Chapter 12
When we reach the table, I fiddle with the hem of my skirt. Even though I put on a brave face, I’m still nervous to eat. I’m not even entirely sure why. Am I having a worse flare-up than I realized? Or is it because the food is elvish?
That would be silly—it’s made of Earthly ingredients, after all, nothing from Elaerion—but not necessarily surprising. It’s the principle of the thing. It’s what the food represents. Putting anything Elvish into my body?
The idea has always made me sick.
But as I survey the table, an idea occurs to me. “You know what?” I say, turning to Daerios. “Let’s play a game.”
“A game?” The edge of Daerios’s mouth quirks up. “I like games.”
“These are the rules.” I pick up a slice of vaaska—a nutrient-dense flatbread sprinkled with thyme and sea salt—and hold it before him. “For every bite I take, you answer one of my questions.”
His lips purse. He doesn’t like this idea. Of course, he doesn’t. What notoriously secretive creature wants to play question-and-answer? But something tells me that the ale is working its magic, and that his competitive side will win out.
I’m right.
“All right.” He gestures to my hand. “Go right ahead.”
I look down at the vaaska. Crumbs and bits of dried thyme have fallen off, into my cupped palm. In every one, I see a glimmer of the species I detest. The beings who severed half my family away.
I take a deep breath. I lift the vaaska toward my mouth and take one tentative bite.
Whoa. For being little more than a slice of bread, the vaaska is delicious. It tastes homey, like something that’s just come out of a wood-fired oven.
I swallow and look up at Daerios. “My turn.”
“Fire away.”
I start with an easy one. “Why did you check out the linguistics book every morning if you never even used it?”
At least, I thought it would be easy. But Daerios looks away, his already shuttered expression growing even more closed off. “New question,” he says.
“Oh, come on. Just answer the—”
“New. Question.”
I stare at him, shocked by the tension pulsing in his jaw.
Fine. If he’s not going to answer that softball, I might as well just go for what I really want to know.
I cross my arms. “What’s Elaerion like?”
Daerios sucks in a breath. “I saw the books you were reading in the library. You already know the answer to that question.”
“Books are one thing. Hearing about it firsthand is another.”
“Fine. Bite first.”
I roll my eyes and shave off another sliver with my front teeth.
“I don’t think anyone would legally call that a bite.”
“What are you, the eating police?”
“I am right now.” He jabs a finger at the vaaska. “Bite.”
I sigh and do as he says. “Now. Tell me about Elaerion.”
“Elaerion is… it’s beautiful. Or, at least, it was beautiful. Before.”
“Before what?”
He hesitates. “There was an incident. Many years ago.”
“Before you came to our realm?”
“Yes.” He nods. “Just before then.”
“Is that why your people came?”
He laughs hollowly. “You’ve asked far more than one question, Kallister.”
“Sorry.” I feel my cheeks turning pink. I’ve been too eager. Come too close to revealing my true desire.
“Take a bite, and then you can ask more.”
I roll my eyes and take another bite, chewing slowly, feeling guilty about how amazing it tastes. Swallowing, I ask, “What are your brothers like?”
“Saechon is the oldest. He’s a hardass, but he’s always looking out for the rest of us. Brannion has a collection of spears and sabers that would make any human shit themselves. And L?th…” A smile plays at his lips. “L?th is my favorite.”
“Aren’t we not supposed to pick favorites when it comes to family?”
“Oh, come on. You’re telling me you don’t have a favorite sibling?”
I look down at the half-eaten flatbread. “I actually… don’t have any siblings.”
“Only child?”
A pause. “Not originally.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
We stand like that for a long moment, my eyes firmly on the flatbread. Its spongey surface indents as my grip tightens. A finger grazes my chin, and Daerios lifts my face until my gaze meets his.
My breath catches.
He’s touching me.
Daerios is touching me. Skin to skin. It’s the first time he’s ever done so, and it’s doing something very confusing to the inside of my stomach.
Just as the prince opens his mouth to say something, an unfamiliar voice interrupts. “You going to eat that vaaska, human, or just treat it like a wet sponge?”
