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thirty-two

“Don’t move.”

Rune was squatting in front of me, looking at my leg. The pain was so fucking intense I’d barely managed to turn over.

“It’s not broken but you can’t step on it,” he told me, as if the woman who’d just saved his life wasn’t even there.

He looked up at me and my heart squeezed. He was such a bloody mess, skin cut in so many places, bruises marring his pale skin. I could see him so much better now because the sun was almost up all the way and the sky was becoming bluer by the minute.

“You threw me away,” I said, unable to help myself, because the woman had moved farther back as she searched the trees for something—or just made sure that we were alone.

“Yes, well, they would have gotten to you. I had no choice,” Rune said.

“How about letting me stay there with you instead of facing them all alone—how’s that for a choice?”

He raised a brow. “And what do you suppose you could have done against all those incubi?”

“I don’t know—I could have bitten them or something. I have teeth.” I pulled my lips up and showed him.

Except he didn’t seem to get the gravity of the situation because he was trying to stifle a smile. “You do have teeth, Wildcat.”

“This is serious, Rune. They almost killed you.”

“But they didn’t. This is going to hurt a little bit. Scream if you need to,” he said and put his hands underneath me.

“I can walk,” I said, but the moment he pulled me up, I realized that was bullshit. The pain was incredible, and my right leg was now completely paralyzed. I wouldn’t be able to even walk two feet without falling on my face.

My eyes squeezed shut and I pulled my lips inside my mouth to keep from making a sound because I didn’t want to scream. Who knew what lived in this damn forest? I didn’t want anything to hear us. I planned not to fuck this up again if I could help it.

Rune moved as slowly as he could to secure his arm underneath my wounded leg without causing me pain, but it was impossible. I didn’t even want to see what it looked like because the slightest pressure made me feel like it was going to fall off me completely.

“This okay?” he whispered, and I wrapped my arms around his neck as well as I could.

“Yes.” He was here and he was alive. And he had his arms around me—it was most definitely okay.

Then the woman stepped in front of us.

I looked at her face for the first time— really looked at her. Dark hair and dark eyes, pointy ears, pale skin without a wrinkle in sight, and the dress she wore was a mixture of velvet and leather and lace. It was tight around her arms and torso, then flared out from the hips down, the skirt more fluffy than that of my dress, and hers reached all the way to the ground.

She was fae, and she was the same kind of fae as Rune, but the way she was looking at me…

A thin brow arched. Her eyes moved to Rune in question, and I had no idea what for.

“Raja, meet Nilah. Nilah, this is Raja.”

“Hello,” I whispered.

The woman looked at me again, this time like I’d offended her with my greeting . She didn’t even say hi, simply turned around and walked into the dark forest with her chin up.

“What the…”

“She’ll come around. Just give her time,” Rune whispered and started to follow her.

“Whatever,” I muttered, my eyes burning, and I didn’t even have the energy to ask him who this pretentious fae was.

“Sleep, Wildcat,” Rune whispered. “We have a long way ahead.”

I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to stay awake with him and talk to him and make sure he was okay.

Except too much had happened, and my mind was so chaotic. The energy that had gone through me when my hands lit up had made a mess of my insides. Part of me thought I should tell Rune about it right now and get it over with because it was real. It had to be—I’d seen it, had felt it just minutes ago.

But my lips remained sealed, and my eyes closed all the way. I fell asleep listening to his heartbeat against my hand.

* * *

The warmth of sunlight fell on my leg. My naked leg. My wounded leg.

My eyes opened and I found myself lying on a bed with a soft mattress. Slowly I sat up, half convinced that I was dreaming because the last time I was awake I was in Rune’s arms. The last time I was awake my leg had been hurting if I even breathed in too deeply, and now…

The room was small, with three windows unlike any I’d ever seen before—rectangular frames set horizontally one over the other on the same wall across from the bed I lay on. The sunlight that came through the highest one was falling on my naked leg. Naked clean leg that was also bandaged from my knee down to my ankle, and the pain had turned almost completely numb.

I looked down and almost screamed—I was naked underneath the thin white cover that was barely hanging on my nipples. Before I could, though, I saw the blue dress Miriam had made me, atop a drawer on the other side of the room, together with my bra and my underwear and my socks.

Clean and dry and folded, all of them, while my sneakers were on the floor near the drawer’s legs, also cleaner than they had been at Lorei’s party.

My heart skipped a beat as the memories rushed through my mind. I pushed the cover off and put my feet against the wooden floor with no clue whether I could stand or not. But I needed to get dressed and I needed a bathroom.

Most importantly, I needed to find Rune.

By some miracle, my leg held me. The pain was still there, double now that I was putting weight on it, but it was nothing compared to what it had felt like that morning. Or at least I assumed it had been that morning.

Images flashed before my eyes—Rune and the woman and the cages and the shadows, and I was so distracted by them that I dressed on autopilot. So distracted that it took me a moment to remember that I’d had my panties in the pocket of the cloak, yet they had been washed and dried and put here for me to find.

