Page 8 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
Warmth floods me, heat and power swirling together, spilling into the torn flesh. I feel the wound knitting itself back together, the ache easing with each heartbeat. The throbbing fades to a faint pressure, and the sharp edge of pain blunts into something I can ignore. The scent of my own blood dulls in the air as the flow slows to nothing.
She gasps — a sharp, startled intake — and jerks back so fast she nearly loses her balance in the wet grass. Her eyes are wide, pupils blown in the dark, darting between the still-glowing runes and my face.
A sound rumbles in my chest before I can stop it — low, rough, instinctive. Not threat, not warning, just a reflex, the sound I make when someone stirs the magic uninvited.
The glow fades slowly, sinking back into my skin until the runes are nothing more than faint silver scars against black flesh. The hum in my bones lingers, softer now, like the echo of a drumbeat after the music stops.
I push myself up onto one elbow, keeping my gaze fixed on her. She hasn’t bolted. She hasn’t screamed. Her breathing is fast, sharp, but she’s still here. Most wouldn’t be.
She shifts her weight, tucking one knee under her, her body ready to spring if I move wrong. Rain has caught in her hair, strands clinging to her cheek and curling slightly at the ends. A drop slides along the curve of her jaw and falls to the ground, drawing my eyes without my permission.
Why did the runes answer her? They only wake for command, for kinship, for blood-debt… never for strangers.
Maybe it was because her touch carried no malice.
The thought lodges in me, uncomfortable, and I push it aside. My kind doesn’t believe in accidents. Yet here I sit, breathing easier, the wound sealed, and she — a strange human in a stranger world — remains within arm’s reach.
The forest wraps around us, damp and heavy, the wind stirring the scent of wet bark and the faint trace of something warm and clean on her skin. She doesn’t know it, but she’s already crossed a threshold with me.
And I’m not sure if I want her to step back.
The magic’s warmth still lingers in my bones, but my muscles feel like wet rope when I try to sit. My arm trembles under my own weight, and for a humiliating second, I think I’m going to topple right back into the dirt. But I grit my teeth and force myself upright, ignoring the way the ground tilts sideways under me.
“Zai vael shorath,” I rasp, the words sharp and familiar in my mouth.Where am I?The sound of my own tongue feels like home after the chaos of this place.
She blinks at me, head tilting. “What?”
I repeat it, slower, my voice low but insistent. “Zai. Vael. Shorath.”
Her brows knit together, a crease deepening between them. She fires back in a quick tumble of syllables — bright, rounded sounds that slide past each other in a way no language from Protheka ever could. It’s almost… musical, each word a note, but the melody means nothing to me.
I frown, leaning toward her. “I don’t understand you.”
She huffs a breath, sitting back on her heels, and mutters something under her breath that has the rhythm of a curse. Then, more firmly, she says a string of words that might be a question, her gaze locked on mine.
The frustration between us builds, thick as the damp air. She gestures at my wound — now nothing more than a faint seam of pale skin — then points toward the dark gap between the trees, back the way she came. I can guess her meaning well enough:Come with me.
But before I step into whatever trap she’s unknowingly building, I need to move among her kind without drawing every hostile eye in the city.
I draw in a breath, letting the night air fill me. The magic stirs at my fingertips, coiling there like a sleeping serpent. I whisper the words that shift flesh, and the glamour washes over me — a shimmer in the air, a faint ringing like struck glass that only I can hear. My skin dulls from polished obsidian to a warm human brown, my hair darkens and shortens, the red in my eyes bleeding away to a deep, unremarkable brown.
The illusion locks into place with a final, soft hum.
Her eyes go wide. She stares at me like she’s just watched me crawl out of my own skin — which, in a way, she has.
I spread my hands, palms up. “Better?”
She doesn’t understand the word, but she understands the act. Her posture loosens by a fraction, and she glances around the woods as if making sure no one else saw. Then, to my surprise, she jerks her head toward the path and rises to her feet.
A clear gesture.Follow me.
For a heartbeat, I just watch her. The rain beads along her jacket, sliding down the curve of her back. She moves like someone who knows exactly where she’s going — even if she doesn’t know what she’s dragging along behind her.
It’s the first truly peaceable act anyone has offered me since the priest’s trick hurled me into this world. No threats. No demands. Just an unspoken offer.
And that’s dangerous.
Because the thought it stirs in me — the one I bury instantly — is that she might actually be my best chance at survival here.
