Page 105 of Boundless

“There’s a chance that they knew and kept the heir away on purpose. And if they didn’t, and he ended up in Ashfall on his own, we’ll deal with it,” said Rune.

“Deal with ithow?”I wondered. “It’s bad enough that we have todealwith Lyall, isn’t it? It’s bad enough that he’s already on his way there.”

“True,” Maera said. “But the Seelie King plans to kill the heir to make sure he doesn’t pose a threat to him.”

“So maybe them being a dangerous criminal isn’t so bad?” I muttered, then thought better of it. “Actually, no—that’s worse. Imagine having to put a dangerous criminal on a throne, giving them a kingdom.Fuck.” Whichever way I looked at it, I saw no way out. “And didn’t you say that dragonfire was something even fae can’t withstand?” That’s what he said. I remembered it.

“It is,” said Rune. “But dragons don’t fly over Ashfall. Only the ashes move with the wind.”

Except he sounded full of shit just now, and he knew I knew it. That’s why he refused to even look at me.

“What the hell can we do against dragons, Rune?” Because it wasdragons.I’d seen movies, had read many a book about them.

“Very little,” Maera answered instead. “But we can still hope we don’t run into one.”

“That does not make me feel any better.”

She shrugged. “Me, neither. But like I said earlier—if we die, we die.” She had most definitely made her peace with it.

I turned to Rune, shook my head. “That’s it? We just ride to Blackwater and hope we don’t run into dragons and hope that somehow we get there before Lyall even though he was on his way hours ago, and that the heir is a decent being and that he was thrown into that awful prison by mistake or something—is that it? Am I missing something?”

“Giants,” Maera said. “We hope we don’t run into giants, either. They’re out there, near the mountains. They live in them.”

“Right, right—giants,too. Because they’re buddies with dragons somehow. What—do they ride them or something? Is that it?” I was freaking out a little bit and I didn’t care enough to try to hide it.

“Nobody really knows,” Maera continued—andshe wasn’tfreaked out in the least. She was talking about all of this as if it was the most natural thing in the world to discuss. “Could be. I always thought it a possibility.”

My mouth opened and closed a dozen times, but nothing came to mind to say to her, not when she looked like that, so unbothered. So calm as she rode that horse.

“Fuck,”I ended up whispering because what else was there to say?

“It’s a long way to Ashfall,” Rune suddenly said, and dove his heels against his horse’s side to make him move faster. “I’m going to buy food and necessities. Keep moving and don’t slow down. I’ll catch up with you.”

His horse moved forward faster, and Maera’s and mine continued at the same pace down a dark road behind the one-story houses of a relatively quiet town. I watched after him without any idea what to even think, let alone speak.

It was all such a shock, I thought, and I still couldn’t believe I’d actually assumed it would beeasyto do this.

But the night wasn’t done with me yet.

“This is fucked up,” I said, shaking my head. “So—sofucked up.”

“But we’ll make it, if we do,” said Maera, and I actually laughed. Not just because of her words, but because of her tone of voice. “If I were you, I’d concern myself with what happensafter.”

There went my laughter. “What?” I said in half a voice.

“After,Nilah. After we find the Unseelie heir and we put him on the throne, and you claim the Frozen Court, too.” Stabs at my gut, at my chest—everywhere on me. My eyes moved ahead though I didn’t really see anything. “Youwilldo it, right? You will claim the throne?” Words—so many fucking words in my mind trying to come out of me all at once, contradictory words, words that made no sense whatsoever, and my tongue was bleeding from the effort my teeth made to keep them in.

“You will,” Maera said after a moment, and I only saw her nodding through the corner of my eye. “You will—otherwise, all of this would have been for nothing. You wouldn’t waste time chasing the lost heir for nothing, would you?”

This time, she didn’t speak. Not when ten seconds passed, and a minute, and two.

This time she let her words marinate in my mind, until a weak,no, I wouldn’t,left my dry lips.

She continued as if she hadn’t had to wait so long for an answer. “Then you should consider putting some distance between you and the Midnight King.”

I pulled at the reins of the horse so hard instinctively that it stopped walking. Maera’s did, too, when he realized I wasn’t beside her.

“What did you say?” I asked because my ears couldn’t have possibly heard right. And suddenly Isawthe way she’d looked at Rune and me since the beginning—at our joined hands, at our arms linked, at our lips pressed against one another.