Page 157 of Lifebound

Sunlight on my face.

It must have been a dream, but God, it felt so good. The warmth, a different kind, felt incredible on my skin, but it was gone too soon. I tried to blink my eyes, to see where Rune was taking us, why he was bothering to even try. We were already dead, weren’t we? The entire cavern was going to fall on us. There was nowhere to go.

I tried to focus but it was impossible. My mind was halfway gone, and my senses no longer responded properly.

“Just a little more. Just a little more…”

Rune’s voice remained in my ears when the darkness pulled me under all the way.

forty-one

I really thoughtI’d died.

For real—I thought one of those huge rocks had fallen on my face, and then I’d proceeded to imagine Rune grabbing me, carrying me, telling me to hold on.

I thought I’d died, but I was very much alive and lying on my back on something hard.

Lips on mine. A hand on my jaw holding my mouth open. Air forced itself down my throat and into my lungs, expanding them. Making them work again because they’d given up, too.

My heart hadn’t, though. It beat so hard it was shaking me, and then I was breathing on my own, and I had hands on my face.

“You’re okay,” said Rune, and his voice had a way of bringing me to life.

My eyes struggled to open while my mind tried to shut down again, but I had to see that he was okay first. I had to see if this little warmth I felt on my face was really the sun.

It was.

My eyes opened. No more moss and glowing plants and fish. No more rocks trapping us in, but a deep blue sky that merged into a gorgeous purple and orange at the edges like it sometimes did during sunsets.

“There you are,” Rune whispered, his face looming over mine, his hands pushing my hair away from my face.

“Are we…”dead,I was going to say because that still made the most sense, no matter what my eyes were telling me.

“We’re okay,” Rune told me, and he was smiling. The sun was at his back, so I was having trouble seeing all of him, but I saw the blue of his eyes, and I always saw his smile. “We’re okay, Wildcat. We’re just fine.”

I wanted to smile, too. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and kiss him and ask him if he was hurt, but that was more energy than my body could spare for the moment, it seemed.

I passed out again, and this time, my mind was calm.

We were okay.

* * *

A little birdmade out of light flew right over me. My eyes were closed but I still saw it—or maybe the more accurate description would be that Ifeltit. I knew it was there, even if it was soundless. Just a glowing light in the shape of a bird that had become a good friend of mine.

I pushed my eyes to open, curious to see it, not just feel it. And it was there all right, flying over my face in slow circles, beyond it the sky dark and full of stars that paled in comparison.

So beautiful, that little bird, with tiny black beads for eyes and feathery wings that moved so gracefully. I reached out my hand to touch it, even though I knew I couldn’t, that it wasn’t concrete, that my finger would slip right through it. And it did, but I also felt the heat in its little body against my skin.

“How are you feeling?”

Rune was lying beside me, which made sense, because my body was lying on something hard, but not my head.

My head was on his shoulder and the heat ofhisbody was what had probably kept me alive.

“Like I just escaped death for…how many times in how many days now?” My voice was dry, but it was voice and it worked.

Rune smiled—Ifeltthat, too, heard it in the way he released his breath, then turned to the side and pulled me so we were face to face. My heart skipped a beat at the sight of him. He had blood on his cheeks and probably on his clothes, too, but his eyes were alive. The deepest, most beautiful blue my eyes would ever see.

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