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thirty-eight

The look in his eyes said that he wanted to talk to me. He wanted to say something.

And I wanted to say something, too. I wanted to say everything.

Neither of us did.

As we walked deeper into the cave, Rune sometimes turned back to look at me, and my heart would stand still, thinking now he’ll say something, tell me what he’s thinking, what he wants, but then he’d think better of it.

And as much as I hated it, I was also relieved. Because whatever it was that he wanted to say, whatever it was that he wanted, it was going to make me feel worse. It was going to tear me apart even more. The future was uncertain, and I had no idea what happened once the prince was awake.

But all of it could be worse if I knew that maybe Rune wanted me to stay.

All of it would be much worse if I knew that Rune wanted me to leave and never visit again.

So, in the end, I didn’t have the courage to say a single word.

The sound of our footsteps was the only thing we heard. We walked at a steady pace, and the boots helped in keeping my feet light and pain-free. The leg that I’d fractured was fully healed now. No sign of pain anywhere. I was perfectly okay, physically speaking. Full of food—and of Rune, too. Just the thought of being on my knees in front of him made my skin raise in goose bumps automatically and turned me on.

I kept thinking, what if we just stay here for another day? We had more food left in that bag because Rune didn’t really need much. We were alone. We were together. Why not ?

“Look,” Rune said after a while, pointing at the ceiling ahead of us. The birds that never once stopped glowing so brightly moved higher up to show me what he wanted me to see. The roots, thick and thin that came through to the tunnel from the ground up there were moving.

I stopped walking, blinked my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, but I wasn’t. Those roots were moving to the sides, some faster and some slower, like they were fucking alive.

“What the fuck.” My voice was loud, and it echoed all the way up there to those roots.

“We’re possibly passing under the garden of a powerful sorcerer. They can basically give movement to plants they use for their herbs and potions. They generate more magic that way,” he said.

My skin crawled and I was never not going to look up now for as long as we were down here.

“That is so…so… vile .” I didn’t even know what thoughts to have. Give movement? How in the fuck did that even work?

“It’s the way of magic. The more you take from your source, the more power you have to create your visions. It’s a trade—one kind of energy for another. For Verenthians, it’s simply the price to pay.”

“Except for fae,” I said.

“Yes. The fae create their own magic authentically inside their bodies.”

“Does that mean the more you use the less power you have?” I wondered.

“Not at all. The more a fae uses, the more he is able to produce. More power creates more power.”

I looked at his profile as we continued to walk. He always referred to the fae as them , never as we. Had he really been so cast out all his life that he didn’t even feel part of his own kind?

Because it was possible. I’d always felt like I didn’t belong with my own kind, either.

“What did you do, really?” I asked in a whisper, almost sure that he would tell me to mind my own business. I hadn’t wanted to ask earlier because the situation had been too tense, and I thought it might make him uncomfortable, but I was so curious to know. “To get banished. What did you do?”

“I told you before,” Rune said, and he had—back when we started this journey.

“You said you don’t know.” Which was why I’d thought he’d lied, or that he’d just wanted to get me off his back or something.

Now, Rune nodded. “They locked my memory of it with the mark.” And he gently tapped his left shoulder.

I looked down at his arm, at his hand that held mine so tightly. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“Not at all,” said Rune, and he was most definitely not lying—or trying to get me off his back about it.

“But why?! What did they say you did? Just… why ?”

Silence for a moment. My heart hammered as I tried to imagine someone messing with my mind, blocking my own damn memories. Fuck, Rune must have felt so violated.

Finally, he said, “Because I killed someone.” My heart stopped. “I killed the Ice Queen of the Frozen Court.”

My legs stopped moving, too. My hand slipped away from his, and when he turned to look at me, Rune was so… desperate. So guilty. Like he was trying to get small all of the sudden.

“Wildcat,” he said, and it was almost a pleading, but I shook my head.

“No,” I said because fuck, no. “There is no way in any hell that you would kill someone. A queen or whatever—no way.”

His eyes were wide open and for a moment, he had nothing to say.

