Page 11 of Lifebound

The boy looked sad for a moment, and his red cheeks paled. “Then you can’t tell anyone I healed you. It’s against the rules,” he said.

“What’s your name?” I asked, so caught up in his face, on the way his hands were still glowing a little, that I reached out a hand to touch him. The fact that I’d just been about to die a moment ago was completely forgotten—this boy was more important than anything.

“My name is?—”

Something moved in the trees behind him, and he suddenly jumped to his feet.

He suddenly lookedterrified.

“Quick—stand still, and don’t move at all!” he told me, and again, he raised his hands toward me and closed his eyes.

My mouth opened to ask him what was wrong, to ask what his name was again, and how he’d done his magic. Why did he call me ahuman mortal—wasn’t he a human, too?

But then his hands started to glow and suddenly my breath caught in my sore throat as a wave of warmth fell over me.

The boy opened those strange eyes, brought his finger to his lips and said, “Shshsh…”

And the next moment, we heard someone’s voice.

“I told you not to leave your mother’s side!”

My heart all but beat out of me when the boy turned and started to run toward the trees. Toward the man who was waving him over.

The man who was right across from me now.

A grownup.Light hair, pale face, golden eyes that pierced the air as he looked around the meadow.

“I was just playing,” the boy said, and when he reached the open arm of the man, he turned to look at me.

Our eyes locked and held for a brief moment.

Then the man looked right at me, too, and I thought he was going to get mad. I thought he was going to go to my mom or something, tell her I’d been bad, and then I’dreallybe in trouble.

Except… “What are you looking at, boy?” the man said, and those eyes went right past me, like I wasn’t there. Like he couldn’t see me sitting on the grass in the middle of the meadow at all.

The boy said something I couldn’t hear, then turned around and went into the forest. The man took one last look at the meadow before he followed.

I didn’t seeeither of them again.

three

My eyes were closedand I could feel that warmth, the same warmth all over my body just like I had all those years ago.

It’s real, it’snotreal; it’s real, it’snotreal; it’s real, it’snotreal—my own thoughts wanted to drive me insane. It wasn’t enough that I’d had to live that, see that, but when I told people about it,nobodybelieved me even though I had the scar to prove it.

Do I?

God, I wanted to slap myself so hard I fell back asleep, but I couldn’t. Because the sun was up and I was already pushing down the blanket and pulling up my leg to look at my ankle, to make sure that the scar tissue was still there, just a small line that had once looked like a scratch.

I had to make sure because I didn’t trust my own self. I’d seen that scar, had had it on me my whole life, and I still didn’t trust myself. I still needed tolookto make sure it was there.

It was—and everyone could see it, and they still hadn’t believed me.

Except Mom.

Even when they ran blood tests on me and confirmed that there was no trace of any kind of venom in me whatsoever, she believed me. Even when Dad insisted that I’d fallen when I was three years old and had scratched my ankle and the scar had remained, she’d believed me. Even when the other kids pointed at me from across the street—she’d been the only one who believed me.

And then she’d gone and died just two years later.

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