Page 10 of Lifebound

Except this wasn’t fun, was it?

Especially when the boy said, “Why aren’t you healing?”

“I…I-I-I…” I couldn’t speak, and not only because I didn’t know what to tell him. I wasn’t healing because it wasvenom. Mom had told me what that was, and that there could be venomous snakes out in the woods, but I’d never once seen a snake before. I thought those weren’t real, either.

“Can younotheal?” the boy then asked, and this time all I did was shake my head.

A moment ticked by and he was thinking. Those golden eyes were on the ground between us, but he was locked inside his head.

“Do you wantmeto heal you? I think I can,” he finally said.

Unsure of what else to do, I nodded. Yes, I really wanted him to heal me so I could run back to Mom and never leave her side again. I really wanted that.

“Okay.”

Just like that, the boy licked his lips, pulled the hem of my dress to the side, and put both hands over my leg. I saw it but I couldn’t feel it. He was touching me, but I felt nothing at all.

Then the boy closed his eyes.

I couldn’t ask him what he was doing, where he kept his medicine. That’s what I imagined when he saiddo you want me to heal you—I thought he’d pull out a bottle of syrup and make everything better.

Except all he did was kneel there with his eyes closed, and he wasn’t real. His hands were glowinglike he had the sun under his skin, so he wasn’t real.

But the warmth was, though. The warmth that was coming from him was real enough that I felt it all the way to my core. My own eyes closed and then there was something inside me, something thatclicked. I remembered the sound of it distinctively. It clicked, and a shadow came over me—or maybe it was light. It slipped inside me with ease, like it belonged there, like it had finally found its place.

Even now, there was no way to explain the sensation properly. There simply weren’t enough words.

Or maybe I just didn’t understand it myself yet.

But a moment later, I could move. My jaws worked and my arms were starting to feel like my arms again, too. And my legs—they were there. Both of them.

“There,” the boy said. “All healed.”

I blinked my eyes fast and looked at his face, at his cheeks that were now red, at his eyes that were even more vibrant, the color so rich it almost looked like real, melting gold.

“How did you do that?” I asked, my voice working again the same as always. I pushed myself to sit up so I could look at my leg.

I don’t know what I expected to find but all I had on my skin was a little blood over my white socks, right there where the pain had been when I was bitten, and a thin red line that looked like a scratch.

Nothing else—just blood and a little scratch.

“With magic,” the boy said.

“Magic?”

“Yes.” He shrugged his shoulders. His cheeks remained red, and he looked…calmersomehow. Satisfied. “Do you not have magic?”

I shook my head. “No.”

I’d heard that word, and Dad had dressed up as a magician and had done his tricks for Halloween the year before, but this boy had no cards and no flowers and no large hat on his head. He didn’t much look like a magician. He looked like a drawing instead.

“Oh. Are you a human mortal?” he then asked.

A human mortal.I’d never been called that before, and I didn’t know whatmortalmeant, but… “Yes.”

He squinted his eyes. “But your eyes are so blue. Are you sure?”

I didn’t know what to say about my eyes, but I was sure about what I was, so I nodded.

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