Page 120 of Lifebound

A thin brow arched. Her eyes moved to Rune in question, and I had no idea what for.

“Raja, meet Nilah. Nilah, this is Raja.”

“Hello,” I whispered.

The woman looked at me again, this time like I’d offended her with my greeting.She didn’t even sayhi,simply turned around and walked into the dark forest with her chin up.

“What the…”

“She’ll come around. Just give her time,” Rune whispered and started to follow her.

“Whatever,” I muttered, my eyes burning, and I didn’t even have the energy to ask him who this pretentious fae was.

“Sleep, Wildcat,” Rune whispered. “We have a long way ahead.”

I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to stay awake with him and talk to him and make sure he was okay.

Except too much had happened, and my mind was so chaotic. The energy that had gone through me when my hands lit up had made a mess of my insides. Part of me thought I should tell Rune about it right now and get it over with because it was real. It had to be—I’dseenit, had felt it just minutes ago.

But my lips remained sealed, and my eyes closed all the way. I fell asleep listening to his heartbeat against my hand.

* * *

The warmthof sunlight fell on my leg. My naked leg. My wounded leg.

My eyes opened and I found myself lying on a bed with a soft mattress. Slowly I sat up, half convinced that I was dreaming because the last time I was awake I was in Rune’s arms. The last time I was awake my leg had been hurting if I even breathed in too deeply, and now…

The room was small, with three windows unlike any I’d ever seen before—rectangular frames set horizontally one over the other on the same wall across from the bed I lay on. The sunlight that came through the highest one was falling on my naked leg. Nakedcleanleg that was also bandaged from my knee down to my ankle, and the pain had turned almost completely numb.

I looked down and almost screamed—I was naked underneath the thin white cover that was barely hanging on my nipples. Before I could, though, I saw the blue dress Miriam had made me, atop a drawer on the other side of the room, together with my bra and my underwear and my socks.

Clean and dry and folded, all of them, while my sneakers were on the floor near the drawer’s legs, also cleaner than they had been at Lorei’s party.

My heart skipped a beat as the memories rushed through my mind. I pushed the cover off and put my feet against the wooden floor with no clue whether I could stand or not. But I needed to get dressed and I needed a bathroom.

Most importantly, I needed to find Rune.

By some miracle, my leg held me. The pain was still there, double now that I was putting weight on it, but it was nothing compared to what it had felt like that morning. Or at least I assumed it had been that morning.

Images flashed before my eyes—Rune and the woman and the cages and the shadows, and I was so distracted by them that I dressed on autopilot. So distracted that it took me a moment to remember that I’d had my panties in the pocket of the cloak, yet they had been washed and dried and put here for me to find.

Heat gathered on my cheeks. Had all of that really happened? Had I really touched myself in front of Rune, and had I really danced and come on his lap at a fucking orgy?

Oh, God…

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried not to panic. Tried not to think. When I put my sneakers on, my leg hurt twice as much, so I left them there and walked out the door barefoot.

A wide corridor full of light. Windows on both sides, and two doors near the one I came out of. I tried the one on the right—locked. The left one led to the bathroom I so desperately needed before my bladder exploded and killed me for real.

Blood, broken skulls, body parts on the floor.

Rune had killed three incubi. He’d killed them in that basement, had left the pieces of them all over.

At first, I’d been afraid. Terrified at the idea, but now that I’d seen how that man Rogue had been about to cut Rune’s head off…

Now I was a little angry Rune hadn’t killedallof them—the entire fucking building.

“It’s okay,”I told myself. “I’ll talk to him—it’s okay.”

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