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thirty-five

I’m just seeing things.

Rune was not acting like he suddenly regretted what we did. I was just making that up because he was composed again, and he wasn’t holding me on his lap, and he wasn’t kissing me and whispering in my ear.

Of course not—we were sitting at a table right outside Raja’s house, and she was there, too. Sitting between us. Watching us eat as she chewed her food slowly.

Yes, I’m just seeing things. Rune was just eating his food. He wasn’t doing anything wrong—and so what if he wouldn’t look me in the eye for longer than a second?

Raja was sitting right there!

I cleared my throat, the thoughts in my head getting the best of me as I poked the fish on my plate. Raja must have taken the head and tail off, and the bones, and it was indeed delicious, whatever kind of fish it was, except I wasn’t all that hungry.

Or I was just getting overwhelmed with too many emotions—and quickly.

The view was beautiful, though. Raja had put white light into a vase in the middle of the table and topped it with wildflowers to give the whole thing an ethereal glow. The lake looked like a giant mirror reflecting the dark sky, and the air was still. My hair was just slightly wet from our swim, but my clothes were all dry. I had no idea how he’d done it, but Rune had taken them when I went to the bathroom, and then he’d brought them back dry five minutes later.

I suspected Raja had something to do with it because even a drying machine wouldn’t have been so fast. Definitely some kind of magic.

“So, what is it that you do here, Raja? How does a Midnight fae live in Blackwater?” I said when the awkward silence got too heavy.

She shrugged. “I work. I live. Simple.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

“Vampires have a lot of blood ceremonies throughout the seasons. Raja prepares and performs them as an unbiased third party. She’s considered…sacred among vampires,” Rune said.

Raja suddenly waved a hand as she grabbed her glass of water. “ Sacred is too fancy a word. I’m their Runellianne and they’re afraid of me—that’s all.”

“What does that word mean?” I asked.

She arched a brow at me. “Keeper of Secrets.”

Holy shit, that was actually pretty cool.

I looked at Rune. “That sounds like your name.”

“It is,” he said with a nod. “Rune means secret in Veren, which is the first fae language.”

Secret. “It fits.” He sounded like a secret, too, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you actually heard his voice. The urge to ask him why he’d be named a secret was strong, but I resisted. Instead, I asked, “How come you all speak English around here?” It had struck me as odd that everyone knew how to speak to me in this place.

“The modern version of Veren includes all languages of your world and ours,” Rune explained. “We are all born with Veren in our minds alongside magic and only need to develop the muscles necessary to form words.”

“So, you can speak French , too?”

“Yes, if I needed to,” Rune said.

“Trade played a big part in it,” Raja suddenly said. “We used to trade goods with Nerith a long time ago, before their technology advanced so much and distanced humans from us completely. Books, mostly, but fabrics and herbs and elements as well. We don’t anymore, of course, as your race has changed so much in the past few centuries, but English always was the main language Verenthians spoke during those ages. It’s much more versatile than the first Veren, so it stuck with us.”

She didn’t once look at me while she spoke, and I didn’t care about that. What I cared about was why Rune didn’t, either. He still refused to even look my way.

I mean, he couldn’t be afraid of Raja. He wasn’t, no—and unless he regretted what happened at the lake…

Maybe I’m not just seeing things, after all. My stomach twisted.

“Rune told me how you became Lyall’s Lifebound.” Raja’s voice filled my ears, but it took a moment to understand what she said.

“Yes,” I said absentmindedly and kept my eyes on the plate.

Had it been a mistake? Did he think it had been a mistake?

My God, what the hell was I even doing?!

“An accident. What a coincidence,” Raja continued. “Tell me, how has it affected you, the binding?”

I looked up at her. “Affected me?”

“Yes. Those who are lifebound usually transfer traits and powers to one another.”

My cheeks heated up. My eyes remained on her, my lips parted.

“That’s when the Lifebound are fae. She’s mortal,” said Rune, but I couldn’t look away from Raja at all.

Suddenly, there was this voice in my head that insisted that she knew . This woman knew what I could do, and it was wrong, and I was wrong, and this whole entire thing was so damn wrong!

“Let the girl speak for herself,” Raja said. She refused to even blink, holding me hostage with those dark eyes.

“No,” I choked out because right now I wouldn’t admit to anything to this woman. Not for any reason—she looked like she was about to eat me, for fuck’s sake! “It hasn’t affected me in any way. I didn’t know I was bound to the prince until Helid came to my home.”

