Page 109 of Boundless

“I can track him. I’m going after him,” Maera said.

“Maera, wait!” I called, not entirely surewhybecause we did need to track Lyall, but she didn’t stop. The shifting had already begun, and even in the dark of the forest, it looked painful. Itsoundedpainful—her bones were breaking, her entire body rearranging itself once more. It must have been awful to do something like this twice within such little time, but Maera didn’t care. Her wolf didn’t even look at us before she charged forward, disappearing in the dark like a thief seconds in—and Rune’s shadows had faded, too.

“I can’t find him. He’s hiding,” Rune said, fisting his hands as he took his magic back.

“We can still see him. He can’t keep this up forever.” I moved forward, cautiously now, not running. Prepared for something to pop up around me because this was Lyall we were talking about. He was cunning and sneaky, and he would strike the second we turned our backs to him.

“Hecan, Wildcat. For hours,” Rune said from beside me, and I flinched.

“We’re still going to search,” I whispered. “Maera will call for us once she finds him. She can smell him.” It was our biggest advantage here, I thought.

“This forest is dangerous,” Rune said. “It’s dragon territory. It’s only a matter of time before…”

My heart stopped. I turned to look at him for a second. “Beforewhat?” I breathed, every inch of my skin raised in goose bumps.

“Before we come across one.” Rune’s eyes locked on mine for a second. No color left in them, and it wasn’t just the lack of light. It was concern.It was fear.It was panic.

Rune was terrified.

“A-a dragon?” I barely choked out.

A short pause, and Rune looked at me again. “An egg.”

The next second, bright light rose from the ground, possibly not fifty feet ahead of us, andexplodedin the sky right over the trees like a golden sun rising out of thin air.

That my body still held me in those moments was a miracle. We could see the light though the canopy—the branches weren’t exactly rich with leaves around here. Most were…burned,now that I thought about it. The trees looked burned every few feet, but we saw that wasn’t the sun that had risen in the middle of this forest.

No. It was a fae light, big and bright. ASeeliefae light.

We were running again before we even knew what the hell we were running for. The next few minutes might be the strangest, most terrifying time I’d lived yet, and of course, it was because of an actual dragon.

We heard the roar loud and clear, and then the light was gone, and there was movement ahead of us. A shadow.

Oneshadow among the trees. One person, not two. No gold or red, just auburn hair, and the terrified face of a man who was looking around himself like he’d just gone blind or like he’d lost something he couldn’t find.

Then he saw us running to him.

It washim,I knew it in my heart. It was the heir, the Unseelie heir, and though there was a part of me that wanted me to be cautious—because this was Lyall, after all, and he could have very well staged this whole thing to fool us—I believed it. It was him, and he turned around to start running when he saw us approaching, completely disoriented.

Shadows shot forward from my side.

“Stop! Don’t run!” I called with all the voice I could muster, and then the roaring came again.

My God, it was right over our heads. We all stopped, not just the guy. We all looked up and we could see the sky just fine because the trees here seemed to be fewer and farther apart.

“That’s close enough,” said a voice I’d never heard before, and shivers crawled down my back like living things.

The heir was right there, possibly ten feet away from us, hands raised and glowing orange, the light reflecting in his eyes, revealing to us his face for the first time.

Rune and I stopped moving before I realized we’d been taking half steps to get closer as we looked up at the sky, sure we’d find the creature there because it sounded so close.

“Calm down,” Rune said. “We’re not here to hurt you.” His voice wasn’t as composed as usual, and he was a little out of breath, too. I was not used to seeing Rune afraid, and it did fuel my own fear even more, too, until I got my shit together. There was a dragon over our heads somewhere, and Lyall was in this woods, and the heir of the Unseelie Court was in front of us—of course he wouldn’t be perfectly composed.

I couldn’t be, either.

“What did you do to him?” the man said, his hands still burning, and my magic reacted as well. Ice down my arms, gathering in the palms of my hands that had turned completely numb.

“Who?” Rune asked, taking a step closer to him, while the guy took one back.