Page 20

nineteen

People with a hundred heads on their shoulders chased me.

In front of me were vampires, red-eyed and fanged and thirsty for every drop of blood in my veins.

There were sorcerers laughing in the distance somewhere I couldn’t see, and I kept trying to find Rune in the darkness, but he wasn’t there. He’d just disappeared.

I knew I was dreaming—I always knew when I was dreaming—but I couldn’t wake up. It was torture, and when I finally managed to somehow escape the waiting vampires, I fell—and landed right into a lair of snakes.

Snakes that wrapped their bodies around me tightly, and that were going to bite me right on the ankle, but the little boy wasn’t going to be there to save me this time. He was wasting away somewhere instead, sleeping, ill, waiting for me to save him.

And the snakes bit. The pain of their fangs felt so incredibly real.

My eyes opened wide. I sucked in a deep breath and I was about to jump out of wherever I was, and run, run, run to the ends of the world where no vampires or snakes or sorcerers could ever find me again.

Instead, something was over me—something that had locked my legs and my arms to my sides tightly.

Wide indigo eyes over mine.

A voice trying to chase away that scream that still rang in my ears.

Rune said, “Calm down. It was a dream.” His words struggled to make sense.

“You’re okay. It was only a dream…”

A dream.

Yes, I remembered it. The men with a hundred heads and the vampires and that awful laughter in the distance.

But wait…

Everything came to a halt. Rune was on my bed, his feet holding mine to the sides, his hands over my wrists on the pillow as he held himself up by his elbows. The tips of his hair that usually fell over his eye touched my forehead, and it was wet, like he’d just showered. His eyes were right there, his lips inches away from mine.

“Calm down,” he whispered. “Calm down—you’re awake now.”

I was, and it was daylight outside, and the sun was falling on my face from the window just below the bed’s edge, and I couldn’t see him as clearly as I wanted to. My chest rose and fell fast. I nodded, and Rune let go of my hands.

The moment he did, I moved on instinct, brought my arm up to shield my eyes from the sun, and accidentally pushed his elbow to the side.

Rune fell right on top of me, his entire body against mine. I felt everything.

Holy fuck…

My eyes were open wide. His closed tightly, and he pulled his lips inside his mouth for a moment, as if to stop himself from speaking.

Or moaning.

My heart didn’t beat at all because there was a fire burning underneath my skin, and she was waiting to be consumed by it. His lips were right there, almost touching mine, and his chest was pressed to me all the way—and his cock.

My God, Rune was hard.

I let go of a shaky breath, and the same insanity as the night before came over me again—I was going to kiss him. The way he slowly opened those eyes and looked down at my lips—yep, I decided it. I was going to kiss the hell out of this man right now simply because I needed to. Nothing else mattered, not the dreams or this realm or his tattoo and what it meant—just his lips.

But even though his eyes were bloodshot and he was breathing as heavily as me, Rune was still in control of himself, and so he rose on his elbows again and took his body off mine before I could make a move.

I looked down instinctively—the tent in his pants was so close, almost touching me over the blanket, and if I just raised my hips a little, I could rub against him.

Yes, he was absolutely, so deliciously hard…

“The sun’s up, that’s all,” Rune said breathlessly, and it took a moment for the words to register.

I looked up at him again. “Oh.”

The corner of his lips turned up as he rolled off me and jumped to his feet near the bed.

“We leave in ten minutes,” he said without meeting my eyes.

And with that bulge in his pants that I couldn’t look away from, he walked out of the room and left me panting.

We stopped to eat breakfast at the same guesthaven where we’d slept. They had this big, half-open area where you could find all kinds of creatures who’d spent the night. Rune didn’t let me sit down but took me with him to the bar this time and told me to keep the scarf over my face as much as I could.

No problem, I thought. I can keep my head down and my eyes on your pants all day, buddy.

Unfortunately for me, he was no longer hard.

But I’d felt him. The memory was so fresh in my mind that the moment I closed my eyes, it was like I was living that moment again. I was in bed and Rune was on top of me, and he was hard, and he was kissing me like the world would end tomorrow, and all we’d ever get was today.

Yet every time I had to open my eyes to see the real world, to see him sitting across from me, watching everyone around us like a hawk, the memory faded and this sense of restlessness came over me again.

“Why aren’t you eating?” I asked, just to chase away the awkward silence.

“I don’t need to.”

“Do fae not eat often?”

“We can eat as much as we like. But we don’t need to more than once a day, maybe once in two days. Food it not our primary source of energy. Magic is.”

I nodded, as if that made perfect sense.

“Your hair is wet,” I noted.

“I bathed when you were asleep. It was safe.” He said it like he was justifying the fact that he’d left me alone to go clean himself up.

