Page 25 of Boundless

For Rune to come out from the other side and take me back.

Neither happened.

When the sun began to retreat behind the horizon, I had no choice but to follow the girls back home. They were worried sick, and though they’d both been happy that I hadn’t gone through initially, now they weren’t. Now they kept looking at one another in panic, as if asking each other what to do next, and neither had a clue.

I hated to do this to them, I really did. That’s why I said I was tired, that I hadn’t slept all night, and that I was going to bed early.

Strangely enough, I did sleep. Must have been more exhausted than I realized. It was the kind of sleep where you didn’t even feel yourself sleeping. Justnothingness—and then you woke up.

Not usually in the dead of the night, though, yet the round clock on the nightstand said it was just after one in the morning.

So quiet. So…dark in the bedroom, but this time I didn’t call for light. I just stood up and jumped off the bed. My body felt rested enough no matter how early it was. The sky outside my window was the same as it had been every night I’d looked at it from here throughout my life. I saw the moon showing just a little less than half of herself, surrounded by stars. She looked so elegant. Sobig,compared to the moon in Verenthia. I felt her as if her silver light was pressing against my skin.

Just like that tattoo had done while I’d tried to get through the Aetherway.

The light of the bathroom hurt my eyes when I went in and locked the door. Took my shirt off and stood half naked in front of the mirror.Lookedmy reflection in the eye.

A miracle I didn’t scream. I looked less like myself than I thought I would, and so much more like Veyra. God, I didn’t even know her last name.The dead Ice Queen,and I could have sworn to you that she—not I—was staring back at me now.

I’d changed so much, even if my family didn’t see it. Nothing about me was the same, not physically, not mentally, not emotionally. And as much as it made me want to cry, I held myself back, bit my tongue.

Because nothing was over yet. I could still fight.

I could cry when it was over, however that might look.

For the first time, I looked at the ink on my skin, extending in senseless shapes all around my right shoulder, down to my elbow. Parts of it touched the base of my neck, too, and to anyone looking, it was ink. A tattoo, nothing more. But I saw the shadows. Iknewthe shadows that had attached themselves to my skin. The same kind of patterns and swirls as Rune’s mark, and though they looked like a tattoo, they were anything but. They were magic. They werealive.

And as long as I had them on my skin, the Aetherway wasnotgoing to let me through.

Rune said I was stubborn once, and I believed him. I really was. Maybe that’s why I put my clothes back on, took the small mirror and a pair of sneakers from my bedroom, then snuck out of the window soundlessly. Nobody was up—Dad and Fi were long asleep, and they’d never heard me sneaking out before, so I wasn’t worried.

Which was why, when I heard the footsteps coming from the side of the house the moment I stepped off the back porch, I froze in place and all the alarms in my head went off.

Half of me prepared to fight and run. The other half was certain that it was Rune, that he’d finally made it across Verenthia, to the Neutral Lands and into the Aetherway. He finally came for me.

A second later, Betty stepped from the side of the house with an angry look in her eyes that didn’t match the way she’d styled her blue hair—in cute, curly pigtails—very much.

She stopped there, crossed her arms, and shook her head at me. “I knew it. You’re a fucking traitor, Nilah Dune.”

My jaw almost hit the ground, but the shock of seeing her had already faded. “Traitor?What the hell did I do?!”

“You were going to sneak out without me—and don’t you dare try to deny it. I saw you staring out the window earlier.” Betty came closer. “You could have texted me.”

My mouth opened and closed for a moment.

It wasn’t Rune. It wasn’t Lyall or Seelie guards or anybody at all who’d want to hurt me. It was Betty.

“I thought you were sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you up.”

A short laugh. “Sincewhen?!”

“Since I’m planning to go try to sneak out of this world in the middle of the night. Sincethen.” I grabbed my hips. “Why are you even up right now? It’s two in the morning.”

“Because I know you,traitor.I knew you wouldn’t be able to wait till tomorrow.”

I flipped her the bird. “Suck it, asshole. Iwasgonna wait, but I woke up and didn’t really have anything better to do.”

“A text—that’s all you had to do. Type a text,” Betty spit, then started walking ahead, straight into the forest, muttering under her breath about getting stabbed in the back by your best friend.