Page 44

He looked asleep, but he also looked sick.

I sat at the edge of the bed covered with milky white silk sheets, and a dark red velvet cover over the prince’s body.

He was really here. He was really asleep.

He was really him.

I couldn’t see his eyes, but I saw the little boy he was at the meadow in the line of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbones, the color of his hair that had grown past his shoulders, neatly combed over them. His skin didn’t glow with health like it had then, though, and he seemed to have lost weight, but it was him. It was the boy who’d saved me in the meadow, and I’d have known it in my heart even if I hadn’t seen him at all. Just to be near him was enough.

“Well?” the queen said. “Heal him—what are you waiting for?”

She stood behind me with Helid, right over my head, and I hated it.

So, I looked up and said, “Please give me some space.”

The queen wasn’t going to want to move, I knew that even before I said anything. But Helid grabbed her by the hand and pulled her back just a couple feet, and it was enough for me.

I breathed a little easier, and I could even convince myself for a moment that the prince and I were alone.

“Hey, you,” I said, and my eyes filled with tears instantly. His hands were folded over the red velvet cover, and I touched them. I put mine right over his, and something went through me, something that made me gasp. It wasn’t bad or good—it was just a feeling, like I imagined a ghost might feel if it went right through my body.

There were no ghosts here, though. Just the connection he’d created between us that day he saved my life.

It’s him, all right. He’s real. I hadn’t made anything up. All of this was real.

“I’m gonna need you to wake up now so I can smack you for never coming back to see me,” I said, and those tears streamed down my cheeks so fast now. I moved closer to him, put my other hand over his, and I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but…I did.

Somehow, in some weird way, I knew what to do— exactly what the prince had done that day he healed me. He’d put his hands on my wound and he’d let out his light and his warmth, and it had been over. Easy.

I let go of a shaky breath and moved my hands to his chest, right over his heart. I felt the beating of it, so slow and weak, and I closed my eyes tightly.

“Please wake up, Lyall. Wake up,” I whispered while I searched inside me for that warmth, that bright golden light that was a part of him. The light he’d given me from himself.

And I found it again, as easily as I had when I thought Rune’s life was in danger. It was right there, burning in my chest, and the more attention I gave it, the brighter it became. The more I called for it, and the more I pleaded with the prince to wake up, the faster it traveled down my arms and to my hands.

Light behind my closed lids. I pulled them open while I whispered, please, please, and it was indeed coming from my hands, slipping into the white shirt the prince wore, and underneath it, to his chest. To his very heart.

For a moment, everything stopped. The whole world hung on a single thread.

Then came his next heartbeat—stronger this time. Steady. Alive.

A scream slipped out of me because of the suddenness of the energy that went through me. Again—it wasn’t painful, it wasn’t anything bad, but it was so sudden, so intense, and it left me feeling more awake and more alive, too. It made my own heart beat twice as strongly as well.

The prince opened his eyes.

My breath caught in my throat and my own eyes refused to blink. He opened his eyes, and they were his eyes, golden and light and beautiful. They were his eyes, the eyes of that boy, and when he slowly moved them down toward mine, the world stopped for the second time.

In that short moment, everything felt right .

Exactly as it was always supposed to be.

“N…N-Nilah?”

I burst out in tears once more, but I was also smiling because somehow, against all those odds, I’d done it.

I’d survived the fae realm, and I’d healed the prince of the Seelie Court.

Me. Nilah Dune of Lavender Hill, the weirdo, the crazy girl, the cuckoo.

“You’re a freaking prick, you know that?” I said, and I doubted he even understood me because my voice was shaking so much. “You never came back! Nobody b-b-believed me—you never came back!”

God, why the hell was I crying so hard?!

And I couldn’t even stop, not when someone behind me cried, too, and moved, and even screamed. I was focused on the prince, on his hands when they wrapped around mine over his chest, on the smile he barely smiled as he looked up at me.

“How?” he finally said, and his voice was dry and small, but he was awake. His eyes were open, and his heart was beating so much faster. So much stronger.

“Apparently you bonded with me when you healed me that day when we were kids.”

The prince’s eyes widened, then closed again.

“By Reme—yes, I thought I did. It wasn’t on purpose, I swear it,” he said, and though he sounded so different now, I could actually see the little boy he was back then. I could see the ease with which he offered to save my life, like it was nothing. Not even a minor inconvenience. “I’ve been trying to keep it a secret my whole life.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have. Had I known I’d have come sooner,” I said, shaking my head, so fucking happy I could burst.

“How did you make it all the way here? What…” He looked around as if to make sure that he was still in his home, not somewhere else.

“Your uncle found me and told me about you, brought me to Verenthia. Then Rune made sure I made it here safely.”

Thick blond brows shot up on his forehead. “Rune? ” He was genuinely surprised.

“Yes—Rune. He brought me here just now.”

His smile stretched bigger. My heart beat with twice as much joy.

