Page 6 of Prince of the Sun

No. I was reading for structure. I was reading to learn, in painstaking detail, the rules that governed the Spanish language.

I loved them. Clung to them—their clarity, their sequence. Every sentence had a beginning, middle, and end. There were no sudden cut-offs. Nothing left unfinished. The book was dividedby tenses: it began with the present, transitioned to the past, followed up with the future, and then, finally, magnificently—the subjunctive.

Technically speaking, the subjunctive is not a tense; it’s amood. It is used for the theoretical, not the literal: judgment, preferences, emotions, possibilities. Uncertainty and unreality. Doubt and desire.

Language became my lifeline. I played translation games on poorly designed websites. I fed myself words instead of food. I stood before the bathroom mirror and conjugated verbs, watching my lips move with the detached interest of an artist painting another’s portrait.

“Yo voy, tu vas, él va,” I said. Present. “Yo vaya, tu vayas, él vaya.” Subjunctive.

With each passing day, I felt the present slipping away. I spoke to myself only in the subjunctive. Descended into a world ruled by the theoretical.

“Es posible que yo sea mala persona,”I said.

It’s possible that I’m a bad person.

“Es posible que yo pueda pasar hambre hasta que la culpa desaparezca,”I said.

It’s possible to starve the guilt away.

After a month of feeding myself nothing but stale graham crackers and the subjunctive, the world around me felt fuzzy. Unreal. Thoughts flitted through my head, but they felt separate from my sense of self, like far-off daydreams.

And still I conjugated.

“Es posible que el dolor nunca termine,” I said.

It’s possible that the pain will never end.

“Es posible que me esté volviendo loco,” I said.

It’s possible that I’m losing my mind.

And then, in the thickest depth of the fog, just as I felt my final tether to reality begin to slip loose…

“Es posible que mi hermano esté todavía vivo.”

It was like a bolt of lightning. Like an AED placed directly over my heart. Eight words that shocked me back to life. That cleared the fog in an instant, bringing everything into focus.

It’s possible that my brother is still alive.

It was true. Itwaspossible. I’d seen my father die, but Michael? He’d only been injured before the elves swept him away. And my mother hadtoldthem that—the police, the paramedics, anyone who would listen. But they’d all said the same thing:there’s nothing we can do.

I understood why. The elves are above our laws. They do what they want, and who are we to try and stop them? We puny, magicless humans are nothing in the face of their power.

If it had been anyone but Michael, I would have done the same. Keep my head down, go about my life. But itwasn’tanyone else. It was my brother. My best friend in the world. I had to at least try. And if I couldn’t find him, I could at least do the next best thing. For himandfor my dad.

I could get revenge.

Even at twelve, I wasn’t a fool. I knew I stood no chance at taking down the elves. One human child against an entire race of powerful magical beings? No. If I wanted revenge, I needed to play the long game. I needed to dig past the elves’ seemingly impenetrable façade. I needed to find their weakness.

That’s why I worked my ass off to get where I am now. Why I gave up my childhood, eschewing friends and free time and a social life in favor of study and tutors and practice tests. I knew language was my best shot, so I pleaded with my mother to put me into Mandarin class as well as Spanish. If I wanted to get into one of the schools where the four Princes of the Sun were posted—Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Beijing—I needed to be better than good. I needed to be exceptional.

I did it all for one reason: to get close enough to the elves tofind their weakness.

Dad was a police officer, before his murder. Working his way toward making detective. He used to say:A person’s weakness lies in the secrets they keep. The information they deem too precious—or too terrifying—to reveal.

What is the one thing the elves have refused, time and time again, to reveal to humanity?

What was so compelling that it brought them to an entirely new world—but too precious to be shared outside their species?