Page 19 of Boundless

“She is going to apologize to you in person, too, just so you know. She’ll give you today, but tomorrow—watch out because shewillcorner you the first chance she gets. She feels awful,” Betty said when we sat down in the backyard to eat the cupcakes.My dad was inside on the phone with whoever he was working with now, and Fiona sat with us on this long sofa that we kept on the back porch, her eyes on the side of my face every few seconds, as if she was afraid that I’d disappear into thin air.

“That’s fine. I don’t mind,” I told Betty, and grabbed a third cupcake even though there was a good chance I would throw it all up.

“You say that because you haven’t seen her crying and trying to speak at the same time,” Betty said with a devilish grin.

Fuck, I’d missed her face so much it wasn’t even funny. I’d missed thewildlook in her eyes more than I thought possible.

“I think I’ll survive,” I insisted, taking another bite. It seriously was out of this world.

But who was I kidding? Allof this wasout of this worldfor me right now. I was a completely different person from who I was when I left, and I just didn’t know how to tell them that. I had no idea how to stop feeling like a stranger sitting there with them.

Home, home, this is home,I told myself, but it was difficult to believe it when it didn’t feel like it.

It didn’t feel like Rune.

My God, I was so, so screwed.

“She wants to go back,” Fiona said, and Betty whipped her head toward me.

“Is that so,” she said, but it wasn’t a question. We’d sat here maybe half an hour ago, and I’d told her the version of the story I told my family for now because Fiona refused to leave my side for a second, so she had no clue.

“I have to,” I said.

“You don’t. You don’thaveto?—”

The way she stopped speaking when I widened my eyes at her could have been funny. I almost smiled when she pretended she needed to cough so Fiona didn’t notice.

“Like I said, you don’t have to rush, that’s all,” Betty ended up saying, just as my dad came back from the house.

I shook my head at Betty to tell her that I did not want to talk about this right now, not in front of them. The truth was that Iwantedto stay, if only to get rid of this strange feeling I seemed to have gotten that said I was a stranger to my own family. I wanted to stay, to rest, to make sure thattheywere okay, too, to understand everything that had happened since I was gone.

For now, I insisted we stayed outside in the back because that’s where the forest was. The forest with the Aetherway at the heart of it. The same portal Rune would come out of if he was already on his way to me.

I answered all their questions about how things worked in Verenthia, and what magic could do, and what kind of creatures I came across. Then they insisted I showed them, too, and despite telling them that I didn’t know how to do proper magic, I did make them lights to play with. Those starlight colored balls of light that came out of the palms of my hands with such ease that I nearly burst out in tears every time I made new ones.

Then they told me all about them, too, about Dad’s new construction project, and about the people who’d been coming with all kinds of foods and cakes at their door almost nightly to apologize for basically being assholes their whole lives. Most of the neighborhood had seen Helid with his butterflies made of light right there in my dad’s driveway. And word had spread, according to the girls. People had talked online about it for days after I left, and they’d only stopped because there’d been no pictures. No phones had worked, and nobody had been able to record it, just like Helid said.Only the eye is sophisticated enough to witness magic.Our technology just wasn’t there yet.

A part of me was glad about it. A part of me wished that wenevergot to experience magic here on Earth because I’d seen what it could do. I’d seen how it could destroy.

A man had died—a king—not at my hand, but with my help. I hadn’t hesitated to use my magic against the Midnight King—I’d have killed him, too, if I could. I’d have killed him a hundred times before I let him hurt Rune.

Look what I have become.

I was most definitely not me anymore.

But luckily, we didn’t talk about me for at least a few hours while we sat there and drank lemonade and ate cupcakes. Only thegoodparts of magic. The beautiful things, the sparks, the lights, the colors.

And then Dad had to leave to meet up with his coworkers. They needed his help, and though he had taken the day off, he had to check in only for a little while, he said.

“Today,” he told me. “Take today to think about it, pup. Tomorrow we’ll talk again, and if you still want to leave…”

His voice trailed off and I saw how torn he was by the look of his eyes. I couldn’t tell himnoif it fucking killed me.

“Tomorrow, then,” I said with half a heart. “Tomorrow.”

Fi was ecstatic. Betty looked a bit panicked, but she didn’t make a single comment, even when Dad left with the promise to bring sushi when he got back. I asked the girls to come with me for a walk in the forest—to stretch my legs and to find some shade because the sun was really hot today, and my shirt had long sleeves. They didn’t hesitate, though I thought they knew that I was planning to get close to the Aetherway again. Just to feel its magic. Just in case Rune made his way through it from Verenthia while we were there.

They followed me without complaint but didn’t stop asking me questions for a single second.