Page 37 of Boundless

“What do you mean? See what?” Betty asked, coming closer to us with a bag of chips in her hands.

“The light.” I pointed at it. “Thatlight.”

They both looked at the hole in the ground, then at each other, then at me.

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing there,” Betty said, and goose bumps rose all over my arms instantly.

“There islightthere—really bright light.” I went a little closer, too, until the tips of my sneakers touched the thick metal of the railway. It wasthere—I could see it flowing both ways.

“That’s impossible,” Arez said, and she wasn’t smiling right now.

In fact, she looked downright panicked.

“Nothing’s impossible,” I said a bit too loudly, but my nerves were getting the best of me, too. “I swear, I see the light.”

The golem shook her head, took a step back. “No, no, no…” Her voice trailed off, and my panic climbed.

“What do you mean,no?” And why the hell was she looking at me like that?!

“Because only werewolves can seeley lines—not golems and not fae, and definitely not humans.”

Oh.

The panic settled almost instantly as relief settled in. I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply.I am not imagining it. I’m not crazy.

Then I told Arez, “I’m actually moonmarked.”

She smiled. Then she frowned. Then she flinched and she laughed and she shook her head—it was a whole thing watching her go through this visual denial as she stood there, and it took her a couple minutes.

Finally, she said, “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“She doesn’t actually turn to a wolf, though. She just got scratched by an alpha,” Betty said, still trying to see into the hole. “You sure there’s light there? Because I don’t see shit for real.”

Meanwhile, the golem continued to stare at me with a brand new light now, withfearin her deep moss-green eyes. She casually took yet another step back before she whispered. “Whatare you?”

Myfavoritestquestion in all the worlds.

“Human,” I muttered because I wasn’t about to dumpmoreinformation that would likely make no sense to her right now. “I’m human, Arez, just…just tell me how to access this thing and what it can do. Can we try?”

The golem didn’t like it. She rubbed her face raw, and with all that light around us now, her skin looked even more grey than before. Like her insides were really made out of stone.

“Right,” she said and cleared her throat. “Right. Let’s give it a try.”

“I’m just gonna sit over here and watch,” Betty said with her mouth half full of chips, moving back toward that mattress again. “You got this, babe. Kick some ass.” And she shamelessly lay back, crossed her legs, and got comfortable like she did when we were about to watch a movie.

I flipped her off, but she ignored me. “Listen to Pink—listen to her and you’ll be fine,” she said instead.

“It’s pretty straightforward. Erm…” Arez had her hands on her hips and she looked down at the hole beneath the railway. “I don’t actuallyseethe ley line, but I’ve tried to connect with it before. Problem is my magic is…tiny in comparison, so I haven’t had much success.”

“Yes, buthowwould I go about making it into a portal? How do we know that it will take us to Verenthia if Idomanage to connect to it?”

My heart beat like a drum in my chest even though I was trying to play it cool because that light was the most unusual thing I’d ever seen. Maera had told me the story of the gates herself, and fuck, Iwantedto believe that this really was a ley line, a river of magical power, a portal to take me back to Rune. I really wanted to believe it.

“You tell it what you want. It’s magic—you’ve gotta show it your destination. You’ve been to Verenthia. You know where you want to go.”

The throne room of the Midnight Palace, if I had a say in it—but really, anywhere on the continent would be perfectly fine. I wasn’t afraid anymore—not of mermaids or sorcerers, not even fae.

I was too terrified of the truth of what awaited me there to care about anything else.