Chapter 29 #2
Before I make it back to the bedroom door, Daerios says, “Why aren’t you eating?”
I freeze. Water sloshes over the rim of the cup. I consider not responding, just heading back to bed, but the rage that has risen inside me will not be silenced.
I whip around, slamming my cup of water onto the table. “Why do you even care?”
Daerios blinks. “Why do I care?” he repeats, shaking his head. “How could you even ask me that?”
“How could I ask you that? How could I ask you that?” My voice is getting too loud.
I’ll probably wake the others, but at this moment, I don’t care.
“No, Daerios. You don’t get to pretend like you care about my well-being.
Not after everything that happened. Not after you faked having feelings for me just so you could get close enough to see if I was the Palasolaeva—”
“I never faked anything,” Daerios almost yells.
I draw back. I’m shocked by the vitriol in his voice. The anger. The hurt.
“Was I first drawn to you because I thought you might be the Lightbearer? Of course I was. But the more time we spent together, the less any of that mattered. I wasn’t even going to test you.
I didn’t want to. All I wanted to do was to hide you away in some faraway place where my family could never find you.
Because if you were the Palasolaeva…” He sucks in a breath, running a hand through his hair.
“I couldn’t bear it. Especially not now that I know we’re… ”
He snaps his jaw shut, cutting himself off.
“Especially not now that you know we’re what?” I prompt.
He shakes his head. “This is ridiculous. I’m not going to argue with you about this right now. You’re just deflecting from my original question.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t lie to me, Quinn. I see what you’re doing.
I know all the tricks. You think that starving yourself will take the pain away, but it won’t.
Not forever. It’s just a Band-Aid. And a bad one at that.
” His knuckles are white around the glass of bourbon.
“When you survive our trip to Elaerion—because you will survive it, I won’t allow any other outcome—the hurt will still be there.
Every last drop. And all you’ll have done is to delay the inevitable. ”
I take a step back. Another.
He’s right. I know he is. I’ve been down this road before.
I know how it ends. There are only two outcomes: you let your disease consume you, let it eat up your life and your body and make you a shell of the person you once were, or you find the strength to fight back.
To claw your way out and emerge on the other side.
And the longer you let your illness control you, the harder that fight will eventually be.
But this wasn’t supposed to matter. He wasn’t supposed to care about me enough to notice what I was doing to myself. No one was.
I don’t answer him.
I turn around and go back to bed, forgetting the glass of water left on the counter.
The next morning, I eat every bite of scrambled eggs and bacon on my plate. Then I go back for seconds.
On the seventh evening, we fill four leather satchels and dress in elvish traveling cloaks.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to use backpacks?” Cara asks.
“Elves don’t wear backpacks.” Daerios wrinkles his nose.
“You don’t have to say it like it’s a dirty word,” I mutter.
“His Royal Douchiness has a point,” Berendir says, lacing up his boots. “We need to make it all the way down to the Unity Tower without being spotted. Elves in backpacks would draw too much attention.”
This is the first part of our plan: make it out of the building, get into a cab, take it ninety-eight blocks south, sneak into the Unity Tower and up to the roof—all without being spotted by any of King Varith’s spies.
Satchels brimming, four bows slung over four shoulders, L?th’s apartment spotless after Daerios’s relentless scrubbing, we open the door for the last time, pour ourselves into the elevator, and descend toward the chaos of Manhattan.
In the lobby, Cara and I hang back as the elves check the street for familiar faces.
We ordered a cab ahead of time, and it idles by the curb now, a mere fifteen-foot walk away from the front door.
But they will be the fifteen most dangerous feet I’ve walked in my life.
By now, the king will have alerted every elf in New York to my escape. He’ll have eyes everywhere.
At Berendir’s signal, Cara and I dart away from the elevator bay and toward the revolving doors. Then it’s just a push, and we’re out into the setting sun.
The sidewalk is packed with bodies. We planned to leave right at seven, when the city would be crowded with elves and humans returning home from work.
More faces into which we can blend. We push through them, and I feel every pair of eyes that falls upon me like a knife to the skin.
Don’t look. Don’t look. Whatever you do, don’t look.
I hear Daerios’s command from earlier. Allow it to guide me forward.
Through the tangle of arms and legs and coats and briefcases.
Into the open cab door. Slide across the seat and into the middle.
Let Daerios and Cara squeeze me in from either side, while Berendir takes the front.
The doors slam shut. Only then, as the car groans away from the curb, do I allow myself to glance out the right-hand window.
Where I find a pair of silver eyes squinting through the glass.
I gasp, hand lifting to grab Daerios’s shoulder. But when the cab rumbles forward, my body lurches backward, and the elf disappears. I twist around. When I look through the rearview mirror, I see him staring after us as we drive away.