Page 113 of Boundless

My life flashed right by me in a blink. In the center of my mind was Rune’s face, my sister and my dad, my best friend. They were right there, the memories as fresh as if I was reliving each one. Was it over? Because I couldn’t tell anymore—whether it was hot, or whether I could breathe; whether there was light behind my closed lids, or if the darkness had already claimed me.

A hand on my shoulder.

“Let go.”

I’d know Rune’s voice anywhere, even on the brink of death. I’d trust Rune in whatever hell we were trapped under, too.

So, I let go.

thirty-four

Fire burned close by.

My eyes opened. I thought I wouldn’t be able to see anything or that there’d be only bright light to combat the flames coming for us from above, but no. My surroundings were nothinglike I expected them to be.

I was lying on the ground on something soft, and there was a fire burning on the ground, indeed, just a few feet away from me, but it wasn’t coming from the throat of a black dragon. It was burning on sticks.

My head was on Rune’s lap.

“It’s okay,” he whispered and touched my cheek with his fingertips. “It’s okay, Wildcat. We’re safe.”

A hand on my ankle.

I sat up so fast the world tilted before my eyes a few times before it fell into place again. Maera was sitting near my legs, and she’d been the one to touch me. On her other side sat the Unseelie fae, potentially theheirto the Unseelie throne. Alive and well and moving something over the fire—something that looked an awful lot like the body of a small animal of some kind that he’d put on a fucking stick to cook.

The sky was open over us. No trees close by, but there were hills as far ahead as my eye could see in the darkness, and there was water in the distance, too. I couldn’t see whether it was a lake or a river, but the surface glistened faintly under the soft moonlight.

Most importantly, there were no dragons nearby.

No dragons.

“What the fuck.” The words slipped from me as Rune pulled me closer, as if he was afraid I was going to collapse again soon—and he wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Thatis my sentiment exactly.” The Unseelie fae was pointing the animal he was cooking on a stick at me. “Such a simple question—what the fuck.Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?”

What the fuck, for real this time.

I blinked my eyes at him, then looked at Maera, who was sitting cross-legged there on the ground, clothed, her hair wet, her left cheek with a bit of a red scar across.

“He escaped,” she told me, as if she read the question in my mind. “And I’m okay. But he’s out there still.” And she nodded her head back, her eyes dark with worry.

She was talking about Lyall.

“How are you feeling?” Rune asked, pushing my hair behind my shoulder. He looked perfectly fine, too, if not a bit tired. The blue bags under his eyes were definitely more pronounced.

“Why are we sitting out in the open?” Because the sky wasright there,and we could be seen from all sides—by dragons. Actual fucking dragons with black skin and large bat wings and fire burning in their throats like they had their own integrated fireplace.

“Lyall,” said Rune. “We’ll be able to feel him coming much clearer out here in the open.”

“And I’ll be able to smell him without small animals and plants getting in my way,” said Maera.

“So, he’s…” Again, I shook my head.

“Alive and possibly plotting our death as we speak,” said Rune, throwing another look around. “But we’re safe for now.”

“And…the dragons?” Because I could see none, but my fear still had a good hold on me, so I kept expecting one to pop into the air. My ears must have been full of the sound of those roars, too, because I could have sworn that one was coming from a distance.

“They’re in their area. We’re far from Santra here. They will not follow,” Rune said, but for once, his reassurance didn’t exactly make me feel better. It didn’t convince me because the memory, thefeelof that fire, the heat that slipped under all that magic, was still so very vivid in my mind.