Page 36 of Prince of the Sun

And then, before Daerios can protest, I spin on my heel, skirt ruffling, and disappear into the crowd.

By the time I make it to Quincy Courtyard, my heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my stomach. Drunk students totter along the brick walkway, bags of Tasty Burger and Felipe’s burritos clutched in hand. Through the glass to the left, I see students crowding the booths of Quincy Grill, sharing baskets of french fries and mozzarella sticks. My stomach churns.

On the bus ride home, I didn’t speak to Daerios. I feigned tiredness, shutting my eyes and resting my forehead against the tinted glass. In the row behind us, Berendir and Cara chattered away, gossiping about the couples at the event. I listened to the elvish names, the titles, the sordid predictions. Anything to keep me from thinking about where my mind truly wanted to go—to Daerios’s finger on my clavicle, to his hand around my ankle, to the shudders those images sent through my body.

When we returned to the Square, I’d given Daerios a curt thank you before taking off down Mt. Auburn, not bothering to wait for Cara. Something told me she wouldn’t mind. That a certain elf would be walking her home.

I press my ID to the plastic scanner, waiting for the buzzthat tells me I’ve been granted entrance to Stone Hall. When it sounds, I press down on the handle and step into the fluorescent-lit staircase.

What is happening to me? For years, I’ve been a broken lightbulb, capable of recognizing warmth but unable to produce it herself. No one—not a single boy I met in high school nor in freshman year of college—lit me up the way I did when Daerios touched me.

I should be happy, I suppose, as I jam the key into the lock on our suite. Now I know I’m nottrulydead inside.

But why—out of all the males at this school, all the males in the state of Massachusetts—why does it have to beDaerios? A man I detest, whom I’ve sworn to use for his access to information?

How do you explain attraction? Is it a chemical compound? A string of neurons? A learned reaction?

Or is it something else? Something intangible—like magic?

The next morning, I eat breakfast with Cara. We spend the hour rehashing events from the night before. Mostly I pepper her with questions about Berendir, and to my surprise, she’s more than happy to answer.

“He’s really sweet,” she says, “for, you know, the son of the deadliest elf in living memory.”

I spear a cauliflower floret. “Doesn’t that scare you?”

“Nope.” She points a slice of breaded chicken at me. “If we were all judged by the actions of our fathers, none of us would make it to eighteen. Myself included.”

I stare at Cara, mouth open. The second half of the cauliflower floats before my lips. She continues eating, eyes out the window, as if she hasn’t just said something incredibly personal and revealing.

With every day that passes, I find myself wondering if I really know my roommate at all.

“So,” I say, “does that mean you and Berendir are…?”

She shrugs. “We’re friends. And for now, that’s all I want us to be.”

Friends. A human and an elf. It seems impossible.

“And you and Daerios…” Cara quirks an eyebrow.

I look down at my plate. Count the remaining cauliflower.

3, 4, 5.

“What about us?”

“Well, you didn’t tear each other’s heads off, for one.”

“A miracle.”

“Though there were a few moments where it looked like you wanted to tear somethingelseoff each other…”

“Absolutely not,” I say quickly. Too quickly.

Cara doesn’t press the subject, but I spy a grin rippling through her glass of water.

After breakfast, Cara heads back up to our room, but I spread my books out on one of the tables in Quincy Courtyard to get some studying done. It’s a gorgeous September morning. Hazy sunlight filters through the canopy of the elm in front of Stone Hall. Its leaves are just starting to take on the faintest hint of orange. In the hammock at its base, someone lies with one foothanging over the edge, reading Proust.

I’m in the middle of a paragraph about Proto-Indo-European, one of the many ancestor languages referenced over and over by Dr. Infix during his lectures, when a long shadow slants over my notebook.