Page 20 of Boundless

It was easy for me to feel the magic in the air now, to know which way it was more intense, and in which way it faded. It was easy to feel the pull of the Aetherwaywithout even meaning to, and while it happened, while I searched for it and moved inits direction unconsciously, I didn’t think it was weird at all. I thought it was normal.

Perfectly normal tofeel the magicand tofollow the magic.Perfectly normal to have the one underneath my skin respond, as if I had been this person my whole life.

Then there were the trees between which was the portal. The gateway to Verenthia.

Empty.

No Rune, no Lyall, no Vair. No soldiers coming for me.

“You’re not going to actually leave, are you?” Fiona whispered after a long moment. I’d been telling them about the winter roses in the garden of the Ice Palace, and I’d stopped talking mid-sentence, my mind wiped clean at the sight of the Aetherway. “You told Dad?—”

“I’m not leaving,” I told Fiona, and made an attempt to smile at her, to put her at ease. “I’m not. I just…I wanted to see if someone was coming.”

No Rune.

How much time could have passed in Verenthia? If over two months there—and I hadn’t even counted the days as I should have—were eighteen days here, could Rune have already made his way to the Neutral Lands?

Was he even coming?

“Well, nobody is. How do you even know that there’s something there, anyway?” Betty stepped forward, looking curiously between the large trees. “All I see is…more trees.”

She didn’t see the shimmer of magic stretching between the barks, below those branches that were reaching out for one another still, just like before.

“There is. I feel it,” I said, and went closer, too, raised my hand as if totouchthe magic radiating in the air. It was there, all right. I felt it all the way to my bones, and my own reacted to it.

“I don’t think I’m ever gonna get used to that,” Betty said, leaning closer to look at my hand, at my fingertips that had just lit up from the inside—and we could see it much better here under the canopy where the sun couldn’t quite get through.

Fiona leaned in from my other side. “That isso cool. I am so telling my friends,” she said, and my heart about burst to hear her saying that. “Hold on, let me try to…”

She took her phone out and turned the camera on, but it wouldn’t work. Her screen remained black.

“What is up with that black ink, by the way? I saw the tattoo yesterday when we put you in bed, but…” Betty pulled down my shirt as much as she could and pushed my hair back to see my neck. I didn’t stop her.

“I can’t believe Dad didn’t disown you before you even woke up,” said Fiona. “He said he would do that to me when I asked him if I could get one once.”

“It’s not a tattoo—it’s a mark,” I told her. “And it’s not forever. I’m…I’m going to have it removed.”

Marked. Banished—that’s what I was.

“What kind of a mark?” Betty asked, rising on her tiptoes to better see under my collar.

“Just a mark to show that I’ve left Verenthia. It should disappear when I go back,” I lied.

And I did feel awful about it, but I wasn’t going to traumatize my little sister with the truth right now. Though I wasdesperateto utter the words, I bit my tongue and smiled at her again. “It’s magic, nothing more.”

She believed me. Betty didn’t, but she knew not to comment, and so she steered the conversation to Verenthia on our way back to the house. She wanted me to tell her all about the hot guys I’d seen, specifically about Lyall. It sucked to have to talk about him when I hadn’t told them about the monster he truly was, but I did.

I walked extra slowly, constantly looking over my shoulder, hoping to find Rune popping up between the trees any second, or to feel his magic, or to see the little bird made of light flying toward me. The bird that meant he was near. He was coming.

He didn’t come, though.

And no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, an ugly voice in my head whispered that Rune wouldnotbecoming for me any time soon.

Sleeping wasout of the question. I couldn’t even make myself stay in bed for longer than five minutes, and everything—everythingwas so fucking strange.

I didn’t understand myself. I didn’t get why I turned the lights off and then made a fae light the size of a tennis ball to float about my room. The color of it, a mix of pale gold and silver, was much more soothing to my eyes than the yellow of a lightbulb, and it beat me.

Had I really gotten used to being away from home so quickly? Had I really changed so much in a matter of months?