Page 43 of Boundless

“None. I can’t find her,” I said. “Send for the seer, please. I need to see her.”

“You saw her yesterday.”

“I need to see her again.” Because I’d tried just hours ago to walk out, and the Midnight Palace hadn’t let me. I needed to know how much longer this place was going to hold me back.

“She’s not going to tell you anything different. She doesn’t know exactly when the Midnight Palace will trust you enough to release you. It depends on the bond you create with it,” Raja insisted.

“I don’t have the time nor the patience for bonds with sentient buildings. Nilah could be in trouble,” I said through gritted teeth.

“She’s not. And even if she is, there’s no kind of trouble in Nerith to match her magic. She’s safer there than she would be here.” Which she’d said since the beginning, and I did believe her. But what she didn’t get was that I would find no peace under my skin until she was next to me.

“Raja, if something happens to her and I’m not there…” The metal of the window frame bent underneath my hands. I was gripping it without really realizing it.

She put her hand over my shoulder. “Nothing will happen to Nilah. She can take care of herself. Your kingdom?—”

I moved, turned to her, barely containing the shadows under my skin.

“Idon’t careabout this kingdom,” I said with so much venom, Raja flinched.

Closing my eyes, I breathed in deeply once more. “Raja, I don’t care about this kingdom,” I tried again. “I do not and I will not care about this kingdom until she’s right here beside me. Understand me—this will not change. If this palace let me out, I would not be here right now.”

“Very well,” she said in a whisper, and stepped back. “I guess I’ll go fetch the seer.”

And she did.

thirteen

There wasn’t muchI hadn’t tried to do, sitting cross-legged on the floor, trying to understand what Helem had drawn with them, how he’d banished her, so that I could withdraw the banishment, at least. If I did, Nilah would come to me herself, I knew she would. If I did, she would be here before this fucking palace let me out.

And I did have a good understanding of the ritual he’d used.

The problem remainedfindingher. Connecting with her.

She was too far, in another world, and I couldn’t even take anyone to her because there was nobody I trusted anymore, except Raja. Nobody in the entire realm. My hands were tied, and it was more difficult not to lose my mind than I would have imagined.

The Seer of Shadows came into the throne room and approached me slowly a few moments later, her bare feet barely making any sound. She came all the way to the circle of the ritual and looked down at me with her fingers intertwined in front of her. Curious. Calm.

Then she said, “I was told you wanted to see me, Your Highness.”

I would never get used to those two words if I lived a thousand years.

“How much longer?” I asked, which she probably already knew I would.

“As long as the palace needs,” she said without hesitation, and then she sat on the marble floor with me, on her legs, with her hands over her thighs neatly as she watched—me, then the ritual circle, then the lynx, who’d lain down on the dais’s first stair and looked at us through half closed eyes.

“And you’re certain we can’t do anything to persuade it to let me gonow.” Again—these same words had been my question to her last morning, so I knew the answer wouldn’t change, but I still hoped. I still expected it to.

“No. This is the Midnight Palace. Until it has completed its connection with you, it will not allow you to leave. Otherwise, your claim might fade.”

I looked at the seer, her wide blue eyes, her small smile. “So, let it. Let my claim to this throne fade. I don’t want to be a king.”

The smile on her face turned sadder right before my eyes. “You know very well why that is a bad idea,” she said. “To give up on your throne means to give up on Verenthia, and where will you live with the one you love if you don’t have a place to call home? You’re a smart man, Rune Kalygorn. You can make this conclusion yourself.” A hand on my arm. “I do not understand why you continue to needmeto put it into words for you.”

Because I continue to hope you’ll see something I don’t. Because I continue to hope that you won’t come to the same conclusion one of these days.

I didn’t answer.

“I can’t find her. She’s too far. I know how Helem banished her, and I know that she won’t be able to come back here on her own with that mark. Are you sure she’s in?—”