Page 12 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
The door slams against the wall.
“Rovax?!”
She’s there in two strides, hair swinging over her shoulder, eyes wide with that same mix of alarm and… something softer. “What the hell are you—are youokay?”
I straighten, the magic settling into its new shape inside me, like a beast curling down to sleep after a long hunt. The chaos in my skull fades to an almost unbearable clarity. I understand every nuance of her question, every drop of concern in it.
“Greetings, human female,” I say, letting the words roll perfectly off my tongue in her own speech.
She freezes mid-step. “What.”
“I have… adapted,” I tell her, savoring the way the syllables feel. “I will no longer require your pantomime.”
Her mouth opens, closes. “You… speak English?”
“I speakyour tongue,” I correct, standing to my full height. The bed frame sighs in relief behind me. “Fluently. Perfectly. More perfectly, perhaps, than you do yourself.”
She stares at me like she’s not sure whether to laugh or start throwing things. “How? You couldn’t even say ‘bed’ last night.”
I allow myself a thin smile. “I am a fast learner.”
“That’s not learning, that’s—” She stops, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You just… woke up and decided to download a language into your brain like some kind of fantasy Google Translate?”
“I do not know what a ‘Google’ is,” I say. “But yes.”
She exhales like she’s been holding her breath since last night. “Thank God. The game of charades was gettingold.”
I tilt my head. “Charades?”
“It’s—” She waves a hand, then drops it, clearly not interested in explaining the rules of whatever this ‘charades’ is. “Never mind. Just… good. This’ll make things a hell of a lot easier.”
I take a step toward her, watching the flicker of awareness in her gaze as the distance between us shrinks. “And now, you can tell me… everything.”
She sits cross-legged on the bed across from me, pulling a pillow into her lap like it’s some kind of shield. “Okay, crash course in Planet Earth 101.”
I straighten in the chair, hands resting lightly on my knees, the same posture I’d take in a war council. “Proceed.”
Her brows pinch. “You sound like a guy about to invade.”
“I am about to learn,” I correct.
“Yeah, that’s not better,” she mutters. Then, louder: “Alright. First off, this—” She gestures vaguely toward the walls. “—is campus. Syracuse University. It’s where I live, study, play softball… basically my whole world right now.”
“‘Campus’ means… fortress?”
She snorts. “Close. Kind of. It’s a place where people come to learn. Think of it like a training ground, but for… brains.”
I nod once, absorbing that. “And you live in this fortress permanently?”
“Just during the school year.”
I file the term away. “And when you are not in ‘school year,’ you return to… your clan?”
“My parents,” she says slowly, like she’s still getting used to the fact that I can understand her now. “Yeah. Sort of like a clan.”
I shift slightly, my gaze catching on the narrow slit of window to my right. Humans move along a stone path below—small, fragile-looking creatures in thin coats and strange footwear, carrying books and glowing devices in their hands. I can see theflutter of hair in the breeze, the way their limbs look like they’d snap with the wrong kind of hit.
Her voice pulls me back. “Next—classes. That’s what I take here. Different topics, different teachers. You have to pass them to graduate.”