It made me feel…strange.

But more than that—the image of Rune in that rusty tub full of steaming water, stark naked and washing himself slowly… fuck.

I swallowed the last of the food hard. This was getting out of hand fast.

I needed to get ahold of myself faster.

“Why are you flustered?”

My eyes met Rune’s and now he was smiling, and my heart forgot how to beat.

Lie, Nilah, lie!

“I, um…the food. I don’t know but it hit my stomach like rocks.” There, that was a lie.

“The food smelled perfectly fine.” He raised a brow, looked at my empty plate.

“Maybe my stomach was sensitive then,” I countered, and it didn’t much matter if he believed me or not, just that he stopped talking about how hot my cheeks felt. Jesus Christ, I was going to make a fool out of myself before the day was over.

“You’ll be all right,” Rune said and stood up. “Time to go.”

I held back a sigh of relief and stood up, too. With the scarf pulled over half my face, I kept my eyes on his feet and followed him outside.

The day seemed to be a bit colder, which suited me perfectly. My muscles were sore, just like I knew they would be, but after a few feet they heated up and the pain gradually faded away. I’d be able to walk—and thank God I’d chosen to wear the most comfortable sneakers I owned. They’d be ruined by the time I made it back home, but it would be totally worth it.

I had no idea in which part of the Neutral Lands we were, but the people here were all the same, especially now that it was morning, and everyone was out and about their business. Rune walked ahead and I followed, sneaking looks at the creatures here and there as I went. Impossible to help it, and it was the perfect distraction to these thoughts in my head that wouldn’t stop coming.

Was I ovulating? Because it felt like it, but I didn’t have my phone with me to check my app, and I never bothered to memorize dates—who did? I must have been, though, because Rune leaned back to grab my hand when a larger group of people turned the corner of a two-story building and came onto the main street, and my insides clenched and my pussy was on fire.

Definitely ovulating.

Or maybe I just needed to touch myself and get this over with quickly, get it all out of my system—except when could I possibly do that?

Eventually, though, the walking and the people and thoughts of his shadow magic got the best of me, and I was no longer so caught up on how my hand felt in his. I asked him questions about this or that creature, and apparently the name fomorian referred to anything at all that wasn’t a species on its own but was a product of magic gone wrong or an offspring of two different species that had had no business creating an offspring in the first place—like the Twinborn.

“They’re one of the oldest fomorians. They say they have giant blood in them,” Rune explained, and in my mind, all I could see was Tuck and Tucker bickering and slamming their heads onto one another.

“Oh, God, Rune. Doesn’t that mean giants have two heads?”

“Most have three according to the stories,” he said, and my stomach turned. “But nobody has actually seen a giant in centuries, so we don’t know for sure.”

I looked up at the sky and tried to imagine a foot as big as a mountain falling over us.

“Hey, you don’t need to be afraid.” Rune was looking down at me, the corners of his lips curled up.

“We’re talking about three-headed giants here.” Of course, I was going to be afraid.

“They’re just big, that’s all. They don’t possess any kind of active magic. If it wasn’t for the dragons, they’d have been long extinct. Fae can kill them easily.”

And now my heart was about to soar out of me once again.

“Wait, wait, hold on a minute.” There were at least two questions in that sentence. “What do you mean, active magic? And what do you mean, if it wasn’t for dragons? ”

Because I’d seen Game of Thrones, and if there was one thing that I could imagine to be worse than giants, it was dragons.

Rune chuckled.

He actually chuckled in almost complete silence, but that little sound traveled inside my ears and made a permanent residence in an irrationally big part of my mind.

“Does your voice always change so much in a sentence? Or is just when you’re especially terrified?” he asked, and I looked to the side as casually as I could so he didn’t see my flushed cheeks.

Something was wrong with me, I decided. I hated when guys laughed or even moaned—I used to legit close Caleb’s mouth when we were having sex. I hated it—so why did I suddenly want to do whatever it took to hear this guy chuckling again?

Wrong. Something was definitely wrong with me, and it was this place’s fault. The air, the ground, the sun—whatever. It was at fault for this insanity.

“Just when I’m terrified, I guess,” I muttered, and he was smiling, raising a hand in front of his mouth to hide it, but at least he didn’t make a sound. Just squeezed my hand in his a little, possibly absentmindedly.

“Active magic means magic you can actually use—like mine. Most fomorians have passive magic—like the Twinborn you met. Though they have magic in their veins, they can’t access it. They can’t connect to it the way they need to, to get it to alter reality in any way.”

“Oh,” I said with a nod because this I actually understood.