Heat gathered on my cheeks. Had all of that really happened? Had I really touched myself in front of Rune, and had I really danced and come on his lap at a fucking orgy?

Oh, God…

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried not to panic. Tried not to think. When I put my sneakers on, my leg hurt twice as much, so I left them there and walked out the door barefoot.

A wide corridor full of light. Windows on both sides, and two doors near the one I came out of. I tried the one on the right—locked. The left one led to the bathroom I so desperately needed before my bladder exploded and killed me for real.

Blood, broken skulls, body parts on the floor.

Rune had killed three incubi. He’d killed them in that basement, had left the pieces of them all over.

At first, I’d been afraid. Terrified at the idea, but now that I’d seen how that man Rogue had been about to cut Rune’s head off…

Now I was a little angry Rune hadn’t killed all of them—the entire fucking building.

“It’s okay,” I told myself. “ I’ll talk to him—it’s okay. ”

Just as soon as I found him, everything was going to make perfect sense.

The bathroom was the best bathroom I had been to in this place. Perfectly clean, with a lot of those horizontal windows on the walls. It had an actual built-in sink with this device that kind of looked like a faucet, which, with the push of a lever, pulled up water from a giant bucket hidden in the cabinet underneath.

A mirror hung over it with a beautiful silver frame engraved with birds and flowers, and liquid soap, toothpaste, and crisp white towels were right to its side.

I looked at my reflection, expecting to find my face a mess. It wasn’t. My hair was tangled like it had been wet and had dried without brushing it, but that was it. My skin was clean, and my eyes were wide and alive, so blue from the sunlight they looked like they were filled with water. My mascara had been wiped off and the blush Miriam had put on me, too. I had no idea where my backpack was, though, but right now I couldn’t care less even if we had lost it.

I looked okay. Alive. Confused.

After using the bathroom and washing my teeth with my fingers, I went back into that corridor, wondering where Rune was and why he hadn’t come to find me yet. Terrified that maybe he was sick or wounded but hoping that he was just sleeping somewhere on his own.

As I walked down the corridor, my leg still throbbed, but the pain wasn’t getting more intense. There were windows on both sides—a lake and mountains in the distance on the right, and only trees were visible on the left. Those same dark trees with almost grey leaves hanging on their branches.

The end of the corridor led me to a wide foyer, and the entrance door was halfway open.

Sunlight called my name. I moved to it without really thinking, and I walked outside and breathed in the fresh air, felt the warmth on my skin.

When my eyes adjusted to the bright light, I finally saw what was in front of me.

The lake was huge, and it seemed to wrap all around the land where this house was built. It went on deeper, behind the forest on the left, and ahead until the edge of a mountain. The sunlight was coming from behind that mountain, and judging by the sun’s position, it must have been afternoon.

The house at my back was possibly twenty or thirty feet from the edge of the lake. A short deck was built between the long grass blades and bushes lining it. In front of those bushes was a table and what could have been a grill on which the woman was cooking something. That same woman from before— Raja.

Swimming in the lake was Rune.

Surreal . So beautiful. If I’d had my phone with me, I’d take a thousand pictures of this place in this exact moment to make sure I never forgot it.

I spun around slowly to look at the house where I’d woken up—one story with a black rooftop and black window frames, but that wasn’t what made me stop breathing for a moment. It was the sky over it. The blue sky that gradually faded into a deep darkness as it went to the other side of that forest where I couldn’t see. The sky that was both day and night, and not too far from here, either.

Before I knew it, I was walking this wide path set with stones in odd shapes that slithered like a snake all the way to the deck. The air was still, no wind blew. The silence was only disrupted by birdsong in the distance, and the movement of the woman standing with her back turned to me, focused on whatever she was cooking on that grill.

The closer I got, the better I saw that it didn’t look all that different from a usual grill, though this was mostly made out of stone. A wooden plate at her side was full of grilled fish with the heads and skins and all. Fruits and vegetables, and a basket full of bread was on the table, along with a jug full of water, glasses and empty plates.

The woman didn’t turn to look at me at all even when I stopped a few feet behind her. Rune hadn’t seen me yet. He’d swum even farther away, almost to the middle of the lake.

From here, he looked okay. If he could swim like that, it meant he wasn’t injured that much, didn’t it?

“How is your leg?”

The voice almost startled me though I’d expected the woman to know I was here. I hadn’t exactly tried to sneak up on her, and she was fae. I’d seen her ears—and her magic, had felt it just that morning. She was the same kind of fae as Rune, except far more powerful.

“It’s fine. Doesn’t hurt much.” I approached her slowly. The smell of fish filled my nostrils, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It actually smelled delicious—or maybe I was just hungry.

The woman still wore the same black dress as that morning. It looked even better in sunlight, perfectly made with pieces of leather and lace added in just the right places.

Her face, though. I only saw her profile at first, and her face was absolutely breathtaking. Pin straight nose and raised cheekbones and skin that looked so blurred it was probably pore-less. A moment later, she turned and glanced at me with those dark brown eyes, and I saw exactly what Rune said before about age—just looking at this woman I could tell that she was old. Possibly as old as Helid, even if her skin and her hair didn’t show it.

