I shrug. “My friend told me about the light ones.”
Her smile grows, sly and wormy. “The kinta.” She doesn’t say it kindly. The flicker of disgust is in her eyes, but she returns to watching the stairs. “Samick, Arwyn—no evate.”
I sink back against the metal rack.
“No mate,” she adds, then she turns her stare on me—and it strikes me how serious it is, the look she lands on me. “Ísalf choose.”
I blink. “Ísalf?”
Her hand flattens to her chest. “Dokkalf.” Then her hand flitters away from her. “Kinta. Litalf.” Then a curt, final wave to the staircase. “Samick, Arwyn— Ísalf.”
Ísalf, like Ísabroch, like ice elf.
Litalf, like Licht, like light elf.
Dokkalf, like Dorcha, like dark elf.
We say fae—and they do, too.
But in their language, it’s closer to elf. Closer to what the Scandinavians would call them from their lore.
I wonder if their languages blend at all. And if this all means it’ll be not so hard to learn the language in Licht.
Then it’s like I really hear what she said, the meaning of her words.
“They—what? What do you mean theychoose?”
Her sharp chin glints paler in the white light. “Choose one.”
“Theone?” I frown at her. “So like humans then? We pick a person to marry—”
“No,” she says, grave.
Something slackens her face, like an unimaginable horror unfolds right in front of her, something I can’t see, and she turns that horrified look on me.
“Not human. Never like human.” The soberness of her voice, the panic that ushers beneath it, chills my spine. “Ísalf choose forever. One. Forever.”
I shrug off the brochure rack and turn to face it.
This time, I actually focus on the letters until the words form under the stark light.
“Forever is a long ass time,” I mutter.
The words are hollow.
They feel as empty as the lethargic smile I aim over my shoulder at her, the one that tries to shut the whole conversation down, because I don’t want to hear another word of it.
“Maybe why Samick watch you.”
Her shit articulation is getting easier to understand—but I wish it wasn’t.
“Maybe why Samick feed you. Protect you.”
Mika is saying things that shouldn’t be said, that should not even be thought.
I wanted to know why Samick can do the things he can—not about Samick and me.
I keep my back to her and pluck out a map from among the brochures. “I’m his ward,” I say. “He does all of that for Dare.”
