Page 144 of Boundless

The closer I got the more blood I saw, all the weapons on the floor, knives and swords, a shoe, a broken vase, a ruined canvas of a painting of roses—and the man with the golden hair lying on his back with his neck torn all the way, his unmoving eyes wide open and on the ceiling.

Maera licked her bloody teeth and stepped off his body when I was close enough. Her yellow eyes had darkened, and she looked at me as if she wanted me to understand exactly what she was thinking.

I did.

This man here was a Seelie fae. He wore black clothes, but his hair and his eyes and the pointy tips of his ears were right there for us to see.

And he had come here to kill me.

I knew it without having to speak the words out loud or have Maera confirm them. I knew that Lyall had sent this man here for me, and I was already shaking from head to toe at the ideathat he’d actually made it all the way up here. He’d climbed all the way up to the sixth floor before Maera found him.

I fell on one knee against the marble and reached out a shaking hand toward her. “Are you okay?” Because there was blood on her fur, but I couldn’t tell if it was hers or the fae’s.

Maera’s answer was a loud growl that echoed in the tall ceiling, and then she jumped to the other side of the body, and she took off running back where I came from.

Again, I followed her like I didn’t know if I was in charge of my own body. My legs moved and I was in the bedroom again, and she was across from the doors, on the other side, two paws against the windowsill in the middle, howling at the blue sky.

No—not the blue sky.

“Oh, my God…”

The whisper left my lips before my fingers fell over them as I took in the crowd of people, all of them with silvery white hair, that had gathered outside the walls of the palace. The outer gates were open, and more people were trying to get in all at once, pushing and pulling each other, trying to get closer.

Every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps. It felt like the sky suddenly fell right over my head, and I had no hopes of ever carrying its weight.

The end had never been closer.

My eyes insistedthat Lyall was there, in the fucking gardens that I’d gone through with Vair when I left the Ice Palace. Others were there as well, so many people, mostly Ice fae with their white hair and blue eyes.

They were all looking at him.

I walked out the doors with Maera to find soldiers wearing silver armor, what few there were around the palace, turning to Lyall.

I found the seer in her silvery white dress there by the corner near the stairs of the entrance, her wide silver eyes scary all on their own before I even noticed the expression on her face—that of pure horror.

Lyall was holding a speech in front of the Ice Palace.

“…do you see how empty your streets are—your homes, your tables? How your throne has sat abandoned, waiting,yearningfor a hand strong enough to claim it? King Helem wasnotfit for that duty—I think we can all agree on that—but me?”

He smiled, and Ifeltthe malice of it deep in my bones.

My God, I could hardly believe my eyes and ears when I moved forward, on autopilot still, and listened to the next words coming out of his mouth.

“With me, you rise,” Lyall said, then turned his head slowly toward me as I stopped on the second stair in front of the palace doors. “With her…” His finger rose, pointed at me. He smiled again—this time like he’d already won. “With her, you will all fall.”

Impossible,insisted the voices in my head.

This entire thing—fucking impossible. How was Lyall here, and how had he gathered all these people?Whywere they all pushing and elbowing each other to try to get closer to him, and why werehis soldiers,dozens of them, standing near the wall of shards of the palace—andwhywere they all staring at me like that?!

“Look at her.” His voice. That fucking voice that made my skin crawl. “A mortal girl playing with powers she neither understands nor knows how to control. Her colors might fit, but she isnotlike us!” He roared. “She is not your queen!”

The people cheered.

The people clapped.

My knees shook.

“I should know becauseImade her. I saved her life, and I brought her here. She betrayed me because that’s what she does. She’s an imposter, a mortal, a thief—her place is in Nerith, not among kings and queens.”