Page 22

twenty-one

My eyes popped open. My legs and arms were around Rune, his arm across my back, keeping me up. If he hadn’t, I realized, I’d have fallen because I’d completely let go of my body while I’d slept.

It had been dark then, but now there was light. The sky was blue, the trees around us fewer than before. The horse we were on was still walking, slowly now, and Rune’s heart was beating steadily. I could tell because my cheek was basically pressed to his chest.

I leaned back, suddenly aware, my mind flooding with thoughts and memories and emotions.

“ Shshhh ,” Rune whispered, and I immediately stopped moving again, tried to look around as well as I could. He grabbed the reins of the horse with both hands, and I locked mine behind his back so as not to slip off the saddle.

When I looked around us a second time, I leaned up and whispered in his ear, “There’s nobody there.”

But Rune didn’t answer. He was wide awake, alert, those eyes of his that looked so much bluer than they did at night moving fast from left to right.

Then he pulled the reins and the horse stopped walking. I held my breath for a moment, listened to the birds chirping in the distance, the leaves moving with the slow wind.

When nothing happened, I tried to turn around, to sit with my back to him again, but Rune’s hand moved to my hip and squeezed.

“ Stay, ” he ordered.

Heat spilled all over me in an instant.

Then I heard the footsteps.

With both arms around his body, I turned as well as I could to see who was coming. Rune seemed calm, not alarmed in the least, but I was. I was panicking so badly my heart about soared out of my mouth—until I saw them.

Four men stepped away from the tree trunks they’d been hiding behind, and they slowly came closer.

They had no glowing eyes or double heads or pointy noses. They looked very ordinary, if not slightly bigger in size than your average man. They wore brown leathers, and curiosity in their eyes, and they moved like they knew where every tree and every blade of grass was without having to look.

“Rune?” I whispered because I didn’t know whether to freak out all the way yet or not.

“Remember what I told you about life-binding, Wildcat?” He reached for the side of the saddle where he’d strapped my backpack, and slowly brought it between us. I put my arm through the straps and tightened my grip around his torso again. “Every creature in Verenthia knows the same things. That’s why it’s very important not to tell anyone who you are.”

“I won’t,” I whispered. “I won’t tell.”

The men were barely ten feet away now, still coming.

Rune wrapped his other arm around my shoulders. “It’s very important not to let anybody find out. There’s no telling who wants the prince dead, and who’s willing to kill you for it.”

Here I thought whoever had sent those monkey monsters after me had simply wanted me to not heal the prince, when in reality, they’d sent those beasts to kill me .

“We’ll lie,” I whispered, my unblinking eyes on the men. “We’ll lie to them.”

“They’re noxins,” Rune said. “They’ll know.”

What the hell’s a noxin?! “I’m a good liar.”

“It won’t make a difference.”

“Hello, travelers. You’re in noxin territory. Please state your name and your business.”

The voice of the man made me want to scream simply because it was so ordinary. Just like a man would speak back home—like my dad spoke.

“We’re just passing by. We won’t trouble you for longer than a few more minutes,” Rune said, and his voice was as calm as ever, as low. You would never suspect a thing if you heard him speaking.

The men who’d stopped at our side now exchanged a look.

Then the same guy said, “Your name and your business,” much more forcefully.

A second of silence that for me lasted a whole eternity.

Rune slowly lowered his head until his lips were against my hair. I barely heard it when he whispered, “ Hold on tight .”

Everything happened so fast.

He moved, slammed his legs onto the horse’s sides, and the horse started running at an incredible speed. The scream died in my throat as I held on for dear life now. Rune was busy with the reins and keeping the horse running, and I had to hold on all by myself while we both jumped up and down with the horse’s body—and while those men followed, two on foot, and another two on horseback.

Where in the hell had they gotten those horses so fast?! And they were as big as ours, too.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I kept chanting, now basically wrapped around Rune’s body with my ankles locked around his hips, and my arms around his neck. He didn’t complain at all as he guided the horse forward, turning to the sides abruptly, hoping to gain a few more seconds.

But the men kept on coming, and it seemed to me their horses were faster than ours.

“They’re getting closer!” I screamed because I had my eyes on them and Rune was only looking forward.

“We have to jump!” he shouted back, and every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps. Did he say jump ? “I need you to hold on to me with all your strength. Our horse is tired, hungry—he can’t keep up. We have to jump!”

Yes, he did.

“Jump where ?” Because we were in a forest full of trees, and those men were still running after us.

Worse yet— more were behind them. More men on horses, and though they were still far, they’d get to us in no time.

My heart stopped beating.

“Just trust me!” Rune shouted.

Did I have a fucking choice?

No, I did not.

