Page 115 of Prince of the Sun

I reach for his hand, winding my fingers through his. “An eternity to bother you?” I nudge his side, eyes sparking with mischief. “I can think of nothing I’d like more.”

Slowly, a grin spread across his face, changing his expression from nervous to one of pure, unbridled joy. And this time, when he takes my face in his hands and kisses me, it’s so sweet it could make the stars sing.

Snow has just started to fall when I push open the doors of Widener Library and emerge into the chilly November air. I pause at the top of the steps, taking a few moments to admire the scene below. The winding pathways. The frost collecting on the grass and pavement. The trees, now bare of all their leaves. The white bell tower of Memorial Church, reaching toward the clouded sky. The snowflakes falling gently over it all.

And the elf standing at the bottom of the stairs, smiling up at me like I’m the sun.

I jog down the steps, backpack bouncing off my shoulders. For a moment, I’m taken back to that first day in the library, when I stormed into Loker Reading Room to confront him. I remember how it felt to run down these same steps afterward. I remember how my heart pounded in terror at what I’d just done.

Now, my heart is pounding again, but for a different reason entirely.

I stop when I reach the second-to-last step, so I can stand almost nose to nose with him, even with how tall he is. His cheeks are rosy from the cold, as are the tips of his pointed ears, which poke out from his dark hair.

He’s so beautiful it hurts.

“Hi,” I say breathily, the word emerging in a grey puff of air.

His smile hitches higher. He holds out the paper cup in his hand—a steaming oat milk latte, like always. “Hi.”

I take the drink from him, but before I can bring it up to my mouth to take a sip, he grabs my wrist and pulls me close. My heart flutters as he lowers his mouth to mine and presses our lips together in a soft, snow-dusted kiss.

“I missed you,” he murmurs when he pulls away, batting his nose once against mine before straightening all the way back up.

I roll my eyes. “I left your dorm room less than three hours ago.”

“Exactly.” He winks and holds out an elbow. “Shall we?”

I slip my arm into his and descend the last two steps. Then we turn and start across the Yard, back toward Quincy House.

This is our routine. Every morning, on days when I don’t have early class, I slip out of his bed in Dunster, grab a quick breakfast, and head to the library for a few hours of studying. When I’m done, he picks me up—always bearing my favorite drink, even if I’ve already had more than enough caffeine—and we head to the dining hall for lunch with Cara and Berendir.

“Did you hear from Lûth?” I ask as we pass a group of human students on their way to class. A few of them do a double take when they see Daerios and I walking together, but not nearly as many as they used to. “He was supposed to get back this morning, right?”

Daerios nods. “He called me earlier. Things are going wellin Árrion. They’ve cleared out everything the Shadow Elves left behind, and now it’s just a question of restocking the palace. New furnishings, new tapestries, all of that boring stuff.” He snorts. “Apparently, Saechon threw a fit over how the librarians reshelved the books. The Shadow Elves destroyed a huge chunk of our library, and he’s taking the preservation of what’s leftveryseriously. The way Lûth described it, you’d think he was in charge of a room full of uranium, not leather-bound collections of paper.”

I laugh. “Sounds about right.”

“He said he ran into Brannion, too, who’s overseeing the Return Migration with Berendir’s father. Things are moving more slowly there, but that’s to be expected. Most elves couldn’t pack up and abandon their lives here overnight.”

“Of course. But does it still seem like most will go?”

“Most.” He glances sideways at me. “But not all.”

My stomach twists, the way it always does when I consider the idea of him returning to Elaërion. Even though it is his home. The place he grew up. The realm to which most of his family is now returning. “And you’re sure you don’t want to—”

“My place is wherever you are,” he says before I can even ask the question. We’ve had this conversation many times before.”

“As is mine. And I know we agreed to stay here so I could finish my studies, but—”

“It’s not just your studies. It’s your friends, your family, your wholelife.I mean, you only just got your brother back. I wouldn’t dream of whisking you off to a different realm right now.”

Daerios is right, of course. After working for almost half my life to rescue my brother, I’m not about to go running off to a place where I couldn’t call or FaceTime him whenever I wanted.

Mom and Michael spent a week in Boston while I recovered, most of which they spent at my bedside. We talked. We watchedTV. I pulled out my phone and explained to Michael what TikTok is. My brother will have a long road back to normalcy; there’s a permanently haunted look in his eyes, and he jumps at the slightest sudden noise. But by the end of that week together, some color had started to come back into his cheeks, and I’d even seen him smile a few times. When they hugged me goodbye to fly back to Minnesota, where my mother had already booked his first session with a trauma therapist, I felt hopeful.

I feel hopeful about my mom and Daerios too. When I first woke up in that hospital bed, she could barely look at him. Even after I explained everything that had happened, she still didn’t look convinced, but I wasn’t surprised; when you harbor a grudge for almost a decade, it doesn’t dissipate just because someone tells you it should. But I saw her watching him. She watched the way he never strayed far from my side, leaping to attention when I needed the slightest thing. She watched as he stepped protectively in front of Michael if anyone got too close to him. She watched it all, and slowly, the tension ebbed from her shoulders. Just a little.

So, I have hope.