Page 41 of Prince of the Sun

I should want to hit him again. Instead, I want to grab his collar and pull him back towards me. To drown in the parchment-and-red wine scent that follows everywhere he goes.

To distract myself from this thought, I clear my throat and ask, “Which brother?”

“All of them, I assume.”

“That sounds difficult. Having to meet so many people’s expectations, I mean.”

A sigh. “Spare me the Dr. Phil treatment, Kallister. I’m a hundred and sixty-three years old. I don’t need a therapist.”

“Therapy is beneficial for everyone, Daerios. Not just the mentally ill.”

“That’s exactly what they tell the mentally ill to make them feel better about being fucking insane.”

“You’re a real sack of dogshit,” I say. “You know that, right?”

“And you’re a Type A princess who doesn’t know when to mind her own business.”

I stick my tongue out.

He does the same.

Which is how I come to have one of the most powerful beings on the planet staring at me with his tongue hanging out like a lazy dog.

I clap one hand to my face. Then, before I can stop it, I dissolve into laughter.

Daerios’s eyes widen. He watches me with a look that sits somewhere between shock and amazement, and I wonder if this is the first time he’s heard me laugh. I could swear his cheeks turn the slightest bit pink.

“I didn’t mean it,” he says when I stop laughing. He’s rubbing the back of his head with one hand. “What I said about therapy. And the mentally ill. We elves don’t do well with emotions. We prefer facts. Data. Well-documented evidence, and all that. But if there’s one thing that has been well-documented by the human researchers of our age, it’s the benefits of talk therapy.”

“Exactly.” I purse my lips. “And, honestly, it sounds like you elves could use a healthy dose of it yourselves. I mean, ‘we just don’t do well with emotions’? Come on. The intake writes itself.”

He laughs. “Can’t argue with you there.”

The sound of his laugh does something to my stomach that I instantly wish I could un-do.

Clearing my throat, I push the blanket off myself and start to get out of his bed. “Well, I’m feeling much better. I should probably get going.”

Daerios sets a hand on my shoulder. “Not yet. You’ve only just awoken; rest a few more minutes before you go.”

“I’m really—”

“I insist.”

There’s a finality to his tone that brokers no argument. Something about it makes me feel strangely hot in the face.

“You sure you can stand to have a human sullying the purityof your bedsheets?” I ask, falling back on our usual routine of poking at one another.

“Quinn,” he says. It’s the first time he’s used my first name, and it frightens me how much I enjoy hearing it on his lips. “There’s no one I’d rather have sully my purity than you.”

I don’t like Daerios. I don’t like Daerios. I don’t like Daerios. I don’t like Daerios.

Why, then, does the memory of his voice—at once husky, at once musical—follow me everywhere I go?

“For your midterm projects,” says Dr. Infix the following week, handing a stack of papers to the head TA, “you will be dividing into groups of two or three to research a linguistic subject of your choice.”

I try not to watch as Daerios’s long arms flex while passing me the stack.

“Your results shouldnotbe delivered in the form of an essay. Movies, songs, or comic books are preferable.”