Page 6 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
I slow without meaning to, each step careful now, my ears straining for the sound that’s been chasing me. Nothing but the rush of wind through the branches overhead and the distant hissof rain on leaves. My pulse is still roaring in my ears, but the forest feels wrong without the thudding behind me.
I turn, my breath steaming in quick bursts, scanning the shadows. No movement. No glowing red eyes between the trees. Just the stillness of a place that’s pretending it doesn’t know what’s in it.
Against every warning bell in my head, I start back the way I came. The underbrush scrapes at my jeans as I push through, my sneakers sinking into the damp carpet of moss and leaves. My chest is tight, the air icy going in and hot coming out.
I see him before I’m close enough to hear him breathe.
He’s down — a massive, unmoving shape on the forest floor, half-hidden by a tangle of grass and ferns. The white spill of his hair is stark against the dark ground, and the sight hits me low in the gut.
He’s on his side, one arm curled under him, the other clutching at his ribs. Blood soaks the grass beneath him, a slick, blackish sheen in the moonlight. The smell of it cuts through the damp pine and leaf rot — sharp, metallic, unignorable.
My steps slow until I’m barely moving at all. The smart thing — the only thing — is to turn and keep running until I find someone else, anyone else. But my legs bend on their own, and I’m dropping to my knees beside him before I’ve even decided.
“Great,” I mutter, my voice shaky and too loud in the quiet. “He’s dying, and it’s my fault.”
My hands hover again, just like on the road, unsure where to land. The armor’s cold under my fingertips when I finally touch it, the plates slick from rain. I can feel heat radiating off the parts of him not covered — his skin is warm in a way that feels unnatural in this cold, like a stone that’s been sitting in the sun all day.
His breathing is shallow but steady, each exhale ghosting into the air. The runes — I can see them now, faint lines workedinto his skin under the blood and grime — catch the moonlight for a second before fading, like they’re alive but tired.
I swipe my wet hair out of my face and glance back toward the road, though I can’t see it from here. My brain is already running through the mess of options: I can’t carry him, and there’s no way he’s walking anywhere like this. Calling 911 feels like opening a whole other can of worms.Hi, I just hit a guy with my car who looks like a cosplayer from hell but bleeds like anyone else, please send help?Yeah, that’d go over great.
I look back down at him. He doesn’t move, but something in my gut says he’s not the kind of person — or whatever he is — who stays down for long. And that thought is somehow both terrifying and… unsettlingly reassuring.
The rain keeps falling, pattering on the leaves overhead, sliding down the back of my neck. My knees are damp, my hands shaking, my heartbeat refusing to slow.
I have no idea that my night — my entire life — has just crossed a line I can’t walk back over.
CHAPTER 3
ROVAX
Pain drags me back before the cold can finish its work.
It’s not the clean bite of a sword cut or the dull throb of a bruised rib. This pain has teeth — it gnaws, chews its way inward, until my whole side is a furnace wrapped in ice. My first breath is a hiss between clenched teeth, the air cold enough to scrape the inside of my throat raw.
I open my eyes to shadows. Above me, a canopy of alien trees sways in the wind. Their branches are too narrow, the leaves too thin and pointed, whispering like silk against silk. The night air is heavy with wet earth and rot — but underneath, faint, is something sharper, metallic, like the taste of blood before it’s in your mouth.
And then I realize itisblood. My blood.
The soil under me is damp, dark, slick. Every shift of my body sends fresh warmth soaking into the dirt — warmth I can’t afford to lose. I can smell the iron tang of it, strong enough that it almost drowns the forest. Almost.
I’ve been wounded before. In the pits. In the alleys between the guildhalls. On the front lines where your friends and enemies bleed out together under the same sun. But this… this burn is different. It crawls along the edges of the wound, a coldfire that tries to pull the strength out of me one heartbeat at a time.
A sound pulls my gaze to the side.
The human female is there — the one from the road. She’s crouched in the wet grass, close enough that I can see the droplets caught in her hair. Her head is bent over a crude little bundle of metal and cloth she’s digging through with quick, sharp motions. The smell of her — rain, fear-sweat, something faintly sweet like fruit just past ripening — cuts through the forest air.
Her eyes keep darting to me between her search, and I can read her as easily as a deck of marked cards: she’s deciding whether to help… or walk away.
“You’re still here,” I rasp, my voice rough as gravel in a dry riverbed.
She jumps — only a little — and glances up. “Yeah. Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Most would have run.”
“Most people don’t hit someone with their car and then leave them to die in the woods,” she shoots back, her words quick, defensive.
“Car,” I echo, rolling the unfamiliar shape over my tongue. My gaze narrows on her hands. She’s pulling out strips of white cloth, a small bottle of something that smells harsh, artificial, sharp enough to sting my nose. “Your healer’s kit looks… primitive.”