“Ah, Helid.” Raja didn’t look convinced, but she needed to eat so she moved her eyes to the plate, and I was free to breathe again. “The prince’s uncle. I never liked that man. He’s a coward. Cowards have no character.”

“That’s not true, Raja,” Rune said. “Helid is a good man.”

“You’re not a good man when you don’t possess the courage to be bad, boy. You’re a good man when you can be bad but choose to be good despite it.”

“So you’ve said before,” Rune said.

“I’ve said a lot of things before, and all of them are true.” Raja put down her silverware and looked at him. “Which is why I’m always surprised that you will not believe me.”

“But I do,” Rune said.

“If you did, you’d have let me try,” Raja said, then grabbed her glass.

Rune looked at her pointedly. “Raja…” His voice trailed off, and her name sounded like a warning on his lips.

“Try what?” I wondered.

“To remove his seal,” said Raja, and my heart skipped a beat. “He won’t let me try it. He prefers to be stuck like this, with not even half of his power accessible to him. It’s a shame. Fae are magic. It belongs to us as much as we belong to it.”

“But why not? Why won’t you let her?” I asked Rune.

“Because it won’t work,” he said, almost rolling his eyes at Raja.

“Of course, it will.”

“It could kill you, Raja,” he insisted.

“ Please. You think me weak.” That, she most definitely wasn’t.

“I think you not a fae king .”

Her hand fell on the table hard, and my heart jumped. “Don’t call that pig a king at my table.”

I was starting to sweat a little bit, not going to lie.

“Regardless. He put the seal on me. You’re not more powerful than him. The seal will kill you.”

A moment passed and then Raja just waved him off. I believed him—he seemed to know exactly what he was talking about. But, fuck, if I didn’t wish he’d just try .

I mean, the amount of power Raja had and then more than that?

It was unimaginable.

Raja turned to me and changed the subject again. “We will be leaving at dawn. It takes roughly three hours to get to the tunnel. From there you’ll need a day to get to the Seelie Court. Are you prepared?”

If she’d asked me if I was ready to die right now, I’d have been less surprised.

My lips opened, but I couldn’t speak for the life of me.

“She is,” Rune said, moving his vegetables around the plate. “She will be.”

I don’t know what got into me. Suddenly I found myself moving, wanting to run, get out of my own skin.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said and pushed the chair back. Looked at Rune.

He looked at me, too. Passively. Like we were strangers again, just like we’d been that first day.

“May I use the room I woke up in to lie down?” I asked Raja, who was just as surprised as I was a moment ago. So surprised, she couldn’t speak, either, only nodded.

I turned around and walked away with my head down and my hands in fists to make sure I didn’t scream or turn to him and curse him in my anger. He didn’t come after me, didn’t call my name, said nothing at all.

There were no lights on inside the house, but I managed to find the small room using my hands and the little light that came through the windows. I closed the door and lay down on the bed and focused on my body—my arms and my chest and my legs. My wounded leg that was throbbing a little, but to look at it now that the bandage was off, you couldn’t even see a little redness. Whatever Raja had done was a damn miracle, and the throbbing didn’t bother me at all. It was the sweetest pain at exactly the right time. I focused on it with my whole being because I didn’t dare think at all. I didn’t dare imagine Rune and how he refused to look at me, how he so obviously regretted what we’d done, how he most certainly wished we never had.

I just focused on the pain until I slept.

* * *

The sound of the door opening woke me up. Darkness in the room, save for a little light coming from the grayish sky beyond the three windows. I sat up when I realized Rune was standing there by the door, fully dressed in new clothes, all black, just like before. His hair was dry, and it was all over the place again, falling over his eyes.

It was like he’d gone back in time.

Like we’d gone back in time.

“It’s time to go,” he told me, his eyes on me, but again, like I was a stranger.

The way it still hurt was unexpected—and it pissed me the fuck off. I’d gone to bed feeling like shit because of that look, and it wasn’t fair. Pushing my legs off the bed I stood up and blinked the sleep from my eyes. Thanks to the anger, my mind was perfectly alert within seconds.

“Sure. Just as soon as you tell me why you won’t look me in the face,” I said.

“I am looking at you.”

And he was. Right now—he was. But the way he looked at me was different, and he knew it. I crossed my arms in front of my chest.

“If you regret what happened last night, you can just say so. You don’t have to pretend I’m a fucking stranger all of a sudden.”

For a moment, Rune paused. Just looked at me.

Why ? I wanted to say— scream it. What the hell changed so fast?

Instead, all I said when he refused to answer me was, “Was it me? What the hell did I do? Tell me because I don’t have a clue.”

