Page 21 of Boundless

Then, there was my phone. Fiona had charged it and had turned it on, and I kept getting notifications every few minutes from all the apps I used to check on the daily, but I couldn’t bring myself to even pick it up. I couldn’t bring myself to want to see.

I missed Rune so much it made me physically sick. My stomach was constantly turning and the magic inside me was becoming colder by the hour, or so it felt to me.

I missed Vair, too.

Then the phone on the nightstand vibrated again, this time with a text. The only reason I opened it was because I saw Betty’s name flashing on the screen.

Garage in 5,said the text, and my heart jumped. I didn’t wait a single second—I climbed out my already open window and went to wait for her on the rooftop of my dad’s garage right away.

Something about closed spaces. Or maybe it was the memories that clung to my room, of who I’d been when I’d lived here? How little I’d trusted or valued or respected myself? How foreign those concepts had been to me before?

So much had happened. My entire mind feltrewired,and all it had taken was a break. Distance from the life I lived to put things into a different perspective.

Then Betty came with beer.

She always took some from the fridge when she came to meet me. She had four cans hidden in the oversized pocket of her hoodie that she’d worn for that purpose only. I didn’t realize how perfect of a plan it was to get drunk right now until I saw the alcohol. I was going to pass out right away—because it was midnight already, and there was no way I was going to fall asleep sober.

“I was banished by the Midnight King and this ink on my arm is calleda traitor’s mark.” The words slipped from me as Betty sat down on rooftop as silently as she could. We always took our shoes off the moment we got up here, just in case my dad or Fiona were up and could hear us.

Betty paused, cans in hand still, and looked at me.

“I also helped Rune kill the Midnight King—who was his dad, and now Rune is thenewMidnight King.” I flinched. “I think. The guards bowed to him, called himmy king.” My eyes closed and the memory was right there behind my closed lids. “And-and-and the throne accepted him, Bet. It came out of the dais—you should have seen it. It came outjust like the onein the Ice Palace did when I was there.”

I looked at her again, and she hadn’t moved.

Betty hadn’t moved a single inch, still on her knees, barefoot, with the last two cans of beer halfway to the rooftop near where she’d put the first ones. She hadn’t even blinked at all.

Well, damn.“I think maybe you should sit down first.” Which was far too late, I got that, but…

Betty laughed.

She burst out laughing like wedidn’tdo when we were up here on the garage, but could I blame her? I hadn’t even realized how desperate I’d been to say those words out loud all day, and I had just dumped all that information on her within seconds. Information that would make no sense to her at all.

Information that still made such little sense tome.

But Betty laughed and finally sat down, took off her hoodie and opened our beers. She gave me one, and clanked her can to mine, and said, “Start from the beginning.”

It was a long story, and a very long night.

seven

It tooka lot to shock Betty, or to even just catch her by surprise, but I think I managed the night before for the first time ever.

I told her the story—allof the story, God help me—because I was going to fucking explode if I didn’t let it out. I drank two and a half beers because I stole Betty’s second one when she was busy trying to process all the information I was dumping on her. To her credit, she made the connections and understood how Verenthia worked so much better and faster than I did, and she believed every word I said. Not that I thought she wouldn’t, but it still surprised me when someone took my word for it and didn’t even hesitate.

By the time I was done with the story, the sky had already turned a deep grey with the rising sun, and we decided to call it a night. We both needed sleep before we could function again, but when I went to bed, I still couldn’t. My mind was still overcrowded, and so I did the only thing I could do—picked up my phone and searched the Internet for Verenthia.

Nothing.

I got nothing.

Other keywords—like fae and vampire and mermaids and sorcerers—only gave me results on fantasy books and TV shows and mythologies, but as I scrolled down the endless pages, exhaustion finally won, and I fell asleep.

When I woke up to a knock on the door, the phone was still in my hand.

So completely disoriented. My eyes were open and the sunlight slipped through the window, and the fae light I’d made the night before was still hovering near the ceiling somehow.

“C’mon, Dad’s making breakfast,” Fiona said, and it took a few blinks to see her standing there in front of the door, a smile on her pale face.