“You were six years old, and you were you —there is absolutely no way, Rune. No way—they lied.” Don’t ask me how I knew this—I just did. I knew it deep in my bones that it was bullshit.

Slowly, Rune lowered his head. “They had proof. Eyewitnesses. I did it.”

“ How?! ” I stepped in front of him and grabbed his shoulders. “How in the fuck could a six-year-old kid kill a damn queen? That’s bullshit and you know it! Not just because you couldn’t have, but also because you wouldn’t. You’re you. I know you. Children who kill when they’re children do not grow up to be like you.”

“I don’t know how—they locked my memory of it. I don’t know what I was thinking or why—just that I did it,” Rune said.

“Well, you didn’t. The fact that they locked your memory speaks for itself—you didn’t. If you did, why would they bother to lock your memory before sending you to that place? Think about it—they wouldn’t .”

He did think about it, and for a moment, he only looked at me like he was at a complete loss. “The Midnight King has no reason to lie, Wildcat. He doesn’t need to lie—he’s the king.”

“First of all, what kind of a king would banish a six-year-old boy with no magic and no means to protect himself into a place like that?!” I spit because this was ridiculous. This was absolutely crazy! “And second—I bet my life to you and to anyone willing right now that you did not kill anyone when you were six years old. You just didn’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

My poor heart.

“Because…because, I don’t know, Rune, I know you.” I couldn’t really explain to him why it made such perfect sense to me, but it did. I knew it just like I knew that I would die if I stopped breathing. “You would never. Not when you were six, and not now.”

Closing his eyes, Rune smiled a little. “Have you forgotten what I did to those men in the basement already?”

I flinched. “That was different. You knew what they were planning to do to me.”

“And maybe I knew what the Ice Queen was planning to do, too—who knows?”

I reached out my hands and touched his cheeks. “ I know. I’m alive because of you, Rune. I was a stranger to you, and I made you miserable and pissed you off, and you never hesitated once to get in front of anything for me. People who are capable of killing at the age of six don’t do that. They just don’t.”

Slowly, Rune held my hand to his cheek and turned his head to kiss my palm. “It doesn’t matter, Wildcat. Things are as they are, and nothing can change them. Come on, let’s keep going.”

With my hand in his still, we started walking ahead again as the birds led the way.

“But there might be something you could do. Maybe go talk to the king, ask him to at least take that mark off you. The seal that prevents you from using your magic.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“But have you tried?”

“No.”

“So, how do you know?”

“Because, Wildcat…” His voice trailed off on purpose.

“Because what ?” And I was not going to drop this, not now when I knew more.

Until Rune said, “Because he didn’t just banish and mark a six-year-old boy. He banished and marked his son.”

There went my heart again, stopping for seconds at a time. “What?” I breathed.

Rune smiled at me sadly. “That’s right, wilding. I’m the king’s bastard son.”

My brain drew a blank. I had no more arguments, nothing to say. All I could do was hug him with all my strength.

Tears slipped from my eyes and I was breaking all the way. To think that Rune not only had to go through all of that but because of his own father? It was unfathomable. I didn’t know how to make sense of it, so I just squeezed him with all my might.

Rune chuckled that sweet sound as he wrapped his arms around me, too. “It’s okay, Wildcat. Really.” He leaned back and raised my head so he could see my face. He smiled at me as he wiped my tears with his thumb and said, “And you didn’t piss me off. Not for a second. I just didn’t know what to do with all you made me feel.” Slowly, he leaned in and kissed the last of my tears from my eyes, then the tip of my nose, then my lips.

I said nothing because if I did, I would start crying again, sobbing like a fucking idiot. And I didn’t want him to have to go through that, too, so I spared him and kept my mouth shut.

Rune took my hand in his again and led me forward, his step never faltering.

For a while we didn’t speak at all, just focused on the rhythm of our footfalls. Eventually, he asked me questions about back home, about what I did when people bullied me—something he’d asked me before. And so, I told him all about it, held nothing back. It was Rune. I wanted him to know me as I was, too.

But the pain in my heart only grew heavier with every new smile and laugh he gave me for the next few hours. And it felt like it was going to stay there for the rest of my life.

