Page 48 of Boundless

Tears streamed from my eyes as the aftermath of that pain rolled over my body, and the shadows that had marked my arm and shoulder and neck were hot. Heavy. Restless.

Now.

Vair wanted me to trynow.

And, by God, I would.

Kissing Dad and Fi on their heads while they slept and had no idea what was happening might have been one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stopthe tears from coming as I put a blanket over them and turned the volume of the TV down so they could sleep a little longer. Until I was gone.

Just in case I didn’t come back again.

For now, at least.

There was a letter I wrote for them a few nights back, hoping they’d find it among my things if I somehow managed to get through in one of the times I tried. Tonight, I left that piece of paper on the kitchen table, as if I knew for a fact that I wasn’t coming back, which I didn’t.

But they’d find it when they woke up. They’d read it. I hoped with my whole heart that they’d understand.

Fuck, it was like a part of remained in that living room with them, and I had never felt a worse person than when I walked out the back door on my tiptoes. I had the queen’s broken mirror in one hand, and my phone in the other, only to text Betty because I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed her there. And I needed Arez, too. That’s why I changed my mind about the Aetherway. The ley lines were much stronger than it, anyway. I could attach my magic to them with much more ease.

By the time Betty got in my dad’s truck, I’d wiped my tears and had forced the panic and the anxiety down as well as I could. It was dark, and Betty could probably see my swollen eyes, but it wasn’t exactly unusual to find me crying lately, so she didn’t even ask. I was thankful for it because how could I tell her that Vair spoke to me, said more than just my name—and that this time,finally,it might actually work?

I couldn’t.

Iwouldn’t,even if that made me the biggest villain in the world. I might have had half the soul of a fae queen inside me, but I was still only human. And I’d been stretching so far for so long now that I feared I was going to break if I tried to take onmore.

Arez was surprised to see us. She’d been projecting a movie onto the white sheet on the wall, too—while her laptop was on her lap and she was typing away at it at the same time. I said nothing, just that the Aetherway was too weak and that I’d rested, and I wanted to try the ley lines one more time for today.

“Well, then? What are you waiting for? Go ahead!” she waved me off when I remained there standing like an idiot, looking at her, at Betty who’d already made herself comfortable on the mattress with a bag of chips, watching the movie playing on the wall—The Devil Wears Prada.

“Right,” I muttered and turned my back to her quickly before she saw the tears pooling in my eyes.

I’d done this so many times before that I didn’t need to think twice about where I stepped or where I sat, how to reach out my magic to connect with that of the ley lines that flowed underneath.

Coward,said a voice in my head, repeated it over and over. I was a coward because I didn’t dare to even look them in the eye, hug them, tell them that I might break through this time, that I might really leave Earth and go to Verenthia.

Because Imight not.

Yes, Vair had saidnow,but he’d called my name plenty of times, and it had never worked. Not a single time. This time would probably be no different. I was still going to be here when the pain threatened to knock me out cold and I let go, broke the connection. There was no need to freak them out likeIwas freaked out.

That’s what I told myself.

“Hey, Nilah, you okay?”

I looked up to Arez who stood in front of the mattress where Betty lay, and for a moment she looked so suspiciously at me I thought she knew exactly what I was hiding.

“Yep. I’m fine,” I forced myself to say.

Whether she believed me or not, I didn’t wait to find out. I turned to the ley lines and poured out my magic into the hole on the floor with barely a thread of hope holding me together.

The connection beganthe same way as always. It felt me, I feltit,and the magic merged together, became almost one. You couldn’t really tell where one ended and the other began.

But when I began to imagine the warmth of the Aetherway and tried to shape that magic into a portal just like it, the pain that followed was worse than any I had ever felt before. Shadows wrapped around me, pulling and pushing and spitting me out. It all happened so fast, yet so slow that I felt every separate second. I felt the magic, my own magic, pullingme,my entire body down with it, into the ley line. On the inside, I screamed. No thoughts left in my head, and my body was moving, but it no longer felt like my body at all. It felt like raw magic, energy, and it was traveling with the ley line. My limbs had become the very light it was made off. I hadmeltedinto those threads of iridescent light. I wasn’tmeanymore, even though I was moving.

For a long,longtime, back and forth, up and down, in every possible direction.

Then it stopped, just as fast as it had started, and I was pulled back violently as I took my own shape again.

There was no telling how long the whole thing lasted or exactly how far I traveled, but the Aetherway was a fucking walk in the park. There was no warmth here, only ice-cold and sharp blades cutting my soul right out of me before they put it back again.