Page 15 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
The library’s got that hush that’s half peace, half “step wrong and the ghost of a librarian will throttle you.” It’s my favorite place on campus, but I’ve never brought a six-foot-ten maybe-alien warlord here before.
Rovax walks two paces behind me like he’s guarding my six, which is… both reassuring and mildly terrifying. I’d meant this trip to be low-key—just the two of us, tucked away in a quiet corner where I could poke at the mystery of “Rovax the Possible LARPer” without an audience—but subtlety is a lost cause. Even under his glamour, he’s a wall of quiet intensity. Students look up from their laptops as we pass, and I can practically hear their inner monologues:basketball player? model? mob enforcer?
“Eyes front,” I mutter.
“They look at you too,” he says, voice pitched low enough that the words hum at the base of my spine.
I don’t answer that.
The smell hits me as we step deeper—paper and dust, tinged with the faint sweetness of the café tucked in the back. It’s comforting, grounding. I steer him toward the farthest corner of the second floor, past the study rooms and into the stacks wherethe carpet muffles our footsteps and the hum of the HVAC is louder than any conversation.
“This will do,” he says when I stop beside a small table. He’s not talking about the workspace—he’s mapping the exits, cataloging the foot traffic. I can see it in the way his gaze slides over the rows, in the slow turn of his head.
“You planning a siege, or can we actually, I don’t know, study?” I drop my backpack onto the table and pull out my laptop.
“Both.”
I roll my eyes but don’t push. Instead, I open the laptop and bring up an interactive world map. Earth spins slowly under my fingertips, blue oceans glinting, continents spread like puzzle pieces. “Okay. Geography lesson. Tell me what looks familiar.”
He leans over the table, close enough that the air shifts around me. The glow from the screen catches on the angles of his face, throwing his eyes into deeper shadow. For a moment, he’s utterly still.
Suddenly, a sharp intake of breath.
“You know none of this,” I say quietly.
“No.” The word is flat, but there’s a flicker there—something between fascination and the cold edge of realizing just how far from home he really is.
I turn the screen toward him fully. “This is Earth. Where you are right now. Syracuse is here.” I tap New York state.
His gaze tracks my finger, then jumps to the rest of the map. “No Protheka,” he murmurs.
The name is heavy on his tongue, a weight I can feel even without knowing what it means. “That’s your home?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His hand hovers over the trackpad like he’s debating whether to touch it. “Yes,” he says finally.
“What’s it like?”
His jaw tightens. “Not here.”
“That’s… not an answer.”
He shifts back, eyes flicking past me toward the nearest student wandering the aisle. “It is the answer you get.”
I bite back my frustration. If I push too hard, he’ll shut down completely, and then I’ll get nothing. Instead, I try a different angle. “Alright. Then let’s start smaller. You know how to read this?” I point to the compass rose.
He studies it. “Directions. North, south, east, west.”
“Good. So you’re not totally hopeless.”
That earns me a sideways glance that could flay meat off bone. “I am never hopeless.”
I smirk, turning the screen back toward me. “We’ll see.”
As I start explaining continents and oceans, he listens like I’m briefing him for a mission—eyes locked, no wasted movements, absorbing every detail. When I mention borders, he snorts softly.
“Arbitrary lines,” he says.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