It’s true that I was always fucking things up, but I could have sworn that I didn’t do anything this time . When could I have even tried?

“Nothing,” Rune said through gritted teeth. “You did nothing.”

“Well, I must have because look at you !” My voice was rising, but I couldn’t control myself. Even my hands were shaking.

“Don’t you dare try to take the blame. You did nothing wrong. Not anything,” he said, striding over to me, but not getting close. Not nearly as close as I needed him.

“Then why ?!” I demanded. “We were fine and then you…you…”

Rune closed his eyes for a moment. “There is no reason, Wildcat. We’re going to get to the Seelie Court by next morning. This journey is almost over,” he said. “It’s almost over.”

“And so what?!” I knew that it was almost over, damn it. I was dreading the end as well, but that didn’t mean we still couldn’t take advantage of this whole day.

His eyes were so dark I barely saw the silver in them. “When we get there, you will heal the prince, and once he’s awake, he…”

Again, he squeezed his eyes shut. My heart thundered in my chest, and God, I was so mad I was seeing red. That’s why I slammed my hands on my thighs and laughed bitterly.

“Oh, so that’s what’s going on here! I remember now—you’re afraid of the prince!”

“I am not afraid of anyone,” he spit.

“Right, right, of course you’re not afraid of anyone—most definitely not the prince. That’s why you keep bringing him up! You’re not afraid at—” I continued, and it was because I was pissed off, and I was going to go on and on about it until I had no more voice left.

Except Rune didn’t let me.

Suddenly he moved so fast I only saw him when he towered over me. “I am not afraid of the prince!”

His hands were on my face, fingers digging in my cheeks. Had it been anybody else I’d have been afraid. But it was Rune, so I grabbed his forearms and held onto him instead.

“I’m afraid of what he’ll do when he wakes up and takes one look at you—just one look, ” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m afraid that he’ll want you like this.”

Eyes closed and jaws locked, he touched his forehead to mine.

Everything I had wanted to scream at him just now faded away into nothing.

“It won’t matter to me,” I whispered in barely any voice. I couldn’t care less about what the prince would think when he looked at me—I was here to wake him up, return the favor he did me, and nothing more beyond that.

But Rune didn’t believe me.

Stepping back, he let go of me and shook his head, and smiled that awful smile. “Of course, it will matter. He’s the prince. ”

“For fuck’s sake, I don’t care who he is—I want you! ” The words slipped from me and I only realized it when I heard them.

Regret opened a hole in my chest instantly. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I shouldn’t have said that!

What the hell was I doing, telling him I wanted him when I was days away from never seeing him again?

Rune clenched his jaws so hard I heard it. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just a banished bastard—I’m nothing,” he spit.

He could have stabbed me, and it would have hurt less. “You’re—” everything, I was going to say when…

“Rune.”

My heart stopped. The words died on my tongue.

Raja was just outside the door in the hallway.

Rune looked down at the floor for a moment, then straightened his shoulders. It only took him a second to compose himself, and when he spoke again, he sounded normal. Just like always.

“Come outside when you’re ready.”

With that, he walked out and closed the door behind him, leaving me all alone.

I went to the bathroom and I almost didn’t recognize the reflection in that mirror. I looked…detached. In shock. Unable to process what had just happened. Unable to come to terms with what my tomorrow was going to look like.

Back home without Rune. A world away from him.

And worse yet, he didn’t care to make this last day count. He wanted to stay away, and I understood. I really did. I should have wanted to stay away, too, since the very beginning. I should have been smart enough to see where this would end, and to stop it when I could, before it became… so much.

The problem was that I never actually believed that I could fall for a guy, let alone a fae whose life was such a secret I hardly knew three things about him with certainty. I genuinely didn’t believe that such a thing was even possible.

When I walked outside, I wasn’t even close to understanding anything at all, but I heard movement behind the house, and that’s where I went. I saw small white lights coming from beyond the first line of black trees, and that’s where my legs took me.

The sky had become a light gray with the rising sun. Rune was tending to two horses attached to a wooden carriage, at the door of which was Raja wearing black leather pants and a leather jacket to match. She said nothing, only waved a hand at me to enter the carriage.

With my mouth shut and my head down, I walked up the three narrow stairs until I was inside.

The door closed.

Two red velvet seats. Small windows on the sides, and one on the ceiling as well. There was no light other than the one coming through them.

I sat with my breath held, my hands fisted tightly, but Rune didn’t come to sit with me.

Barely a minute later, the horses moved, took the carriage forward.

I was all alone again.