Page 3 of Boundless

Then the pain began.

I thought I screamed, but I couldn’t be too sure. It was so sudden. Either the magic pushed me back or my own instincts forced me to move away a couple of feet, but the pain that had started on the right side of my neck made me think I might be burning, that flames were dancing on my skin—and they weren’t.

Instead, shadows that looked like ribbons of black ink were dancing down my shoulder and arm, and the burning spread on every new inch of skin they touched.

This time I didn’t scream, too shocked by the sight, too frozen to open my jaws and produce any kind of sound. All Icould do was watch those shadows wrapping around my arm andmarkingme like tattoos, their presence heavy on my skin, buzzing so that I heard it, too.

Magic, raw and powerful. The traitor’s mark that Rune had worn all his life was now onmybody, too.

Banished.

The Midnight King had banishedme. Like a fool, I’d willingly stepped onto that circle he’d drawn with his shadows on the marble floor of his throne room. Like a fool I’d thought he’d prepared it for Rune, to get rid ofRune—not me.

Instead, he’d sent me home in the blink of an eye.

No.

Voices around me—I heard them, but I couldn’t make out what they said. Ground underneath my knees again. My legs must have given up on me, but that was okay.Iwasn’t about to.

With my eyes closed, I reached deep inside me for the cold—the shards that sometimes raised inside my veins andhurton the way down my arms. The frostfire that had taken me a good long time to even access deliberately, but I’d done it. With Vair’s help, I’d done it, had learned how to get my senses out of the way, so now I knew what to look for. I knew to think of the music, to let that hauntingly beautiful melody from the music box fill my head, chase away every other thought, the fear, and the panic. I knew to imagine I wore gloves, and I ate the most unusual, intense berries in the worlds. The memory of their sharp taste burst on my tongue, and the frostfire was there, waiting under my skin, coming alive, rushing toward my hands. My teeth were gritted, but this pain I welcomed. This pain I didn’t mind.

Because this pain meant that the magic was coming, and I was getting the hell back to Verenthia no matter what kind of shadows had marked my skin.

I let go.

My eyes opened. My mouth did, too, but my vocal cords refused to produce sound still. I’d been in pain before, but nothing came close to the way those shadows that had wrapped around my arm felt from the ice that raised against them. Nothing came close to the way it squeezed my neck—it must have wrapped around it, too, just like Rune’s, and now I knew exactly why Rune had never attempted to go back to the Midnight Court after his banishment. Now I understood.

Unfortunately for me, giving up wasnotan option.

I couldn’t tell you how I managed to lower myself farther, to lean forward and sink my fingers into the soil right in front of the shimmer of the Aetherway. I knew why it wouldn’t let me through—I was banished—but by God, I was going to try tobreakit completely if that’s what it took.

The only way I knew how to do that was to unleash every ounce of energy I had inside me. It could have all of it—everything. It could have whatever part of the Ice Queen’s soul had made its home in my body. I didn’t want it. I just wanted Rune.

This time I did scream. My fingers were in the soil and the burning of those shadows made me feel like I’d already lost my arm and my entire right side, but the frostfire exploded out of me the same way it had done in the forest at the Mercove.

Snow, but not quite snow. Hail, but softer. Water, but it wasn’t entirely liquid. A white powder spread out from my hands and into the ground, and then rose between the trees, creating a layer over the shimmer of the Aetherway that looked like frost but wasn’t.

It spread up and up until it reached the branches, and I knew someone was there, watching me, but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t stop now—if I did, if I was distracted for only a second, I was going to collapse.

So, I kept my eyes forward and I somehow stood up. Dirt on my hands but I took a step forward, and another—until I heard the click in my head.

The frostfire hadn’t broken the Aetherway. It had merely manipulated it, and I thought for a second that I could walk through, shielded by the magic. I could use it as an invisibility cloak—and I could have.

If not for the shadows that had marked my skin.

If not for the pain that had set my whole body on fire now.

I fell.

It was too much pain—my body couldn’t handle it, couldn’t move through it even if I tried to force it. My God, it was completelyhopeless,and I gave up despite myself.

I gave up.

The frostfire disappeared. The Aetherway was no longer coated in it. The shadows around my arms and neck no longer burned as much.

“Do something!”

Fiona’s voice pierced through the darkness that was slowly consuming my mind, all of my thoughts. I blinked and the world was tilting so fast, so hard, and I found myself kneeling there between the trees, and the three of them were there still, watching me, horrified expressions on their faces.