Page 156 of Lifebound

I said whatever came to my mind first with barely any focus.

And while I spoke, something inside me clicked just like it had the first time I went through the Aetherway. Just like that morning in the dark forest. I felt the heat spreading in the center of my chest, and I felt it when it moved to my shoulders, down my arms.

Please be real, please be real, please be real,I prayed with all my being, and the voices of the mermaids, the lights of the caverns—none of it existed for me anymore. I no longer spoke, even though they continued to ask me questions.

All I needed was to make things float—especially those boxes at the edge of the pool. Especially the three full of tempest crystals that could burn underwater.

I pushed against the heat, pushed it harder down my arms and to my hands, and I willed it to spread out of me in the only way I knew how to do it—byimaginingit. I imagined my hands were glowing with golden light, and I imagined magic coming out of them, pickingeverythingup, throwing it to the sides. Making a mess, an even bigger mess than it did in my room when I was all alone. Making a mess out of those mermaids, too.

I imagined it—and then I heard the screams.

My eyes opened. My hands were raised to my sides and my palms were lit from within. One of the mermaids, the first one who had approached me, was trying to get back in the water because she was floating over the surface of the pool.

She wasfloatinglike she was being pulled out by some invisible force, and then two of her friends reached for her hands and pulled her down hard. The water splashed when she went under—and she wasn’t the only one.

Rocks and glowing flowers and drops of water were in the air that hummed with raw energy. My hands were shaking and this light inside me didn’t want to be contained anymore, and I suddenly had no idea if I wasstoppingit from coming out of me or if I was trying to get it to make things explode.

No idea—but the boxes full of dead fish and plants and crystals were in the air, four feet high, moving to the sides. A couple more feet, and they’d be right over the water.

A couple more feet and all those crystals would fall in the pool and those mermaids would no longer be able to stop us.

Then I felt the water.

Human beings don’t actually have a specific sense to feel water. Our skins detect changes in temperature, pressure, and texture, and that’s how we’re able to tell that we’re touching water. Just some fact we learned in school that came to my mind, which seemed to be working in slow motion just now.Veryslow motion as I looked down at my legs and saw these tentacles made of water trying to wrap themselves around my boots, but they failed to do so for whatever reason. They failed to wrap all around me like they’d done with Rune because something stopped them and pushed them back, broke their form and turned them into splatters—before they reformed into those tentacles to try again.

Then I saw the silhouettes—all those big silhouettes in the water of the pool barely four feet away from where I was standing. Mermaids—a lot of mermaids—and they were coming for me.

They were coming for us.

My heart skipped a long beat. My eyes moved to the boxes again, floating in the air together with more rocks now, bigger rocks, and the cavern was groaning. The ground was shaking a little bit, too—but the boxes were right over the edge of the pool. Right over it.

The surface of the water broke. More mermaids—and mermen—than I could count were hissing at me, showing me their teeth—all sharp as razors. My instincts moved me back. Fear squeezed my neck, and suddenly all the heat that had gathered in my body exploded out of my skin.

It felt like it tore me wide open when it did, and I screamed, but it wasn’t pain I felt. Just release of pressure. A lot of fucking pressure.

The ground shook once more. The world seemed to freeze in front of my eyes for a split second.

Then everything started to move again, and the mermaids hissed, and the rocks fell.

The boxes fell on the edge of the pool, on the rocks. Wood and dead fish and plants exploded in the air on all sides. Almost an entire box full of tempest crystals fell in the water, and that’s when everything changed.

The screeching sound that was coming from the mermaids filled my ears. They were screaming in pain, and the water was turning red, and the surface was suddenly full of dead fish that were just popping up on the surface while the water bubbled.Boiled.

“Nilah!”

I turned around with my eyes wide open, unsure of whether to scream again, and I found Rune had made it out of that pool. He was out and he was struggling to stand up, to get to me faster.

The ground shook harder, and pieces of rock were falling everywhere around me. I couldn’t move—forget running. The big pool had turned completely red, not with blood but with those crystals. They’d become red as soon as they hit the water, and they were still red as they floated around the dead fish on the surface, and the water continued to boil. To steam. To suffocate me little by little.

Something grabbed me from behind.

I found myself upside down before I knew I had voice to scream with. I did scream again, I thought, but it made no difference.

Because I blew it. I ruined everything. I overdid it, and now this cavern was going to fall on us just like that tunnel had been about to, and we were going to die. We were going to die under these rocks, and nobody would even know it. Nobody would ever find my body or Rune’s.

“Hold on. I got you, just hold onto me, Wildcat.Pleasehold on.”

My arms moved—Rune wrapped them around his own neck. Then he pulled me up and wrapped my legs around his hips, too, begged me to hold on to him again. By some miracle, my body obeyed. My limbs locked around him and then he was moving. He was climbing.

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