Page 121 of Lifebound

Just as soon as I found him, everything was going to make perfect sense.

The bathroom was the best bathroom I had been to in this place. Perfectly clean, with a lot of those horizontal windows on the walls. It had an actual built-in sink with this device that kind of looked like a faucet, which, with the push of a lever, pulled up water from a giant bucket hidden in the cabinet underneath.

A mirror hung over it with a beautiful silver frame engraved with birds and flowers, and liquid soap, toothpaste, and crisp white towels were right to its side.

I looked at my reflection, expecting to find my face a mess. It wasn’t. My hair was tangled like it had been wet and had dried without brushing it, but that was it. My skin was clean, and my eyes were wide and alive, so blue from the sunlight they looked like they were filled with water. My mascara had been wiped off and the blush Miriam had put on me, too. I had no idea where my backpack was, though, but right now I couldn’t care less even if we had lost it.

I looked okay. Alive.Confused.

After using the bathroom and washing my teeth with my fingers, I went back into that corridor, wondering where Rune was and why he hadn’t come to find me yet.Terrifiedthat maybe he was sick or wounded but hoping that he was just sleeping somewhere on his own.

As I walked down the corridor, my leg still throbbed, but the pain wasn’t getting more intense. There were windows on both sides—a lake and mountains in the distance on the right, and only trees were visible on the left. Those same dark trees with almost grey leaves hanging on their branches.

The end of the corridor led me to a wide foyer, and the entrance door was halfway open.

Sunlight called my name. I moved to it without really thinking, and I walked outside and breathed in the fresh air, felt the warmth on my skin.

When my eyes adjusted to the bright light, I finally saw what was in front of me.

The lake was huge, and it seemed to wrap all around the land where this house was built. It went on deeper, behind the forest on the left, and ahead until the edge of a mountain. The sunlight was coming from behind that mountain, and judging by the sun’s position, it must have been afternoon.

The house at my back was possibly twenty or thirty feet from the edge of the lake. A short deck was built between the long grass blades and bushes lining it. In front of those bushes was a table and what could have been a grill on which the woman was cooking something. That same woman from before—Raja.

Swimming in the lake was Rune.

Surreal. So beautiful. If I’d had my phone with me, I’d take a thousand pictures of this place in this exact moment to make sure I never forgot it.

I spun around slowly to look at the house where I’d woken up—one story with a black rooftop and black window frames, but that wasn’t what made me stop breathing for a moment. It was the sky over it. The blue sky that gradually faded into a deep darkness as it went to the other side of that forest where I couldn’t see. The sky that was both day and night, and not too far from here, either.

Before I knew it, I was walking this wide path set with stones in odd shapes that slithered like a snake all the way to the deck. The air was still, no wind blew. The silence was only disrupted by birdsong in the distance, and the movement of the woman standing with her back turned to me, focused on whatever she was cooking on that grill.

The closer I got, the better I saw that it didn’t look all that different from a usual grill, though this was mostly made out of stone. A wooden plate at her side was full of grilled fish with the heads and skins and all. Fruits and vegetables, and a basket full of bread was on the table, along with a jug full of water, glasses and empty plates.

The woman didn’t turn to look at me at all even when I stopped a few feet behind her. Rune hadn’t seen me yet. He’d swum even farther away, almost to the middle of the lake.

From here, he looked okay. If he could swim like that, it meant he wasn’t injured that much, didn’t it?

“How is your leg?”

The voice almost startled me though I’d expected the woman to know I was here. I hadn’t exactly tried to sneak up on her, and she was fae. I’d seen her ears—and her magic, had felt it just that morning. She was the same kind of fae as Rune, except far more powerful.

“It’s fine. Doesn’t hurt much.” I approached her slowly. The smell of fish filled my nostrils, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It actually smelled delicious—or maybe I was just hungry.

The woman still wore the same black dress as that morning. It looked even better in sunlight, perfectly made with pieces of leather and lace added in just the right places.

Her face, though. I only saw her profile at first, and her face was absolutely breathtaking. Pin straight nose and raised cheekbones and skin that looked so blurred it was probably pore-less. A moment later, she turned and glanced at me with those dark brown eyes, and I saw exactly what Rune said before about age—just looking at this woman I could tell that she was old. Possibly as old as Helid, even if her skin and her hair didn’t show it.

“Did you, um…did you put this bandage on me?”

She paused for a split second. “Yes. After I healed your fractured bone.”

Well, fuck.I looked down at my leg. It made sense that I’d had a fractured bone because the pain had been incredible. I had no idea how I’d fallen on it so badly, but I was really glad that it wasn’t hurting like that anymore.

“Thank you,” I said, a bit breathless now.

“Don’t thank me, mortal. I didn’t do it for you.” The woman looked at the lake, at Rune still swimming almost in the middle, and he was looking our way now. He could definitely see me.

The urge to wave at him and basicallybeghim to come closer was so overwhelming, and it pissed me off.

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