Page 35 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
The moon hangs low above the complex, huge and white, casting silver light over the frost-glazed ground. I find my gaze drifting upward. It’s different here — closer, almost. Not the same as the pale twins of Protheka, but compelling in its own way.
“You keep staring at it,” she says, softer now. “The moon.”
“It does not look like this, where I am from.”
She tilts her head, searching my face. “Do you miss it?”
My eyes drop back to her, and I can feel the pull of the truth — and the weight of it. “Some things,” I admit. “Not all.”
There’s no smile this time, no teasing remark. She just studies me for a beat, like she’s measuring what that answer means.
Her shiver is smaller now, but I notice it all the same. I shift again, just enough to block the wind where it cuts across the open path. She doesn’t move away.
For a few moments, there’s nothing but the quiet, the white of our breath in the air, the distant thud of a ball echoing from somewhere inside the sports complex. And beneath it all, that low, quiet tension — not the sharp edge of our usual verbal sparring, but something slower. Warmer.
Something I can’t quite name yet.
The question comes softly, almost lost in the hiss of wind over frost.
“Do you miss it? Your home?”
Her eyes search my face,and for a heartbeat I consider lying. A polished, court-ready answer would be safer — a shrug, a vague deflection. But there’s something about this cold, this quiet, the way the silver moonlight paints her features without judgment, that pushes the truth past my teeth.
“Parts of it,”I say. The words taste like old wine — sharp, familiar, with a trace of bitterness at the end. “The heat of the forges. The scent of night-blooming firethorn. The taste of strong, blackened steel on the air before a duel.” My gaze drifts beyond her shoulder, toward shadows that hold nothing but memory.
“But not enough to return.”
Her brow knits. “Not enough?”
I meet her eyes again,and let her see the steel in my answer. “I left behind more enemies than allies. Blood spilled on stone doesn’t wash away, Skylar. And I have no wish to add my own to it.”
The rawness in my voice surprises even me. It’s not a thing I mean to give away — vulnerability is a currency you spend only when the profit outweighs the cost. Yet here, in this thin, freezing air, I find myself speaking plainly.
She doesn’t look away.Doesn’t push. Her lips part just slightly, the faintest catch in her breath before she says, “I’m glad you’re here.”
The words landbetween us like a dropped blade, heavy and sharp. I can feel the weight of them, the way they sink into the silence.
My first instinctis to examine them from every angle — what they cost her to say, what they demand of me in return. But instead, I simply… look at her. The lamplight and moonlight together paint her in silver and shadow, her breath curling in the cold, her heartbeat visible in the flutter at the base of her throat.
Slowly,deliberately, I lift my hand. The leather of my glove creaks in the stillness as I brush my knuckles along her jaw. Her skin is warm despite the chill, soft under the rough texture of my gloves.
I watch her reaction as closely as I’d watch an opponent’s stance in the opening breath of a duel.
She doesn’t pull away.
Her gaze flickers downfor the barest moment — to my mouth, I think — before snapping back to mine. I can feel the thrum ofher pulse in the space between us, the way the cold seems to recede, replaced by a heat neither of us names.
The wind stirs, carrying the scent of her — human warmth laced with the faint sweetness of whatever she washes her hair with. The smell catches in my lungs in a way that makes me want to lean closer.
But I don’t.
Instead, I let my hand fall, slow and measured, the ghost of my touch still clinging to the edge of her jaw. I don’t look away, and neither does she.
There’san unspoken truth hanging here — that her words were more than politeness, that my touch was more than idle curiosity — but the moment teeters, balanced on the knife’s edge between what could be said and what should remain unsaid.
The world beyond us feels far away, muffled by frost and moonlight. For just a breath, I let it stay that way.
The decision isn’t made so muchas it happens — one heartbeat we’re standing there in the cold, the next her breath is fanning warm against my mouth.