“And giants and dragons have coexisted in their mountains for a very long time. We don’t really know why but they’re very protective of the giants. They’ve made enemies out of every creature who’s ever tried to kill the giants and take their mountains. A dragon’s fire is one even fae can’t withstand.”

Goddamn it, his voice, said another in my head, which I ignored.

“Why would anyone want to take mountains from giants, if they’re willing to stay away from this place where everyone else lives?” I wondered.

“Greed. Those mountains are some of the richest in precious gemstones in Verenthia.”

My jaw hit the ground. “Are you serious?”

“I am. But nobody’s tried to even go near the giants in the last half millennium, and the stories are enough to keep everyone away for at least another thousand winters.”

I shook my head. “That’s so awfully… human.” And the words slipped from my lips. “I mean, not all, obviously, but greed is big with humans as well.”

Rune looked down at me as we went—this town seemed to go on forever and very little changed about the setting and the buildings.

“What’s it like in Nerith?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never actually been farther away than my state, which is Oregon, but it’s pretty much the same everywhere from what I can see on social media,” I told him. “The Internet has made it very hard to hide anything anymore.”

“And? What’s it like in your town?”

Something about his curiosity. “I don’t know—the same as every small town, I imagine. The people are assholes. There’s really only so much you can do. Movies, hiking, the mall, and we have a waterpark that’s open all summer, but that’s about it.”

“Why are the people assholes?”

“Because they are. They’re bullies and I hate bullies.”

Silence for a moment, and I wondered if I’d maybe said too much.

“Someone would dare bully you? ” Rune said, and I almost said, aww ! But then he continued with, “The Lifebound of a fae prince—and they dared to bully you?”

I flinched. “It was because of that, actually. I told everyone back home about the prince—I was only a kid. And…well, they thought I was crazy, so they pretty much made my life a living hell ever since.”

When he looked at me now, there was no sign of a smile on Rune’s face.

I bit my tongue, thinking maybe I shouldn’t have said that at all.

“It’s fine, though. It wasn’t that bad, really. I’m fine, as you can see. I survived,” I muttered. “But anyway, where did you grow up?”

Again, Rune remained silent for a long time as we walked, sometimes looking ahead, sometimes looking at me through the corner of his eye when he thought I couldn’t tell. But I always felt his attention on me.

I said nothing, of course. It was enough that I was drowning in regret for having told him as much as I did. Just that to me that was so normal. It was just my life. I didn’t think he’d make anything of it; otherwise, I’d have kept my mouth shut.

“I left Midnight when I was six. I’ve lived in the Seelie Court since I was eight.”

“And how old are you now?”

I saw the way his cheek rounded up when he smiled. “How old do you think I am?”

“Could be twenty. Could be two hundred. Does it make a difference with your kind?”

“It does, actually. Helid is close to two hundred. He and I don’t look the same.”

“You…really don’t,” I said in wonder. “You’re way younger.” It wasn’t wrinkles or grey hair or anything like that—Helid had neither. It was the aura. The clothes. The eyes .

“That’s because I’m twenty-six. If I ever make it to two hundred, I’m sure I’ll look plenty different,” he said.

Twenty-six. He was eight years older than me.

“What did you do?” Rune asked before I could come up with a question of my own. “When they bullied you. What did you do?”

Oh, hell… “Um…nothing.” I cleared my throat, looked away when he raised a brow at me in suspicion. “Do you, by any chance, have a Lifebound, too, somewhere?” I blurted.

He paused for a second like I’d just asked the most ridiculous question he’d ever heard. “I don’t.”

“Oh,” I said with a nod. “Is it like a common thing?”

“It isn’t.” Those deep indigo eyes were still full of suspicion as he looked at me. “Fae no longer bind themselves to others. I haven’t even heard of a single real binding in my lifetime before you.”

Well, fuck. “Really? Why ?” Now I felt even more uncomfortable.

“Because we’re fae,” said Rune. “Because immortality means that a lot changes along the years. Old enemies become allies. Old friends become a threat.”

“And? So what? Can’t one be…I don’t know, unbound? And so what if friends become enemies? Doesn’t that just mean that if they fall sick they can’t call the other to heal them?”

“They can be unbound, but both parties would need to willingly agree to it. And there’s a lot at stake when your life depends on that of the other.”

My heart skipped a beat. I was afraid to ask but I did anyway. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, if one dies, so does the other.”

I stopped walking. When I did, my hand slipped out of his. I looked up at the clouds in the sky, at the sun half hiding behind them—which, by the way, looked bigger than it should have, but maybe I just wasn’t in my right mind at the moment.

I looked at the people, too, all those creatures, men wearing lizards like clothes, and women with eyes that glowed, and another incubus with hair a hot pink that just grazed her shoulders—and I thought, Betty would like her hair.