“Did you, um…did you put this bandage on me?”

She paused for a split second. “Yes. After I healed your fractured bone.”

Well, fuck. I looked down at my leg. It made sense that I’d had a fractured bone because the pain had been incredible. I had no idea how I’d fallen on it so badly, but I was really glad that it wasn’t hurting like that anymore.

“Thank you,” I said, a bit breathless now.

“Don’t thank me, mortal. I didn’t do it for you.” The woman looked at the lake, at Rune still swimming almost in the middle, and he was looking our way now. He could definitely see me.

The urge to wave at him and basically beg him to come closer was so overwhelming, and it pissed me off.

Yes, I was uncomfortable standing here with this stranger, but I didn’t need a damn babysitter, did I?

“Whatever you did it for, I’m still thankful. And my name is Nilah, not mortal.” Because that word pissed me off, too. Maybe because it sounded like they used it to imply that we were inferior because of our mortality?

The woman turned to me again, just a quick look. “The prince saved his life,” she said, and it was very easy to tell just by the sound of her voice that she didn’t like talking to me any more than I liked talking to her right now.

“Yes, I know that, and?—”

“He keeps him alive still,” she cut me off.

“He does?”

Putting another cooked fish on the wooden plate, she turned to me, the wooden tongs still in her hand. She looked down at me somehow, though she was a bit shorter than me, but those dark eyes of hers consumed me as she looked me over. Inch by little inch. I swear I felt completely naked under her gaze.

“His life has been difficult enough,” she told me. “Without the prince’s favor, he wouldn’t survive the Courts.” She leaned closer. “And you are threatening to ruin it all.”

I beg your fucking pardon?

I shook my head so hard the entire view tilted. “No, no, no, I’m not. I’m not ruining anything—I’m just trying to get to the prince to heal him so that he can wake up. Rune is going to be perfectly safe.”

“Will he now,” the woman said, slowly crossing her arms in front of her, smiling, but it was so bitter I could taste it on my tongue. “You mortals always think you know everything.”

My jaw almost hit the ground, but she didn’t even let me comment.

“Tell me this, then—do you know what happens after? Have you ever bothered that head of yours with that question?”

I fisted my hands. I gritted my teeth, and my automatic instinct was to feel guilty. Because usually everything that happened in my life was somehow my fault. When the people around me were mad and disappointed, it was because of me .

But this time it was different.

I didn’t know this woman at all, and she had no right to accuse me like this.

“I haven’t, actually. I’m terribly sorry, but I didn’t really have the time to wonder about anything while I was running for my life and trying to survive in a world I didn’t even know existed a week ago. Where everyone is constantly trying to tell me how worthless I am and how superior they are to me—including yourself, even though you don’t even know me—and everyone has tried to take advantage of me one way or the other, except for Rune. So, excuse me if I’ve been a little busy surviving.”

The woman was not surprised or impressed. Instead, she put the tongs down on the rock on which her grill was built and came even closer.

Every instinct in my body said that I should back away because I had seen what this woman could do. I’d seen it with my own eyes how she’d basically knocked out all those incubi and succubi at once without breaking a sweat.

Yet my pride didn’t let me move a single inch even if my heart was shaking me like a drum.

“That boy has gone through enough hardship. If something happens to him because of you, I will not take it lightly,” she whispered. “So, answer me: what is it that you plan to do after you heal the prince?”

It was a goddamn order.

I crossed my arms in front of my chest and prayed my voice didn’t shake when I said, “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out when I feel like it.”

A ghost of a smile touched those long pale pink lips, this one worse than the first. “When you feel like it might just be too late. I could be coming for you then.”

My God, she was actually serious. And I didn’t even have the time to be properly shocked by it.

“Threaten me all you like, lady. I came here to save your prince because he saved my life, too. If it wasn't for Rune, I’d be dead by now. That means something to me. I would never hurt him,” I said instead.

“You already have,” she said.

“I haven’t.” Never . I’d rather claw my own eyes out, and if this woman knew what it was like inside me when I thought of Rune, when I was close to Rune, she wouldn’t have been arguing with me right now. She wouldn’t be threatening me like this

“He washes your clothes— by hand. He cleans you and stays by your side for hours—after he carries you all the way here.” Oh, she was mad as hell and it was written clearly in her eyes. It terrified me, that look, but I also couldn’t move away now because of her words. “A fae carrying a mortal—we do not carry mortals. We do not carry anyone. We. Are. Not. Horses.”

She moved lightning fast, and the next moment, I only saw her back as she walked away toward the house and disappeared inside the door, leaving me there with my mouth wide open.

A million thoughts went through my head.

The sound of water coming from the other side made me turn just in time to see Rune pulling himself out of the water, naked from the hips up, just a pair of shorts on his body.

My train of thoughts crashed into an invisible wall and my mind was perfectly blank again.

This guy is going to be the death of me.