I knew it! The prince was not going to even hesitate to let Rune visit me and me visit him. He was going to help us. He was going to make everything possible.

“I can’t…I can’t believe it. You’re really here,” the prince said, and then his eyes moved up somewhere behind me. “Mother, Uncle, what—” He was cut off by this cough that came out of nowhere and pulled him up, shook the entire bed.

“Oh, my boy!”

Suddenly I was pushed aside.

Suddenly, both the queen and Helid were reaching for the prince, touching him, his mother holding his head against her chest as he coughed, but he was smiling. The prince was smiling, and when Helid pushed me even farther back to get closer, I stood up to give him more room. This was his nephew, after all—I imagined he was over the moon to see him awake after so long.

And the queen, too—she was crying and laughing at the same time, a completely different person from who she had been when she first saw me. A mother.

The prince looked at me for a moment. Our eyes connected. The color in them looked even brighter than a moment ago. I could have sworn I saw the thank you he wanted to say but couldn’t. I saw it as clear as day.

But the coughing started again, and Helid was offering him a glass of water, and the queen was pushing his hair away from his face. He really did look sick, like he had pneumonia or something, but I doubted that was problematic now. He’d be back to himself in no time, I figured.

The closer the other two fae and the seer came to the bed to see the prince, the closer to the door I moved—on instinct.

It was done now, all done. He was awake and he needed a little time with his family before I could talk to him. He probably needed to eat, too, and rest before I could ask him to take me back home. To let Rune stay with me on Earth for as long as he could.

My heart beat fast with pride as I watched the prince trying to stop coughing, while the seer insisted on holding his hand for a moment longer. It was so chaotic over there because everyone seemed to be talking at the same time—the queen telling him to lie down, Helid telling him to sit up, the seer begging him to stand still.

The guard who’d let Rune out was right there by the wall still, and I asked him, “May I go outside for some air?” I wanted to give them a moment of privacy.

And I wanted to find Rune, too, to tell him that it was over. I would come back to speak to the prince once he calmed down and stopped coughing.

The guard nodded his head and immediately pulled the door open without ever looking at me.

“Thank you,” I said, and with one last look at the prince in his mother’s embrace, I stepped outside into the hallway, the balcony, and breathed in the fresh air.

The guard closed the door behind me. The balcony was empty. Rune wasn’t there, only a couple guards standing by the wall down the hallway.

Slowly, I made my way to the golden railing, hands slightly shaking. I took in the view I’d wanted to see before going through that door, thinking something bad was going to happen. Something awful.

Well, it didn’t. It was already over, and the Seelie Court stretched before me, wide and beautiful, brimming with golden light. With people. The prince was awake, and…

“My God, I did it,” I whispered to the stars twinkling in the sky. “I did it .”

As impossible as everything seemed to me looking back at it now, I’d done it. I’d healed the prince. I’d saved him just like he’d saved me.

And now I could run and find Rune wherever he was hiding, and I could tell him all about it. Ask him if he wanted to spend time with me on Earth when they took me back.

Ask him if he maybe wanted me forever, like I wanted him. Because, God, I wanted him with every fiber of my being, and I was already missing his beautiful face.

With tears in my eyes, I was smiling so big my cheeks hurt. The plan was to go to those guards and ask them if they could take me to Rune, or if they could go call him for me, tell him I was waiting for him.

But the moment I turned around, a deafening sound rang somewhere outside, so loud my hands went to my ears to shield them. It was like something hit a large bong somewhere over our heads, and the entire palace shook.

My stomach fell and I was moving, running back toward the prince’s bedroom to ask what the hell that was, what it meant— and where the hell is Rune?!

Both doors of the prince’s room suddenly opened. I stopped in the middle of the hall when the man, one of the two who’d been in the room with the seer, shouted, “ MURDERER! ”

Every inch of my body froze. The guards who were on the other side of the hall were running toward us, unsheathing their swords.

“The prince is dead! The prince is dead!”

A scream cut through the air, then a woman’s cry. The man walked outside, his bloodshot eyes on me.

But when he stepped aside, I saw inside the room I’d been in just now. I saw the side of the prince’s bed, and I saw the prince lying on the floor on his back near it, motionless, with a knife sticking out of his chest, his white shirt stained red.

“She killed him!”

I blinked and turned to the fae who now had both his index fingers pointed at me.

“She killed the prince! Attack!”

Everything came crashing down on me at once. The guards turned their golden swords toward me, looked at me like they expected me to burst into flames. The doors of the prince’s room closed again, and I couldn’t see his body anymore. My ears whistled as more guards came running from the other side of the hallway—so many more.

I moved back as they said something, shouted orders I didn’t really understand, until my back hit the railings and there was nowhere left to go.

Just like that, I was surrounded by a dozen fae guards and I was all alone.

That’s when I realized that nothing was over. Everything was only just beginning.

—THE END OF BOOK 1

Thank you for reading LIFEBOUND !

I really hope you enjoyed Nilah’s story.