Chapter 30
By the time we pull up to the Unity Tower, the sun has set and my pulse is hammering so fast I fear my heart might jump out of my throat. For twenty minutes, as we bumped through the streets of Manhattan, all I could see were silver eyes squinting suspiciously through tinted glass.
“You’re sure he was looking at you?” Daerios asks for the hundredth time since we got in the cab.
“Positive.”
He nods. “Then word will already have reached my father. We can only hope he didn’t manage to track our cab here.”
As we throw open the side door and spill out onto the sidewalk outside 1 World Trade Center, we can only hope the cab’s license plate was lost to the maze of the city.
At the top of the Unity Tower is Manhattan’s most popular tourist trap: the Hendele Observation Deck. “The Best View in the City!” according to the myriad billboards we passed on the way here.
Hendele closes each night at 7:30 p.m., at which time there is a mass exodus of humans and elves from the building. Thankfully, by the time we reach the plaza at 7:25, this exodus has already begun. The pavement is packed. We’re banking on this crowd to swallow up our approach.
Hoods up, bows shouldered, we push through the hoard.
Same as outside L?th’s apartment, I’m conscious of every pair of eyes that flicks toward my face, obscured though it is by the dark green cloth of my traveling cloak.
Every pointed elbow that jostles me, every lush strand of hair that flutters in my peripheral vision—they all feel like an extension of the king.
Like a chance for him to swoop down and scoop us up before we’ve even made it to the starting line.
Face down, I do my best to disappear into the crowd, to become nothing more than another elf on her way home from work.
We almost make it. Though my eyes are down, I track our progress through the plaza, and we’re almost to the sweeping entryway when we hear the commotion.
It comes from behind. We whip around, only to find a sea of elvish guards flooding the plaza. Their hooded faces tower over the humans trying to dive out of their path.
This is it. They found us.
“Plan B,” says Daerios, grabbing my elbow and yanking me in a different direction.
“What are you doing?” I stumble as I try to keep up with his frantic pace. “The elevators are over there.”
“We aren’t taking the elevator.”
“What?” I look up at his face, which stares ahead with terrifying concentration. “Then how the hell are we supposed to get to the roof?”
Berendir glances over his shoulder. “Daer,” he says. “They’re gaining on us.”
“Damn human legs,” Daerios says.
“Hey,” I say defensively. “They’re not—”
But I can say nothing more, because Daerios sweeps me up into his arms and swings me around onto his back.
I yelp, crossing my arms over his neck and holding tight.
As I jostle about, I struggle not to notice the way his hard muscles move beneath the skin of his neck and shoulders, a lithe little dance.
I peer over his shoulder and find Cara in the same position with Berendir.
Our gazes meet over their shoulders, and our eyes expand with awe.
To the boys’ credit, they barely even break stride, sprinting effortlessly forward, as if there weren’t two human women clinging to their necks for dear life.
They’ve completely changed course. We’re now headed toward the western side of the Unity Tower—one hundred stories of shimmering windows, no entrance in sight.
What the hell are they doing? I glance over my shoulder, only to find the wall of guards less than fifty feet away.
I make eye contact with Rad, who bows his head and runs even harder.
Daerios and Berendir plow through the crowd, knocking humans aside as easily as bowling pins.
The other elves are quicker; they leap aside, supernatural reflexes getting them out of the way just in time.
Unfortunately, this also means that we do all the work of clearing a path for the guards behind us.
When I next look back, they’ve closed the gap, now less than twenty feet behind.
“Daerios—”
“Open my pack,” he yells.
“What?” I yell back.
“Just do it.”
I unzip the top, revealing a tangle of clothing, food, weapons. “What am I looking for?”
“A rope.”
“A rope?” I practically screech. “That’s your big plan? To scale the whole skyscraper?”
“Not exactly.”
That’s when the first arrow whirs past our heads.
It misses by less than an inch, lodging into a tree across the plaza.
I scream, ducking my head against his back.
One arrow is quickly followed by another, and another.
Daerios dodges to the left, then the right, then the left again.
He doesn’t even glance backward. I have no idea how he senses the approaching arrows, but he’s doing a fantastic job.
“Found it!” says Cara, who was also searching for rope in Berendir’s pack. When I peek over Daerios’s shoulder, I see her pull out a woven length of rope, light gold in color.
It’s less than two feet long.
“Are you mad?” I holler.
“Have you found it yet?” Daerios asks in response.
An arrow whistles past my head. “I’m a little busy trying not to get skewered.”
“Let me take care of that. Just search.”
Adjusting my grip on his neck, I use one hand to rifle through packets of dried food, a set of arrows, a neatly-folded stack of pants. My palm closes over coarse fibers. I yank out the golden rope. Daerios’s hand waits up by his shoulder, waving eagerly. I pass it to him and zip his pack shut.
Then I make the mistake of peeking backward.
I almost cry out. Rad is barely seven feet away.
This close, he’s put aside his bow in favor of a saber, its deadly sharp blade swinging at his side.
My head whips back around. We’re ten feet from the western side of the building.
Daerios and Berendir plow toward the windows at full-speed.
We’re trapped on both sides. We’re going to crash.
I chance one last glance back over my shoulder. Rad is almost upon us. He lifts the saber over his head.
“Daerios!” I scream.
“Hold on tight!” he yells. And as the blade falls toward us, Daerios tosses the two-foot length of golden rope toward the sky. I duck my head and squeeze my eyes shut, ready for searing pain, ready for steel to split my head open, ready to die…
One second.
Two seconds.
The pain never comes. Did Rad change his mind? I crack one eye open, expecting to find us surrounded on all sides.
