Page 7 of Prince of the Sun

Their goal. The thing they’re looking for.That’stheir secret.

So, I’m going to find out what it is.

And then I’m going to use it to destroy them.

It doesn’t take long for Daerios to collect.

In Linguistics two days later, I wait anxiously at the back of the lecture hall. I’ve kept the textbook for far too long, unwilling to return it to Widener for fear I’d run into Daerios or Berendir again.

But I can’t avoid them forever, because here they come—one head of silver and one of wavy black, floating gracefully into Sever 214 behind a group of tall, beautiful elf women. And sure enough, both pairs of eyes turn directly to me. A wicked little smile crawls up Berendir’s face. I tense, squeezing my pencil so hard it might break.Please don’t come back here,I plead.Please.

Mercifully, they don’t. Eyes snap away as quickly as they found me. They head for their usual seats, right up front.

I spend the entire lecture reminding myself to breathe. Our professor, a wizened human with oversize glasses and age spots on his wrists named Dr. Infix, draws morphological trees at the front of the classroom. I try to copy them into my notebook but my hands shake too hard.

I first took notice of Daerios Ariar when I was eight. Like every other elf on the planet, Daerios hasn’t aged a day since then—a permanent college-aged dickhead.

It was the first of November, and I’d just sat down with my family to watch the Elvish Press Conference. It is held once a year, and is the only time the king and his general appear publicly. One glimpse to let us know they’re still alive, still hold dominion over us all. The conference provides a platform from which the elves can “update the world on the progress of their search.”

Translation: spout cryptic nothingness meant to appease the human race.

That year, Daerios and Berendir showed up to the press conference blind drunk. At first, they did nothing but teeter in the background, making faces at the cameras over their fathers’ shoulders. My eight-year-old self homed in on their unabashed silliness right away. I giggled when Daerios crossed his eyes and mouthed along with his father’s predictable speech in perfect sync.

But then the king began to list the elves heading up each branch of the search.

At the time, of all the Elvish Princes, Daerios was the only one not stationed at a university to direct an arm of the search. Even his little brother, Lûth, had been at Yale for over twenty years. Rumor had it that, when his father offered Daerios the position at Harvard decades before, he told the king to, and I quote, “kiss my royal bottom.”

“As you already know,” King Varith said into the microphone. “Three of my sons are spearheading our search at the following universities: Oxford, Yale—”

Daerios jumped in front of the microphone, elbowing his father out of the way and interrupting in the middle of the list.

“People of the Earth,” Daerios said, flashing a white-toothedgrin. “There has been much talk in the media as to why I am the only prince not leading the search. Allow me to provide clarity: as the resident family disappointment, it is generally understood that my talents are better used elsewhere, such as drinking, gambling, and using my obscenely good looks to bed as many women as poss—”

It was only then that General Meldë managed to seize the microphone away.

Michael and I dissolved into a fit of laughter as we watched the elves scramble to reestablish order on stage. The King was frozen. The General sputtered some words into the microphone before grabbing Daerios by the scruff of his tunic and dragging him off the stage. Even my parents had to cover their grins.

From then on, Michael and I were card-carrying members of the Daerios Ariar fan club.

Daerios was by far the most public of all the royal family. After that press conference, Michael and I followed his adventures with wide-eyed amazement. We watched as he scaled the towers of Notre Dame, boated off the coast of Ibiza, ran alongside zebras and giraffes in Tanzania, and snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef. We trolled gossip websites, clicked paparazzi photos, scanned through blurry iPhone footage on YouTube. Everywhere he went, he was gorgeous and charming and lavish in his displays of magic. How could Michael and I, two kids from a small, midwestern town, who’d never even left Minnesota, let alone been on a boat in Ibiza,notbecome a little bit obsessed?

Everything changed after that day in the parking lot.

That day, any admiration I felt toward Daerios dried up faster than a well in the desert. No longer did I see his exploits as fun or mischievous; they were dangerous. I delved even deeper into the gossip websites, digging up every bit of dirt that I could. And, oh—there was plenty. Stories of him andBerendir luring smitten women into nightclubs, only to get them drunk on elvish wine and do God only knows what else. Stories of them manipulatingkalwe-sanya—Maevish (n), translation: “thought-opening” or “telepathy”—to send terrifying thoughts into unsuspecting human minds. Or abusing the elves’ ability to lay curses and blessings, placing blights upon any creature who pissed them off. Or, my personal favorite: the time they hid in a tree in Central Park and shot arrows at passersby—only to scare them, they said—until one of the arrows went straight through the left eye of an NYU med student, ending her career before it began.

All of it was fuel for my fury. Evidence that, beneath their poised, ethereally beautiful surface, the elves were violent, hateful creatures. Shiny-skinned fruit hiding a curdled core.

And Daerios—he’s the most rotten of them all.

The prince’s fun came to a head a year and a half ago, the spring of my senior year of high school. On a trip to him and Berendir’s favorite party locale, Mykonos, Daerios very publicly cursed an entire club’s worth of humans to look like a stampede of ugly green goblins. Dozens of videos surfaced of the event. The music ground to a halt, and there was screaming, and tears, and calls for the prince’s head on a stake. Daerios’s only response was to take a swig straight from a bottle of Belvedere, rip his tunic off his body with one hand, and holler, “I’d like to see you try, sweetheart!”

Apparently, Mykonos was the final straw. A week later, King Varith announced that Daerios Ariar, third-born Prince of the Sun, would enroll as a student in the fall at Harvard University. One of six colleges to which I’d just been accepted.

And me?

I knew exactly what I needed to do.

In the end, I chose Harvard because of Daerios. Because of his reputation.