So, I locked my ankles as tightly as possible, gripped the back of his cloak in my fists with all my strength, and I waited for him to do whatever the hell he’d planned to do.

I even thought I’d have another moment to catch my breath, to prepare mentally for him to jump, but once again, everything spiraled too fast for me to keep up properly.

The horse turned to the right all of the sudden, did a full U-turn faster than a fucking car would, with a neigh loud enough to be heard all the way back home.

My eyes were wide open so I saw it when Rune moved us, threw us to the side while the horse continued to run without us—and then we were falling.

Trees.

Yellow, purple, blue, green leaves on big and small trees below us, possibly over twenty feet. Rune had one arm around my back, keeping me to his chest, and the other outstretched to the side. The shadows of those trees were moving, coming up, rising toward us while the trees remained in their place.

My eyes squeezed shut. My brain insisted that none of this was real, that I was still asleep, that it was still nighttime wherever we were. We weren’t about to fall onto these huge trees, and shadows were not reaching up to touch us from the ground.

Not real .

Then we were spinning.

My eyes opened—I blamed my instincts. Darkness around me, not so thick that I didn’t see anything outside, but thick enough that it held Rune’s back while he basically slid onto it, like it was a solid thing, that darkness. Like it was a very slippery surface, when I could still see the trees and the sky and the world beyond. I could see that this ball of shadows was pretty much sitting on top of those trees that had seemed so far below us the last time I had my eyes open.

Now, they were there, and they were holding the shadows, while Rune slid on them around and around, slower by the minute.

My mouth opened to scream, but his hands were on my face, his wide eyes on me.

Rune shook his head, brought his finger in front of his lips for a second. I still had my legs wrapped around his hips, and I gripped his wrists, too, to make sure he didn’t let go. I stayed there, tried to get enough air in my lungs, and I didn’t look around us at all. If I did, I’d lose it, so I just focused on him. On the way he was focused on me. On how close we were, how I was practically sitting on him. On his hands on my face, and the tips of our noses touching, our lips an inch apart.

When he closed his eyes, I did the same. No sound came through to us, so all I heard was the wild beating of my heart. I felt that heat in my chest, too, the kind that terrified me, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what could happen if I lost control. If I did here what I sometimes did back home when I woke up sweating from my nightmares.

Right now, I didn’t even consider whether it had ever been real or not—the fear wouldn’t let me. All I knew was that I needed a distraction, and Rune might have just been created for that very purpose, to distract me from everything and everyone without even trying.

God help me, I leaned in and touched my lips to his. Just touched.

My entire body stood perfectly still. The heat under my skin paused.

Rune whispered, “Wildcat,” and he made to move away.

I wrapped my hands around the back of his neck. “Please, Rune, I need you.”

And maybe I would regret it later. I probably would, but right now, I knew that I wouldn’t survive if I couldn’t make it to the end of this. I would never survive this in one piece.

The next second, Rune crashed his lips to mine and kissed me.

The entire world hung on that very spot. It made zero sense where we were and what was happening around us, how we were still sliding on the surface of shadows, but this…

This made more sense than waking up in the morning. Than breathing.

And it consumed me so quickly.

Rune took my bottom lip between his and kissed it gently, and the heat in my chest, the one that could destroy me from the inside, disappeared. In its place came another, and this one burned differently. I stood still, felt the softness of his lips, held onto his face the same way he held onto mine.

Then his tongue came out and slipped between my lips, and my mind exploded in flames that came in the same colors as the leaves of these trees. I lost control of my body when I sucked it in my mouth and tasted him for the first time.

Dark. Sweet. Perfect.

**Everybody, put your hands together for a warm welcome to my new addiction**

My tongue slid against his and he let out a moan, soft and low, which spilled even more of that delicious heat all over me. Within seconds, we picked up the rhythm, sucking onto each other’s lips and tongues, exploring each other’s mouths like we’d been desperate to do so our whole lives.

My arms were around his neck, and his around my waist, and I wasn’t going anywhere now. Our rhythm was perfect, and I didn’t need to think about the kiss at all—our bodies knew what to do, how to complement each movement and each turn of our heads. All I thought about was more, pressing my body harder onto his, deepening the kiss, moving faster and slower and every speed in between until I knew for a fact that I fit him in every way and every angle.

Until our mouths knew one another thoroughly.

But suddenly Rune moved back, and it was like he’d cut all my life-strings at once. The music—or whatever it was that had been playing in my head while we kissed—stopped abruptly, and my eyes were wide open, and so were his.

Indigo and silver and—again— perfect .

“ Shit,” Rune said.

The surface of whatever he was sitting on burst like a goddamn balloon, and then we were falling again.