Page 85 of Prince of the Sun

At Berendir’s signal, Cara and I dart away from the elevator bay and toward the revolving doors. Then it’s just a push, and we’re out into the setting sun.

The sidewalk is packed with bodies. We planned to leave right at seven, when the city would be crowded with elves and humans returning home from work. More faces into which we can blend. We push through them, and I feel every pair of eyes that falls upon me like a knife to the skin.Don’t look. Don’t look. Whatever you do, don’t look.I hear Daerios’s command from earlier. Allow it to guide me forward. Through the tangle of arms and legs and coats and briefcases. Into the open cab door. Slide across the seat and into the middle. Let Daerios and Cara squeeze me in from either side, while Berendir takes the front.

The doors slam shut. Only then, as the car groans away from the curb, do I allow myself to glance out the right-hand window.

Where I find a pair of silver eyes squinting through the glass.

I gasp, hand lifting to grab Daerios’s shoulder. But when the cab rumbles forward, my body lurches backward, and the elf disappears. I twist around. When I look through the rearview mirror, I see him staring after us as we drive away.

By the time we pull up to the Unity Tower, the sun has set and my pulse is hammering so fast I fear my heart might jump out of my throat. For twenty minutes, as we bumped through the streets of Manhattan, all I could see were silver eyes squinting suspiciously through tinted glass.

“You’re sure he was looking at you?” Daerios asks for the hundredth time since we got in the cab.

“Positive.”

He nods. “Then word will already have reached my father. We can only hope he didn’t manage to track our cab here.”

As we throw open the side door and spill out onto the sidewalk outside 1 World Trade Center, we can only hope the cab’s license plate was lost to the maze of the city.

At the top of the Unity Tower is Manhattan’s most popular tourist trap: the Hendelë Observation Deck. “The Best View in the City!”according to the myriad billboards we passed on the way here.

Hendelë closes each night at 7:30 p.m., at which time there is a mass exodus of humans and elves from the building.Thankfully, by the time we reach the plaza at 7:25, this exodus has already begun. The pavement is packed. We’re banking on this crowd to swallow up our approach.

Hoods up, bows shouldered, we push through the hoard. Same as outside Lûth’s apartment, I’m conscious of every pair of eyes that flicks toward my face, obscured though it is by the dark green cloth of my traveling cloak. Every pointed elbow that jostles me, every lush strand of hair that flutters in my peripheral vision—they all feel like an extension of the king. Like a chance for him to swoop down and scoop us up before we’ve even made it to the starting line. Face down, I do my best to disappear into the crowd, to become nothing more than another elf on her way home from work.

We almost make it. Though my eyes are down, I track our progress through the plaza, and we’re almost to the sweeping entryway when we hear the commotion.

It comes from behind. We whip around, only to find a sea of elvish guards flooding the plaza. Their hooded faces tower over the humans trying to dive out of their path.

This is it. They found us.

“Plan B,” says Daerios, grabbing my elbow and yanking me in a different direction.

“What are you doing?” I stumble as I try to keep up with his frantic pace. “The elevators are over there.”

“We aren’t taking the elevator.”

“What?” I look up at his face, which stares ahead with terrifying concentration. “Then how the hell are we supposed to get to the roof?”

Berendir glances over his shoulder. “Daer,” he says. “They’re gaining on us.”

“Damn human legs,” Daerios says.

“Hey,” I say defensively. “They’re not—”

But I can say nothing more, because Daerios sweeps meup into his arms and swings me around onto his back. I yelp, crossing my arms over his neck and holding tight. As I jostle about, I struggle not to notice the way his hard muscles move beneath the skin of his neck and shoulders, a lithe little dance. I peer over his shoulder and find Cara in the same position with Berendir. Our gazes meet over their shoulders, and our eyes expand with awe. To the boys’ credit, they barely even break stride, sprinting effortlessly forward, as if there weren’t two human women clinging to their necks for dear life.

They’ve completely changed course. We’re now headed toward the western side of the Unity Tower—one hundred stories of shimmering windows, no entrance in sight.What the hell are they doing?I glance over my shoulder, only to find the wall of guards less than fifty feet away. I make eye contact with Râd, who bows his head and runs even harder.

Daerios and Berendir plow through the crowd, knocking humans aside as easily as bowling pins. The other elves are quicker; they leap aside, supernatural reflexes getting them out of the way just in time. Unfortunately, this also means that we do all the work of clearing a path for the guards behind us. When I next look back, they’ve closed the gap, now less than twenty feet behind.

“Daerios—”

“Open my pack,” he yells.

“What?” I yell back.

“Justdo it.”