* * *

We stopped only for little water breaks. Rune continuously asked me if I wanted him to carry me, but I would rather just walk beside him, hand in hand. We talked about Earth and about Verenthia, saw a lot more of those moving roots while we were under Mysthaven, and then the tunnel began to become very creepy, too.

“What is that?” I asked when the howl-like sound reached my ears. Rune raised his hand forward, and the birds rushed to reveal to me that the tunnel ahead went two ways. We had never seen that before—there was only one way to go—forward—and if there were corners, they always led to dead ends.

“It’s just the wind. That way leads to Bloomsridge and the Vale eventually. That’s what Raja said, though I’ve never tried it,” Rune said, and when we passed the mouth of the tunnel on the right, colder air made the hair on my skin stand at attention.

The names came back to me—the golems and the shifters. Actual werewolves .

“It sounds like howls,” I muttered, trying not to sound so terrified.

“Pretty sure the tunnel’s just open somewhere.” He must have noticed me shivering because he put his arm around me and pulled me to his side. “It’s okay, Wildcat. There’s no need to be afraid. Nothing comes through here anymore.”

And I believed him, but my instincts had a mind of their own, and the deeper we went, the heavier this feeling in my chest became.

We passed another two tunnels that Rune said would possibly lead to either Mysthaven or Bloomsridge. No sounds and no wind and no cold air, but that didn’t mean I felt any better.

We kept going for a long time, but when I saw light coming from ahead, I stopped automatically. The birds were there, flying over our heads, so they were not the ones making that blueish light. Every instinct in my body screamed that we were screwed, that it was over, that we’d been found, when…

“That over there leads to the Mercove,” Rune said. “Do you want to see?”

He wasn’t afraid in the least.

“But there’s light,” I whispered, and he nodded eagerly, eyes sparkling with excitement.

“Come on, let me show you.”

We went closer and closer, down the side of the main tunnel and to an opening that led to this round space glowing with blueish light. It wasn’t coming from birds at all—it was coming from glowing plants and crystals all around a tunnel that seemed to lead upward .

“Holy shit,” I breathed, mesmerized at the sight in front of me.

Patches of moss grew on all sides of the tunnel, and those plants were indeed glowing blue and green. Flowers and leaves and stems—and those crystals, too, that were on the smaller side, standing upright on the sides and only close to the mouth of the tunnel. The light they cast all around themselves was fucking magical. They were semi-transparent and cut into perfect rectangles, and they looked like they simply grew that way on the moss.

“Those are water plants. They usually glow in contact with oxygen,” Rune said. “Most are poisonous, but these aren’t.”

“And what about the crystals? So beautiful,” I whispered.

“Those are tempest crystals. Very dangerous—they can actually explode and burn underwater.”

I looked at him. “Are you serious?” Burn underwater?

“Very—and you only need to shake them or drop them to activate them. Not something to be messed with.”

“But…but I wanted to take one with me,” I said with a pout. They really did look so beautiful.

Suddenly Rune leaned in and took my lip between his teeth. “I’m gonna bite this off if you do that again.”

I grinned, a million butterflies exploding in my stomach. “Sure thing, Mr. Moody.” And I made a mental note to pout more often.

Rune shook his head as he looked down at my lips. “I still haven’t ruled out the possibility that you’re an incubus in disguise.”

Laughter exploded out of me. “Oh, boy. Just when I thought I was hiding it well…”

His smile was otherworldly—a full smile, one I saw so rarely on him. He showed me all his teeth and his eyes crinkled and his cheeks gained a little color, too—how could I resist kissing his entire face?

“I’ll find out the truth eventually,” Rune whispered and kissed my lips again. My toes curled in my boots, and I was so fucking happy I could burst.

That’s it—that’s all it took. His arms and his lips and his affection.

“You sure, though? Absolutely sure that I can’t take a crystal with me? I’ll be careful with it, I promise,” I said, but he shook his head, still smiling.

“Very sure. Stay away from tempest crystals at all costs, Wildcat.”

Oh, well. I was still the happiest girl in all the worlds.