Page 6 of Boundless

Until I saw the animal.

He looked so small in the distance, there by the wall near the doors, sitting on his back legs and watching in silence.Vair, the Ice Queen’s pet. A lynx that had Nilah’s eyes. A lynx that could speak to her—and only her.

More talk. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, or who was speaking, because that animal had Nilah’s eyes. What were the odds that she would be able to see through them from Nerith? Because that’s where she’d gone. That’s where King Helem had banished her to—home. Far away from here. Far enough thatIcouldn’t go after her. Couldn’t chase her at all.

Why? He wanted to kill her. He wasgoingto kill her—why did he change his mind?

“…know who I am!”

The woman was shouting when I came to my senses and back into the present again.

And before Raja could speak, I said, “Enough.” Just like the old king had.

Enough,and they all stopped.

Whatever had taken over me, whatever was happening underneath my skin, I didn’t know how to stop it. But I knew exactly how to stopthis.

“I don’t care if you’re marshals or chancellors or advisors—from this moment forward, Raja is my second in command and she is in charge of everything,” I said. “That means she’s in charge of all of you. You want to talk to me, you go to her.”

For a moment, the whole room held their breath.

Then one of the men who’d stuck to the back of the group stepped forward with his chin raised, shadows on his hands, his mustache as black as his eyes.

He looked at Raja, and he pretended to be disgusted at the sight of her. “Outrageous,” he spit. “This is not acceptable. You are in no position?—”

That was as far as he made it.

Raja moved too fast for my eyes to catch, spun and raised her sword and cut half his neck with such precision, that when she stepped back in front of the dais again, I was tempted to believe I’d imagined the last two seconds.

The man choked. Raised his shadow-covered hands to his neck. Touched it, and when the shadows faded, we saw the blood on his fingers that was invisible underneath his black velvet jacket.

His mouth opened and closed a couple of times. He fell and didn’t move again.

Raja said, “Anyone else have a problem with His Highness’s decision?”

His Highness.

Bile rose in my mouth. The others looked shocked—at Raja, and at me, then back again.

I barely forced myself to speak again. “You will be called upon when we have settled. Dismissed.”

All of this I knew to say because I’d been in the room when the Seelie Queen gave her orders to her people countless times, with Lyall. That’s how she’d spoken to them, and it had been fast, efficient in getting them to leave.

I needed fast and efficient now.

They wanted to argue. The way they looked at one another and at their friend on the floor, dead. The way they tried to give it a moment, to see if someone else would be brave enough to speak again—but one look at Raja, and they thought better of it.

Finally, they turned around and walked away. It only took a thought in my head to get the doors open for them, and then closed. A thought, that was all.

“Clean up this mess and leave,” Raja said, waving a hand at the soldiers. She meant the dead bodies—of theothersoldiers and the man she’d just killed, not the old king. I wanted him here still for a while longer.

I wanted to understand.

My skin was melting, though when I looked at my blood-coated hands, it seemed intact.

“Yes, Regent,” said one solder or the other, and they moved.

While I analyzed my hands, my fingers, my torso, they wrapped their shadows around the bodies, and carried them toward the doors.