Page 143 of Boundless

I finally had a home to go to, and nothing in any realm or any time was ever going to keep me from her again.

forty-three

Nilah Dune

The grimoire wasopen on the desk, full of words I didn’t understand. Full of words I wouldn’t have cared to understand had I not felt so fucking helpless.

“Again,” I told myself, as if saying it out loud was going to make a difference, when I knew it wouldn’t. The fact that Vair was still just a marble cube in my hands proved it—but I did try again.

There were magics that required spells, like the sorcerers did them. And I was sure that, because Vair had been a gift to the Ice Queen from the sorcerers, it would require some kind of a spell to bring him back to the way he used to be—ifthat was even possible.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t know shit about sorcerer magic or how to read spells, and it was still too early to go knocking on that woman’s door, wherever she slept.

Aseer.

No—myseer, she said.The Seer of the Ice Queen.

The Ice Queen beingme,in case you missed it.

I continuously did, and the reminder sent ice-cold chills all the way down my spine.

The magic rushed through me like a beast. I closed my eyes and I called for every ounce of it—and I hada lot.No way could I explain the rush that had come over me, the pain followed by an explosionof power that had ignited in my every cell, had set my bones, my flesh, my very soul on fire.

Then it had put it out again, but the magic had remained, ready to be ignited at my call. Magic fit for royals,activatedinside me by the seer—because she was going to stay here now. Forever. She belonged to the Frozen Court, she said, and before she left the throne room the night before, her nose had been bleeding. She’d been smiling, and she kind of looked high, but her nose had been bleeding because she’d tapped me on the forehead.

Go figure.

And then there was just me and Maera. And Vair.

The magic spread onto the cube, and it almost recognized it, like it had felt it before. It searched it, merged with the surface, slipped inside it to the very center, andthis was Vair.There was no doubt about it in my mind that he washere,right in my hands—but every time I heard him calling my name, I lost him. He slipped away. Faded again into nothing.

It was like I’d found the door, but I had too many keys in my hands and I had no clue how to find the right one to unlock it. It could take meyearsto try every single one if I went at it alone.

But with the seer…

The muffled sound that came from somewhere outside my bedroom door startled me. My body froze suddenly. Even though my eyes were open, I didn’t see anything, only heard. Focused so hard that for a moment I wondered if maybe I was out of my own body.

And while I was, for that split second, I felt thehummingof every vein in the moonstone that made the walls of this bedroom. I felt it, and it calledmyname.

How strange.

The throne room had somehow magically descended onto the second floor of the Ice Palace when I came back. It had been very high up the last time, and Vair had said it used to be on the ground floor, but now it was on the second. The bedroom and the cabinet of the queen remained across from one another on the sixth, though, and this is where I’d chosen to stay, even before the Ice Palace had the chance to make the choice for me. It was familiar, this room. I’d stayed here. I’d come apart and then back together again here. I’d sat at this beautiful desk and had slept on the large bed, had worn the clothes in the closet hidden inside the wall. It almost felt…mine.

And it was very quiet here.Tooquiet, sometimes, so when I heard the sound coming from outside, I knew something was off.

I thought it was the help. I thought there would be people come to bring me breakfast or something, though I wasn’t hungry at all. I even considered it would be the seer come to see how I was, and I could take advantage of the opportunity and have her read from the queen’s grimoire for me, and maybe I could finally bring back Vair.

Because it had to work. I had the magic now. I had plenty, and I had voice and eyes and ears for the both of us.

But then I heard the howl.

There was only one werewolf that I knew of in the Frozen Court, and that was Maera. She’d stayed in a guest room across the hallway on this floor, too, and the night before, before she went to bed, she’d promised me that she wasn’t going anywhere untileverythinghad settled.

I thought for sure she wasn’t going to have to shift anymore, but then again, I hadn’t really had the time to think anythingthrough properly. Because Rune was gone—and how was I to cope with the fact that I might not see him again for weeks or months or years? I was sitting on a crystal throne now, and I had no idea what the hell to do next.Wayin over my head here, so I’d collapsed, my brain had shut down right away when I lay on the bed, and I hadn’t woken up until just before sunrise.

But Maera had no business shifting into a wolf now, which was why, at the sound of the howl, I was moving, running out the door with my skin glowing, the magic humming,barelycontaining itself inside me.

I didn’t see her until I was in the middle of the wide hallway and I looked through the doorway that revealed to me the other side of the floor. No guards—though I could have sworn there was a pair when I came to sleep last night. And Maera was standing with her front paws atop the bloody chest of a man as she raised her head up again and howled at the ceiling.