We both startle, turning to find a short elf with braided blonde hair, gold torches pinned to his orange cloak. A Fire Elf. He must be here as someone’s date.
Daerios’s eyes lose the brief lightness that had touched them, shuttering to thin slits. “Agathron. Can we help you?”
“Just wanted to meet the human girl everyone is talking about.” Agathron is clearly drunk. But even inebriated, his stumbles are graceful, his slurs spoken with eloquence.
“Well,” says Daerios. “You’ve met her. Now you can move along.”
“Why so rude, Princeling? I thought you and I were buddies.” Agathron sways gently forward and back. Slowly, his eyes shift to me. “What does human hair feel like, Daerios?” He raises a hand, fingers fondling the end of my curls. “I’ve heard it’s less silken, more akin to the hay we feed our hor—”
But Agathron doesn’t get to finish his insult, because his hand is suddenly gone, swept away by a blur of black fabric. The fire elf’s arms twist up and around his head. I blink, and Daerios has Agathron by the wrists—one arm behind his back, the other across the back of his neck.
“Daerios,” I whisper-yell.
“Touch my date again,” Daerios hisses into Agathron’s ear, “and you will find that you’re the one with hay stuffed between your jaws.”
The lump at Agathron’s throat bobs.
“Apologize to the lady,” Daerios growls.
“I didn’t—”
“Apologize.”
“I’m… sorry.”
Daerios releases him, and Agathron shakes out his limbs, glaring at the prince.
“What is the meaning of this?” comes Magrion’s voice. He elbows his way out of the small crowd that gathered to watch the altercation. “Are you fighting with one of the other initiates, Your Highness?”
Neither elf speaks. The muscle at the bottom of Daerios’s jaw twitches.
“Need I remind you that you are both Punches, not yet official members of the club? That we can easily drop you at any point? We don’t make exceptions—not even for royalty.”
Agathron drops his head, but Daerios stares straight into Magrion’s eyes. They seem to be carrying out an unspoken conversation.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Daerios says finally, in a voice devoid of any repentance at all.
We don’t speak to each other after that. Or, to be more specific, I run away before Daerios can stop me.
What the hell was he doing, defending me like that? I’m not supposed to matter to the prince. I’m supposed to be his little human toy, his plaything to dangle in front of his superiors in order to piss them off. And I am.
At least I think I am.
After a time, I find myself in one of the sitting rooms upstairs in the Estate.
It’s empty, thank the heavens. A worn couch, plush and welcoming, sits at one end of the room, but I stroll over to the massive stone hearth on the far wall.
No fire is lit inside, but I stare into it as if it were.
I need to think. To clear my head. All that niru, and after hardly touching a scrap of food all day long…
Remember why you’re here, Quinn. Remember your mission.
But it’s hard to remember anything right now. Anything but the blind fury in Daerios’s eyes when he pinned Agathron’s arms behind his back.
Ugh.
My head seems to press in on itself, to squeeze my brain so hard I fear I might pass out.
I haven’t been this light-headed since the month after Dad and Michael, when I refused to touch almost anything in the kitchen.
I feel unstable. Vertigo wobbles at the edges of my vision.
I stagger left, catching myself on the hardwood table.
I will not look weak, I tell myself. I will not look weak.
“Quinn?”
I turn around. It’s Daerios, of course. God, why now? I don’t want him to see me like this, all dizzy and vulnerable. I’m trying to prove that humans are elves’ equals. Not frail creatures in need of help.
He rushes forward, eyebrows knit. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” The word wobbles. “Just… a little dizzy.”
“You need food.”
Before I can protest, he vanishes back out the door.
I teeter over to the couch and lower myself onto it. The spinning doesn’t stop, just drifts downward, settling at the base of my skull.
Daerios returns with a plate stacked to the ceiling with paal.
He crouches before me and offers the plate.
For a brief moment, I consider saying no.
Standing up and simply leaving the room.
But there’s something about his eyes—the crinkle at their corners, the pupils dilated with focus.
Concern radiates from his silver irises.
It’s an expression I’ve never seen on his face before, and it makes me feel like I’m the only person in the whole building.
“Here,” he says softly, picking up one of the honey cakes. “Let me.”