Then Rune’s face filled my vision. “How much did Helid tell you about the life-bond?”

I shook my head, opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t make a sound until the third try. “Just that those who are bound can save the life of the other, can heal any disease or poisoning.”

Rune waited another moment, and when he saw that I wasn’t about to continue, he said, “That’s it?” I nodded. “Come on, let’s get going.” And he tried to grab my hand again.

I jerked it away. “No,” I said, louder than intended, but what the hell. “No, no—first, you will tell me what being a Lifebound really means, and then we can go.”

“We’re in the middle of the street.”

“I don’t care.” If he couldn’t see it in my face, he was just wasting our time here.

He sighed deeply. “It means that. It means your life is bound to another. It’s one . It means one cannot die through magic or curses or poison while the other lives. The only way to kill you or the prince right now is to cut off your head or pull your heart out of your chest. You both die if that happens.”

Lifebound.

Oh, my God, the word was literal.

I was tied to a fae prince with my very life.

“Wildcat, we have to go,” Rune said, but I raised a finger at his face.

“Just…just a moment.” I turned around and I started walking—where, I had no idea. I barely saw from the black dots that exploded in my vision, but I kept on going for a little while.

Eventually I began to see the gravel and the thick walls of the stone buildings, which were surprisingly really smooth to the touch. Creatures walked about and they had shops and they had restaurants, those strange-looking roosters on the wooden holders in front of at least one in ten houses. There were little ones, too, running and playing ball—an old ball full of thick threads and fabric, like it had been stitched together a million times before.

I stayed away from the beautiful creatures, though— those made me feel the most uncomfortable, but the animals I didn’t mind. Like the lizard that seemed to be half hiding under the shade of a carriage at the side of a single-story building with no windows in the front, just a round door that would barely fit me even crouched over.

I stopped to the side of it, and I squatted down, looked at the lizard, trying to determine why he looked different from the lizards of Earth.

That’s because its green scales were rhombus-shaped, and its eyes were as pink as that woman’s hair, and when it opened its mouth, three different tongues came out to lick the air while I watched.

Then those pink eyes locked on mine.

“You’re…pretty in a very strange way,” I told it.

Its response?

This strange vibrating sound suddenly came from its throat, and the lizard opened its mouth wide.

Three tongues—yep. It had three thin black tongues, and like a fucking fool, I leaned in to see better.

That’s why I only noticed the spit coming at me from deep inside its mouth when it was too late.

The scream was stuck inside me, and I turned my head away on instinct, even knowing I couldn’t get away in time.

But somehow, that spit that was as green as its scales never reached me, and when I opened my eyes again, I found Rune squatting next to me, holding up a piece of metal in front of my face.

“What the…” He turned the metal over—must have been some sort of a tray.

The green goo that was stuck to the surface was bubbling like it was fucking boiling.

I had never in my life stood up and moved back faster, my entire body shaking. A lizard—a fucking lizard!

“Hey, look at me,” Rune said, and his face was there in front of mine, but the image of that lizard was still in my mind’s eyes. “You’re okay. You’re okay…”

“It…it spit at me.” Was that even normal? That wasn’t a fucking llama—it was a lizard as big as my hand!

“Yes, that’s what they do. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“What the hell was that spit? Was it boiling ?”

“Acids,” said Rune and bile rose up my throat on cue. “Look at me, Wildcat. You’re okay. Nothing can hurt you.”

At this I laughed, and it was bitter. Even Rune looked surprised. “You don’t know that. If a tiny lizard could kill me with spit, you don’t know that nothing can hurt me!” On the contrary— everything could.

“I do,” he simply said, and his confidence pissed me off.

“ How ?” I demanded. “How the hell would you know?”

“Because they’d have to go through me.”

My eyes closed and a deep sigh came out of me.

Yes, his confidence was annoying as hell, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t calm me down. Even I was surprised that it worked so well. He believed what he said wholeheartedly, it was easy to see. I had no choice but to believe it, too, if only to preserve my sanity.

Taking in a deep breath, I shook my hands to get them to stop shaking. “I thought you said I only need to be alive,” I muttered.

Rune came as close as possible to rolling his eyes without actually doing it, but he didn’t say anything. He just turned around and started walking down the street again.

“Oh, right—I remember now. You’re afraid of the prince,” I teased, feeling a million times better as if by real magic. Because that asshole of a lizard was still there under that carriage in the shade, licking the air with those three tongues, far away from me.

I ran after Rune, who barely glanced back at me. “I’m not afraid of the prince,” he said.

“Sure, sure. Not even a little bit,” I teased again, smiling a little as I pulled the scarf over my mouth.

For all his moods, Rune was pretty easy to get to—and I was never going anywhere near a lizard again.