Page 151 of Lifebound

Too fast. Too absurd. Too much.

My hands were on my head. My instincts were all over the place. I didn’t know whether to run back or forward or stay right where I was, but those men were fighting Rune, and I wasn’t going to just sit there and do nothing. I was going to join the fight, too, pick a rock and throw it at them if that was all I could do.

Except before I could bring my body to move, force my eyes to blink, I saw how Rune was moving, fighting with two swords at the same time, throwing both men back. The sound of metal clashing against metal filled my head, but I was no longer trying to close my ears. I just watched with my hands on my chest how Rune moved, so fast he turned to a blur as he jumped and ducked and leaned forward and back.

My God, it was like he didn’t have a bone in his body, like those swords weighed nothing at all.

It wasworking.

A couple of minutes must have passed. Rune got hit, too, by the men, but he was still standing, while one of them was already on the ground, trying to get back up, holding onto the wall of the tunnel.

We were going to make it, after all, I thought, until…

“No!”

The man who was trying to get up screamed the word at his friend, who had raised a hand toward Rune, the mask on his face covered in splatters of blood.

But before any of us could blink, a bright light came out of the man’s hand, as golden as the sun, and shot forward furiously.

Rune threw himself to the side and hit the opposite wall.

The golden light slammed onto the other, and the ground groaned.

Time seemed to move in fast-forward mode again. The ground shook like something was pulling and pushing it to the sides. I tried to hold on, but it was impossible to keep my balance. Dust rose in the air when I hit the ground on my side, and I struggled to breathe, to blink, to see where Rune was.

Fuck, the tunnel wasreallygoing to collapse on all our heads. We would be buried within seconds—and I believed it with my whole heart. The fear froze me, locked my muscles in place tightly, locked my jaws so that I couldn’t even call out his name.

But only specks of dirt and small rocks fell on me by the time the ground stopped shaking.

Taking control of my body again, I sat up, searching for Rune. The first thing I saw was the man on the ground on his back, with one of Rune’s swords coming out of his chest.

His mask was still on his face, his body perfectly motionless. His chest didn’t rise or fall.

He was already dead.

“Rune,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me because he was busy holding the other guy on his knees in front of him, silver sword on the side of his neck.

“Send word to your masters, coward. Anyone who comes for this mortal will die screaming, and I will carve her name into what’s left of their bones.”

Rune’s voice was crystal clear, and his every word rang true.

He moved his sword just slightly. It cut into the man’s shoulder, and he hissed in pain. Blood exploded, and I saw the splatters from the white lights that were only circles now, not birds. Rune pushed the man back and watched him as he dragged himself backward, holding his left arm to his chest.

He disappeared into the darkness, and a moment later, the sound of his footsteps faded away.

My eyes closed.It’s over,I told myself. The fae were gone.

But it still felt like nothing had even begun yet.

I focused on the air going down my lungs, and I heard it when Rune took his sword from the dead man’s chest. I heard it when he turned to me, too, and came closer.

“Nilah,” he whispered, his voice dry, his breathing heavy.

Then the ground began to growl again, as if it were angry.

Suddenly Rune was right beside me, back turned to me, swords raised as he waited—and I thought someone else was coming, too. I thoughtmorefae would pop up in the darkness with their glowing golden lights, but instead it was the tunnel.

It opened a massive hole on the wall next to the dead fae’s body, but it didn’t stop there.

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