I realize, then, that it doesn’t matter if I turn the paal away. Daerios won’t give up. Not until I’ve eaten. He’ll pry my mouth open and force them inside, if he has to.
Normally, this thought would anger me. Would cause me to snap, to push the plate away. But with Daerios, it’s different. With Daerios, I see that that response wouldn’t truly be mine; it would be my fear’s.
Slowly, without taking my eyes off him, I nod.
Pinching the sides of the paal, Daerios lifts it from the plate and raises it slowly toward my lips. I swallow the spit that has, for some reason, built up atop my tongue. Then I open my mouth and take a bite.
Sweet honey floods every inch of my mouth. I nearly moan, it’s so good. I taste flour and butter and sugar and spices. Layers of flaky pastry melt atop my tongue. I chew for a few seconds, then swallow it all down.
Daerios watches the whole process with a strangely intense expression on his face.
Once I’ve swallowed, he moves the paal back toward my lips, and I open them again.
We repeat this for three bites, four, until the whole pastry is gone.
But Daerios is already reaching for a second one, and I don’t protest. I let him feed me a second.
A third. With every honey cake I eat, the focus and intensity in the prince’s expression grows even deeper.
His eyes track my lips as I chew, the bob of my throat as I swallow. He looks almost pained.
When I feel honey drizzle down my chin, I lift my sleeve to wipe it away, but the prince catches my wrist. His fingers are cool, but warmth ignites along every pore he touches me.
“Let me,” he says. His voice is husky, almost a rasp.
He reaches into his suit jacket, long fingers reemerging with a dark grey handkerchief pinched between them. He brings it to the side of my face and gently wipes the honey away.
I think I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
He lowers the handkerchief, but doesn’t move away. He stays crouched down at eye level. Our faces are barely a foot apart. I can’t take my eyes off him. Can’t look away from that strange intensity in his eyes. They’ve grown so dark now that the silver looks more like steel.
And then, down by the floor, on the bit of exposed ankle sticking out from under my chiffon skirt, I feel cool fingers wrap slowly around my skin.
I inhale.
My eyes dart between his. I search frantically for something to say.
Some way to stop what’s happening, what’s about to happen, but I come up blank, and for the briefest of moments, I hear a little voice whisper that I don’t want to stop what’s happening.
That I want to sit on this couch and let him do to me whatever he wants to me, but that can’t be true, that would mean I’ve gone insane, that would mean—
“There you are!”
Daerios and I rocket apart so fast you’d think the space between us was made of lightning.
Cara—thank the heavens, curse the heavens—has chosen this exact moment to bounce into the room. She grabs one of my shoulders, teetering slightly. Her cheeks are ruddy, eyes wide and excited. “Well, if it isn’t the Unfun Committee.”
“Hi!” I say, my voice far too breathy. “What’s up?”
“We’ve come to bring you to greener pastures.” Cara shakes her hips. “The dance floor is packed.”
I’ve never seen her like this before. What happened to my quiet, reserved roommate?
The answer comes shortly after her. Berendir bounds over to Daerios, throwing an arm over his shoulders. “And by packed, our dear Cara means that we’re the only two out there,” says Daerios. “But we’re about to add two more.”
“Absolutely not,” Daerios and I say in unison.
Berendir and Cara look at each other, grins widening.
“Whyever not?” Cara asks, and when I open my mouth, she adds, “And don’t say you don’t dance, because I live with you, and I’ve witnessed more than my fair share of underwear-clad solos to Taylor Swift.”
My cheeks heat. “Cara! Those are a secret!”
“Not when you leave your bedroom door open, they aren’t.”
Daerios turns to face me, eyes glinting in a way I don’t like one bit. “This,” he says, “I need to see.”
I cross my arms, but Cara sweeps over and links one elbow through Daerios’s, tugging him out of the room and toward the dance floor. Berendir follows.
“Coming, roommate?” she calls. “If you don’t, I might end up stealing your date.”
“Fine with me,” I call back. But after a few seconds standing alone in the sitting room, I sigh and start to follow. “I’m going to regret this.”
“Don’t worry!” Berendir yells over his shoulder. “We can request Taylor Swift.”