that I have this magic inside me.
That it’s been there all along. I can’t think about it for too long, or I start to feel completely separate from my own body, as if it no longer belongs to me.
It’s a terrifying feeling. The slits made by the elven knives heal within minutes, but each test leaves me strangely drained, as if I have just run ten miles without leaving the living room.
They teach us archery. The boys buy a cheap mattress from and draw targets on its center, setting it up against the wall so Cara and I can run shooting drills.
Elvish bows may be feather-light, made of sleek wood and hair from a creature I’ve never heard of, but it doesn’t make the training any easier.
After two hours of holding my arms ramrod straight and tugging back on a line with virtually no give, the entire upper half of my body shakes.
“An unfortunate necessity,” Daerios says when Cara complains of sore muscles at breakfast one morning. “Our light magic won’t work on Elaerion, remember? We’ll have only our skill in combat to protect you.”
“And while that skill is obviously immense,” Berendir adds, “we’ll still be at a disadvantage. Better that you both train up.”
There are lessons, too. Lectures on what to expect once we reach Elaerion—especially the different beasts of Elaerion.
There are skria, gigantic black birds with razor-sharp beaks and talons strong enough to puncture steel.
There are urrath, humanoid monsters with mouths like lamprey eels.
There are a whole host of other horrors, creatures that sound as if they were made from a child’s nightmare.
At night, they sneak into mine, and sometimes I wake up wishing that I had never agreed to go on this suicide mission.
But another part of me, the more logical part, knows that it’s far better to be prepared for what’s to come.
But what other choice do I have? If I go along with this scheme and it turns out to be another lie, another betrayal, the outcome is the same as if I’d stayed at the king’s camp. Either way, I die.
I could run, of course. But then I would be leaving Michael to his fate on Elaerion, and that is simply not an option. The very thought makes me want to throw up.
If my mother were here, she’d chastise me for even considering allying myself with an elf once, let alone twice—especially after he’s already betrayed me.
This thought is followed immediately by a wave of guilt.
Surely Mom will have noticed my absence by now.
My phone is dead, and I’m not allowed to charge it.
Any texts she may have sent me will have been undeliverable, any calls gone straight to voicemail.
She never wanted me to attend a school so heavily populated by elves, and now I’ve vanished. It’s her worst nightmare come to life.
I’m doing this for us, Mom, I tell myself. I’m bringing Michael home.
“Let’s go through it one more time,” Daerios says on the morning of our third day in L?th’s apartment. He’s hunched over a piece of paper, sketching from memory the layout of the stronghold at árrion. “Once we leave the apartment, we’ll go directly to…”
“The Unity Tower,” Cara fills in.
The Unity Tower was a joint effort between the humans and the elves—or so the PR campaign said when construction began two decades ago.
I was barely a wink in my mother’s eye, back then, but I’ve read about it countless times since I began studying the elves.
According to the press releases, building the tower was King Ariar’s idea, pitched to and approved by the American government.
A tangible representation of a century-long partnership between species.
Of course, other anonymous human-written forums didn’t hesitate to call it what it really was: a display of power.
Now that I know the truth behind the elves’ presence on Earth, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something more to their motivation than just power. If this tower was meant to serve this exact purpose: as an escape hatch to Elaerion.
“Why there, exactly?” I ask. “It’s the most popular tourist destination in New York. If we’re going for discretion, you couldn’t have picked a worse spot.”
“It’s the tallest building in Manhattan.” Daerios shades in the bottom of árrion’s main gate. “The magic we’re to perform will create a portal that connects Earth to Elaerion. But in order for the spell to be successful, we need the atmosphere to be as thin as possible.”
Understanding dawns over me so suddenly that I forget not to speak directly to the Prince. “That’s why the elves came from the mountains. One hundred years ago, when you first arrived.”
Daerios nods, not looking up from his drawing.
“But the peaks you came from were as high as fifteen- or twenty-thousand feet,” I argue. “The Unity Tower can’t be higher than two.”
“1,925 feet, to be precise,” said Daerios, citing the date the elves came to Earth.
“How the hell can you be certain the spell will work that low?”
“We cannot.” Daerios glances at me, eyes unreadable. “But we have to pray it will.”
With each day that passes, the portions of food I eat slowly shrink down.
Initially, I don’t even notice what I’m doing.
On the first day in the apartment, I eat whatever Cara puts in front of me, with only a few bites behind.
A bit of chicken there, a forkful of potatoes there.
Day two, I bypass breakfast, telling Cara I have no appetite.
Which is true—every time I think about the fact that I’m about to journey to a completely different realm, a place where I may very well die, desire for food flees my body entirely.
Day three, I want to skip lunch as well as breakfast, but I know my roommate will say something if I do.
I slip back into my old techniques, the ones that worked on my mom for so long—pushing food around, cutting it into small pieces, chewing it up and spitting it into my napkin when Cara isn’t looking.
By this point, I know what I’m doing. I can hear it again: that old, slippery voice.
The one that tells me I’m not good enough if I eat certain foods, or if I eat all the way to the point of fullness.
I hear it, and instead of doing what I’d normally do—which is to say, “hello there, old friend, I remember you,” and then let it go—I let it linger.
I let it call the shots, for the first time in a long time.
But I’m careful. I do it in secret, making sure no one notices.
At least, I think I do. Right up until the moment all of my favorite treats start materializing around the apartment.
First it’s a plateful of chocolate chip cookies. I find it sitting on the dresser when I slip back into my bedroom after a shower. I glance around the room, then peek out into the kitchen, but no one is around.
Then it’s a box of paal, with the name of some fancy-sounding elvish bakery stamped on the side. This one is left on the nightstand beside the bed I’ve been sharing with Cara. On my side of the bed.
I have my suspicions as to who’s behind these little temptations around the apartment. Those suspicions are confirmed on the afternoon of the sixth day, when I find a paper bag sitting directly on top of my pillow, as if to say, “You will notice me. You will eat me.”
It is brimming with vanilla crullers.
That night, I wake in the wee hours of the morning and stare out the window at the lights of Manhattan. I’m exhausted. Between the archery, the tests of my light, the lengthy planning meetings, and my slowly-dwindling caloric intake, I feel as if I’ve been running a long, slow marathon.
I slip out of bed and go in search of a glass of water.
When I enter the kitchen, I halt. At the counter sits Daerios, a tumbler of whiskey before him. I glance at the clock on the microwave. It’s 2:30 a.m.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” I ask.
“Oh, look.” His smile is tight. “She speaks.”
I glare, then march over to the cabinets and grab a glass. I carry it over to the sink and switch on the faucet. As water swirls up toward the brim, I feel his eyes on my back. It makes my skin feel hot.
Being around him shouldn’t be so difficult. I’m an expert at feeling nothing. I did it for seven years—first with starvation, then with obsession. Before I met him, sexual attraction wasn’t a factor in my life. Not even when I wanted it to be.
But the pull I feel toward Daerios is not normal. It’s attraction, sure, but it’s something beyond that. Something more primal, like the pull of the moon on the ocean. All he has to do is exist, and it turns me into this awful, churning mess.
I shut off the faucet too hard and turn to walk away.