Page 1 of Prince of the Sun

That wretched elf prince stole my book again. Every day, I get to Widener Library earlier than the morning before, and every day, Daerios still beats me.

“Sorry, Quinn,” the librarian—a human, like me—winces as he hands back the scrap of paper with the ISBN scrawled in my crooked handwriting. “Better luck next time.”

I sigh, tucking the paper back into the pocket of my jeans. I only need theMorphological Similarities Between American English and Elvish Lukkarin. A categorically uninteresting read, but I can’t do this week’s assignment without it.

And sure, the prince might be in the same linguistics class as me, but there’s nowayhe’s been working on the same problem set for five days straight. Elves, as we humans are constantly reminded, are brilliant. Keepers of knowledge, protectors of magic. Far too smart to need almost a week to do their homework.

“Thank you,” I say to the librarian, turning toward the exit. Looks like I’ll be using a digital copy to do my linguistics problem set.Again.

Daerios probably doesn’t need the book at all. He’s probably taking it just to torture me. The final clubs regularly prank humans as part of their initiation process, and I know for a fact that Daerios is currently Punching the Ikarith.

Punch happens during a student’s sophomore year, and is a bit like rush at a fraternity or sorority, only more pretentious. The final clubs used to be human institutions, but as soon as elves discovered that the clubs were housed in the grandest buildings on campus, they took them for their own.

Bullies. Every single one of them.

My mother warned me that things would be different at Harvard. I grew up in Minnesota, far from the grand libraries and universities that house the majority of the Elvish population. Only a small Elvish outpost exists at our state university, but I never went anywhere near it; Mom wouldn’t let me. In fact, before this year, I had never evenmetan elf. Not face-to-face, anyway.

Now, they’re all I see.

They tower over me in the dining halls. Sweep past with unearthly grace, long, pin-straight hair swishing down to their waists. Wild Elves leap from building to building, bows and quivers slung over their backs, preferring to run the rooftops rather than walk on the ground with us lowly humans. Water Elves linger on the banks of the Charles River, dipping their feet in the water or meditating in the reeds. Wood Elves ride horses bareback through Harvard Yard.

They do whatever they want. They’re elves—well above our earthly laws.

Just before reaching the exit, I halt.

No, you know what?

I turn back to the librarian, hitching my backpack further up my shoulders. “Which direction did he go?”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

The librarian swallows. “Are you sure you want—”

“Yes,” I cut him off. “Just point. I won’t tell him who told me.”

The librarian hesitates, clearly not trusting me. But he raises one wrist anyway and, quaking slightly, points up the main staircase.

Of course. Daerios is in Loker, the main reading room. The gorgeous one, with sky-high ceilings, wooden bookcases, and frosted-glass reading lamps. The one that only elves use, because no human dares disturb them.

I reach back and pull the scrunchie out of my bright orange curls, letting them fall around my shoulders like a wild, tangled veil. I roll back my shoulders. Place one foot onto the staircase, then another. Let them stare, I decide as I start to climb. Let them whisper and taunt. I’m getting my book—even if I have to go through an elf prince to do it.

I pause outside the reading room. Exhale once.

Then I lift my chin, straighten the straps of my backpack, and push open the doors.

They came from the mountains. One hundred years ago, they streamed down the peaks and ridges in great droves, some on horseback, some on foot. Everest, Kilimanjaro, Fuji, Olympus. The Tetons. The Rockies. Appalachia.

No one knows how they arrived to our world. Some believe they took invisible ships that set them down at the highest elevations. Others believe they materialized from thin air.Whatever the case, the elves aren’t telling. They don’t share information with humans. Not now. Not ever.

Once here, the elves swarmed our libraries and universities: Harvard, Oxford, the Imperial Universities in Japan. The Library of Congress. The Bibliothéque nationale de France. They made for humanity’s fountains of knowledge with eerie precision, as if they’d spent millennia studying Earth before their arrival. Maybe they had. No one knows how long elves can live, but in the face of our puny human lifespans, it seems to be an eternity.

Like my parents before me, I grew up under Elvish rule. Though it is technically still humans who occupy global seats of government—elves have no time for the headache of human politics—we know who our true rulers are. Not the kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers of the world, but the lithe, blindingly beautiful super-beings who live a plane above us.

Their arrival sent the world into chaos. Stock markets crashed. Wars screeched to a halt. The world gaped in collective awe as these otherworldly beings casually ripped apart everything we believed we understood about the universe.

We mean you no harm, said their leader, King Varith Ariar.We are looking for something. As soon as we find it, we shall leave your realm in peace.