Instead, we’re flying.
The plaza shrinks below us—twenty, thirty, forty feet, and growing farther away with every passing second. We’re soaring. I tighten my grip on Daerios’s neck, terrified. I’m not even capable of screaming; the breath has left my lungs entirely.
I look up to find Daerios’s hands wrapped around the golden rope, which has mysteriously grown thousands of feet in length. It seems, in fact, to reach all the way to the top of the Unity Tower.
Over the air rushing past my face, I start to ask, “How—”
“Ever-rope!” Daerios yells over his shoulder. “Stolen from my father’s supply before we left camp!”
“It grew 1,925 feet long?”
“It could grow even further, if necessary.”
Shaking my head in disbelief, I look back down at the milling guards. They grow smaller and smaller. “Why aren’t they following?”
“They can’t,” Daerios says. “They won’t have brought any ever-rope along. It’s a very rare artifact. Not part of a soldier’s standard gear.”
Adjusting my grip on his neck, I look over at Cara and Berendir. They’re already staring back, huge grins on their faces.
“Oooo-wee!” Ber whoops. “Come and get us now, assholes!”
I can’t help it. I smile too.
Within half a minute, we reach the top. The rope swings us up and over the railing.
The boys land with effortless grace. At this height, the wind is vicious; it whips at our hair and cloaks, flapping them around our bodies.
Daerios slides me off his back and into the cradle of his arms before setting me onto the ground.
When my toes touch the metal roof, I don’t release his neck right away.
I linger, fingers brushing his collarbone.
His hands grip my waist. My eyes move slowly upward, tracing the line of his body, from his torso to his chest to his neck to his chin and, finally, when I can fight it no longer, to his eyes.
Even though I’ve seen them dozens of times—perhaps hundreds, at this point—their blindingly bright silver makes my heart go still.
And it isn’t just their color; it’s the emotion they wear.
Daerios stares down at me with a mixture of hesitancy and hunger.
My hands slide off his neck, running down to his chest. We breathe heavily, chests rising and falling with the lingering adrenaline of the chase.
Or maybe with something else entirely.
“Not to interrupt your eye-sex,” says Berendir, “but an army of elves are racing up the elevator as we speak.”
“Right.” I step quickly away. “We should…”
“Yes.” Daerios clears his throat. “I’ll just…”
“The portal,” I supply.
Cara and Berendir look at each other and roll their eyes.
“Right. The portal.” Daerios adjusts his stance, straightening to his full height. He holds out both hands, tucking in his pinky and index fingers and extending the middle and pointer fingers. He touches the inside edges of his hands together. “This will only take a moment,” he says.
Then he closes his eyes and begins to murmur.
It’s hard to hear his voice over the howling wind, but I think he’s speaking Maevish. An ancient subdialect of it, one that most elves do not use anymore and, by all accounts, should be extinct.
He speaks under his breath for over a minute. Nothing happens.
Cara and I exchange nervous glances.
“It’s not working,” Berendir says quietly enough that only we can hear. “We’re too low to the ground.”
“No.” My foot taps on the steel roof. “No, it has to work.”
“We don’t—”
A crash sounds on the other side of the roof. Daerios doesn’t even flinch, but the rest of us spin around just in time to see both human and elvish guards spill out of the emergency door. They spot us immediately. One of the guards pulls out his bow and nocks an arrow.
“Daer.” Berendir shifts in front of Cara and me, holding out both arms. “If you’re going to take us to Elaerion, now would be a good time.”
I don’t know if Daerios hears him. He is completely absorbed in the spell, muttering like a man in a trance. The first arrow releases. It misses, but the rest of the group takes off across the roof, headed toward us at a dead sprint.
“Daerios!” Berendir yells.
As if on command, golden sparks begin to shower from the prince’s fingertips. Sensing that the spell is working, Daerios raises his voice. “Andon alacénima,” he chants, pulling his hands slowly apart. “Andon alacénima.”
I watch in amazement as the air peels open.
That’s the only way I can describe it: Daerios’s fingers are knives slicing through the wind, taking the open air with them.
As the blue sky is stripped away, black night appears in its place.
Darkness in the shape of a crescent moon, then a half-circle, then, when Daerios’s fingers reach the steel floor, a full, complete, gaping hole in the sky.
A volley of arrows shoot toward us. Some miss their target. Others fly straight into the black hole and disappear.
Daerios’s eyes flutter open. When he sees that the spell worked, his face quickly transforms from serenity to knife-sharp focus. “Now!” he yells, ushering us toward the hole. “Through the portal!”
Cara glances over her shoulder at the approaching guards. “You don’t have to tell me twice.” She dives into the darkness. Berendir follows.
Daerios steps one foot into the portal. He holds out a hand, waiting for me. I step forward and take it.
Just as my fingers close around his, another hand grabs my other arm, yanking me backward. I cry out. The guards have reached us.
“No!” Daerios points over my shoulder with one hand and blasts out a stream of light.
Whoever grabbed me must go flying backward, because their fingers loosen their vise and disappear.
I have no time to register the fact that Daerios just used his magic—his elemental magic—in front of me for the first time.
The portal wobbles, as if it’s about to give out.
“Now, Quinn,” Daerios says. “We’re almost out of time.
” He dives through the portal, pulling me with him.
As we plunge toward Elaerion, I glance back over my shoulder.
The guards have regained their ground. One of them crouches low and dives forward, following in our wake.
The portal’s edges flicker dangerously. Just as the guard’s hand closes around my elbow, the portal closes around his wrist, and we tumble into shadow.