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forty-five

The first thing I felt when I came to was the cold—soft and biting my skin at the same time. My clothes were wet, at least on one side, but I wasn’t lying in the water. I was lying on hard marble instead—and the shallow pool I’d been standing in what felt like moments ago was just within my reach.

My God, it was so goddamn cold inside me. My limbs ached. My chest felt hollow. Empty without the heat I apparently was so used to having there under my skin.

Funny how I never really realized it.

I sat up too fast. The world spun once, twice, and steadied. I opened my mouth to call for Lyall, but I never got the chance.

Because I wasn’t alone in that silent room like I first thought. The Seelie Queen was there with me.

She sat on the floor with one leg under her, and her arm over her knee, playing with the crystal-clear water at the very edge of the shallow pool behind me. The water that had resembled a mirror when I first came here but somehow didn’t anymore .

She wore white and gold, her long hair done in a braid, her strands threaded with gold here and there, and she didn’t raise her head, though she probably saw me sitting up.

She just continued to stir the water with her fingertips slowly.

“You survived,” she then said, her voice clear and ice-cold—a different cold from the one inside me.

Dragging myself on my hands, I pulled myself farther away from the pool, closer to the dark doorway, as if I had any hope of running when I couldn’t even stand up yet.

A thought occurred to me, one dark and final and so fucking heavy.

If my memory served me right, I was no longer bound to the Seelie Prince.

The golden thread had burned, and the ashes fell in this water.

We were no longer tied together by magic, Lyall and I, and I felt it.

I felt the way the warmth had slipped from me, had left me freezing.

A layer of frost was over my heart, and I was honestly surprised that it was still beating, but it did.

I was surprised my breath didn’t come out in white clouds, too.

I tried to speak but I couldn’t, not yet. My throat burned as if I’d swallowed ice.

The queen finally looked up, and her eyes met mine. “Do you know why it hurts so much when something ancient is torn from something young?” She tilted her head to the side. “Because the young weren’t built to carry it.”

What in the actual fuck, lady?!

Every hair on my skin stood at attention as I moved farther back slowly. My body wasn’t frozen like I feared it would be— like it should have been considering the way my insides felt—but I still wasn’t strong enough to stand. I was trying.

At least when I wet my dry lips and tried to speak again, I could. “What happened?”

The life bond was broken, torn out of me—that much I felt.

And then I’d passed out.

The queen stood up, moving ever so gracefully, and began to walk the edge of the pool. She was barefoot, her feet barely making any sound against the marble.

“Magic doesn’t die, you know. Not truly. When it loses a host, it only waits for a vessel that fits it.”

“I don’t…I don’t understand.”

She stopped on the other side of the pool, right where Lyall had been standing when I first came in here. “That’s okay. You don’t have to. It won’t matter for much longer anyway.”

My limbs were feeling a bit stronger, though my legs were still shaking. I still forced myself to stand up, get as far away from her as I could.

“Why?” I demanded, and I hated that my voice sounded so weak. “Why won’t it matter?” Because the way she said it…

The queen smiled. “You saw it, didn’t you.”

Everything came to a halt. Even my legs were no longer shaking. “What?”

“The painting. You saw it.”

There went my knees again.

There went my thoughts spiraling out of control, my memories of the painting of the Ice Queen, half torn, the plaque underneath with her name on it clean, when others weren’t.

And suddenly my mind made up this detailed image of this very woman standing in front of me tonight, crownless, slipping into the Gallery of Time, finding the portrait, ripping the canvas in half…

I swallowed hard. “Was it you? Did you put that there? Did you hope to trick me with it?”

Suddenly, the queen threw her head back and laughed. “ Trick you?! Oh, no, mortal, no!”

God, she laughed like she’d just heard the funniest thing in her whole life, and I was going to demand she tell me exactly what the hell she was talking about, demand it again and again, until she answered, when?—

“Mother.”

Her laughter cut abruptly. Lyall walked in through the doorway, looking as put together as always, not a hair out of place. And the queen smiled.

“Oh, my boy. I was just keeping your guest entertained.” She rushed to his side, moving like she truly was a fairy like I’d seen in movies back home, her dress floating about her with each step.

She put her hands on Lyall’s chest and kissed his cheek. “Don’t take long.”

The queen turned to me and I was stuck in my disbelief, wanting to scream at her face and run away until I disappeared at the same time.

My voice failed me so I couldn’t manage to even stop her when she disappeared beyond the doorway like her feet glided over the floor—and then Lyall was in front of me.

He put something around my shoulders. “Here. I brought you this.”

A cloak, thick and warm and red.

“You fell in the pool when the life bond broke, but you’re okay. It’s over now.”

I blinked a million times before I was able to focus on his face. “Your…your mother…” Damn my traitorous voice that always failed me when I risked choking on emotions.

“Don’t mind my mother. She’s just looking forward to retiring, that’s all. Come. Let me take you to get warmed up.”

I looked at him again, really looked at him, saw how pale he was. How the circles under his eyes looked like bruises all of a sudden.

“I…I have to go,” I thought I said, completely disoriented. “I have to go, Lyall.”

“You have to rest first,” he said, but when I stepped back, he didn’t stop me. “You lost a lot of energy. I did, too—I could barely keep standing. You need to rest first, Nilah.”

I could have sworn that it was a fucking threat.

My freezing heart picked up the beating and I forced myself to raise my chin. No more of this weakness. No more cowering back.

“The only thing I need is to walk away from this palace. The life bond is no more. We’re both free.”

I held his eyes for a long moment, not daring to even blink. This was the moment of truth. Here, Lyall would show me what he really was made of. Here, I would finally figure out whether he ever intended to let me walk away after the unbinding ceremony or not.

My heart pounded. My limbs felt numb, both from the cold and from how tightly I was clenching my every muscle.

Then…

“Of course,” Lyall whispered. “You’re free to leave whenever you like.”

It took all of me to stop the sigh of relief that wanted to rip out of me. He was going to let me go, after all. I was free to leave right this second, and I would. As soon as I walked out of this room, I would keep going until I was out of this palace, but…

I never got the chance to say a word or take a step before we heard someone coming through the dark corridor that had led me here.

Both Lyall and I turned to see who it was, and I never in a billion years could have ever predicted or imagined the next moment, not even in my wildest dreams.

But Rune stepped into the lights, stopped in the middle of the doorway, clothes half torn, hair all over the place, skin covered in blood and grime.

Rune was right there.

That my knees didn’t give was a damn miracle, but I thought they were just too frozen, locked too tightly to budge.

My eyes were open, and I was looking at Rune, alive and a mess and standing on his own.

The silence in the room lasted an entire eternity. Even Lyall didn’t move a single inch, and I could have sworn he was just as shocked to see Rune there as I was.

He’d thought Rune was dead.

I’d thought Rune was far away, waiting for me.

“I take it that it went well?”

His voice ripped through the air and filled my ears, and my mind was suddenly overwhelmed with one thought: Rune is here, Rune is here, Rune is back.

I don’t know how I managed to run.

I don’t know how I didn’t fall on my face, but I was jumping in his arms the very next second.

Screw the ritual and the prince and the court—and the entire fucking continent: Rune was here. He hadn’t died. I didn’t have to wait a second longer to be with him. He was here now, and everything was going to be all right.