Page 11 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
I sigh. “Right. You don’t understand a word I’m saying.”
His lips twitch. Not quite a smile, not quite a smirk, but enough to make my stomach dip in a way I refuse to acknowledge.
I move toward the closet and drag out my extra blanket, the scratchy wool one my mom sent me last winter. I toss it onto Syndee’s bed. “You can sleep there. She’s not gonna be back tonight.”
He doesn’t move. Just watches me. The tension in my shoulders ratchets up another notch.
“Youcansleep there,” I repeat, pointing.
Still nothing.
I step closer, holding his gaze. “Bed. Sleep.” I pat the blanket like I’m trying to get a cat to use a new bed.
His eyes drop to where my hand rests on the wool, then return to my face. Slowly—so slowly I can see every shift of muscle under his shirt—he stands. The air changes with him upright, the charged hum pressing in closer. He steps past me, and I have to fight the urge to lean away.
When he finally lowers himself onto the mattress, the springs squeal in protest. He sits there a moment, elbows resting on his knees, head bent slightly forward. I can’t tell if he’s tired or still on alert.
“Good,” I say, mostly to break the silence. “Great. We’re… good.”
I retreat to my side of the room, curling up on my bed with my knees pulled to my chest. My eyes stay locked on him even as the minutes stretch. He doesn’t lie down. Just sits there, still as stone, the lamplight painting shadows along the planes of his face.
I tell myself I’m going to keep watch until he sleeps. Make sure nothing happens. Then I’ll drift off. And in the morning, I’ll send him on his way and go back to being a semi-normal college student.
But somewhere in the space between one blink and the next, I admit it—to myself, quietly, where no one else can hear.
I’m lying.
I don’t want him gone.
CHAPTER 5
ROVAX
Morning claws its way into my skull before I’m ready for it.
The sunlight cuts through a narrow rectangle of glass, slicing across my eyes like a blade. It’s not the clean, pale light of Protheka’s dawn—it’s sharper, thinner, tainted with the faint tang of metal and smoke. I can hear this place waking: footsteps drumming in the corridor beyond the door, voices muffled through thin walls, the steady, unnatural hum of… something. Machines, maybe. I’ve fought in the forges beneath Aeztharr Keep; I know the bite of steel and steam. But this sound is stranger—constant, tireless, almost smug in its insistence that I notice it.
The bed beneath me is too soft. I sit on its edge, elbows braced on my knees, and every shift of my weight makes the frame complain with little metallic groans. The air smells faintly of stale paper, fabric cleaner, and the sharp chemical tang from the little bottles lined on a shelf across the room.
Skylar moves like a storm in the background—pulling on fitted garments dyed in bright, impractical colors, gathering strange papers and devices into a bag that looks like it couldn’thold a proper blade if her life depended on it. She doesn’t seem to notice me watching her. Or maybe she’s pretending not to.
The memory of last night itches at the edges of my pride. Collapsing. Bleeding out on foreign soil. Being… helped. I bristle, jaw tightening. But the other part of me—the part that’s been quiet far too long—is curious. This world is loud, cluttered, inefficient, but it’s clearly built by clever hands. I need to understand it if I’m going to move in it without drawing attention.
And to do that, I need to understandher.
Not just her words, but all of it.
I roll my shoulders, loosening the stiffness in my muscles. The injury is gone, the runes humming low and content under my skin. I can focus now. Enough to attempt something I haven’t tried in years—a particularly difficult weave meant for rapid language acquisition. My tutors used to say it felt like swallowing lightning.
I close my eyes and draw the threads of magic together in my mind. The air around me stirs, though I don’t hear Skylar’s movements falter. The syllables of the incantation are old and ugly, meant to trip the tongue of anyone unworthy. My voice curls around them like smoke, pulling them tight into a knot before releasing the final word with a sharp snap.
Then I slam my palms against the sides of my head.
The world detonates.
It’s like someone’s split my skull and poured molten steel straight into my brain. Words—thousands of them, millions—slam into me in rapid succession, each with its own weight, its own shape, its own history. I see them as colors, feel them as textures:sidewalk—rough gray under my fingers;coffee—bitter and black;police—cold, hard metal and blue light in my eyes. Phrases flicker past like blades: “Watch it, buddy,” “What’s yourproblem,” “Can I help you?”—all too fast to catch, all too loud to ignore.
I roar, the sound ripping out of me, clutching my head as if I can physically hold the flood inside.
