Page 122 of Lifebound

Yes, I was uncomfortable standing here with this stranger, but I didn’t need a damn babysitter, did I?

“Whatever you did it for, I’m still thankful. And my name is Nilah, not mortal.” Because that word pissed me off, too. Maybe because it sounded like they used it to imply that we were inferior because of our mortality?

The woman turned to me again, just a quick look. “The prince saved his life,” she said, and it was very easy to tell just by the sound of her voice that she didn’t like talking to me any more than I liked talking to her right now.

“Yes, I know that, and?—”

“He keeps him alive still,” she cut me off.

“He does?”

Putting another cooked fish on the wooden plate, she turned to me, the wooden tongs still in her hand. She looked down at me somehow, though she was a bit shorter than me, but those dark eyes of hersconsumedme as she looked me over. Inch by little inch. I swear I felt completely naked under her gaze.

“His life has been difficult enough,” she told me. “Without the prince’s favor, he wouldn’t survive the Courts.” She leaned closer. “Andyouare threatening to ruin it all.”

I beg your fucking pardon?

I shook my head so hard the entire view tilted. “No, no, no, I’m not. I’m not ruining anything—I’m just trying to get to the prince to heal him so that he can wake up. Rune is going to be perfectly safe.”

“Will he now,” the woman said, slowly crossing her arms in front of her, smiling, but it was so bitter I could taste it on my tongue. “You mortals always think youknoweverything.”

My jaw almost hit the ground, but she didn’t even let me comment.

“Tell me this, then—do you know what happens after? Have you ever bothered that head of yours with that question?”

I fisted my hands. I gritted my teeth, and my automatic instinct was to feel guilty. Because usually everything that happened in my life was somehow my fault. When the people around me were mad and disappointed, it was becauseof me.

But this time it was different.

I didn’t know this woman at all, and she had no right to accuse me like this.

“I haven’t, actually. I’m terribly sorry, but I didn’t really have the time to wonder about anything while I was running for my life and trying to survive in a world I didn’t even know existed a week ago. Where everyone is constantly trying to tell me how worthless I am and how superior they are to me—including yourself, even though you don’t even know me—and everyone has tried to take advantage of me one way or the other, except for Rune. So, excuse me if I’ve been a little busy surviving.”

The woman was not surprised or impressed. Instead, she put the tongs down on the rock on which her grill was built and came even closer.

Every instinct in my body said that I should back away because I had seen what this woman could do. I’d seen it with my own eyes how she’d basically knocked out all those incubi and succubi at once without breaking a sweat.

Yet my pride didn’t let me move a single inch even if my heart was shaking me like a drum.

“That boy has gone through enough hardship. If something happens to him because of you, I will not take it lightly,” she whispered. “So, answer me: what is it that you plan to doafteryou heal the prince?”

It was a goddamn order.

I crossed my arms in front of my chest and prayed my voice didn’t shake when I said, “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out when I feel like it.”

A ghost of a smile touched those long pale pink lips, this one worse than the first. “When you feel like it might just be too late. I could be coming for you then.”

My God, she was actually serious. And I didn’t even have the time to be properly shocked by it.

“Threaten me all you like, lady. I came here to save your prince because he saved my life, too. If it wasn't for Rune, I’d be dead by now. That means something to me. I would never hurt him,” I said instead.

“You already have,” she said.

“I haven’t.”Never. I’d rather claw my own eyes out, and if this woman knew what it was like inside me when I thought of Rune, when I was close to Rune, she wouldn’t have been arguing with me right now. She wouldn’t be threatening me like this

“He washes your clothes—by hand.He cleans you and stays by your side for hours—after hecarriesyou all the way here.” Oh, she wasmadas hell and it was written clearly in her eyes. It terrified me, that look, but I also couldn’t move away now because of her words. “A fae carrying a mortal—we do not carry mortals. We do not carry anyone.We. Are.Not. Horses.”

She moved lightning fast, and the next moment, I only saw her back as she walked away toward the house and disappeared inside the door, leaving me there with my mouth wide open.

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