Page 167 of Lifebound

He looked asleep,but he also looked sick.

I sat at the edge of the bed covered with milky white silk sheets, and a dark red velvet cover over the prince’s body.

He was really here. He was really asleep.

He was reallyhim.

I couldn’t see his eyes, but I saw the little boy he was at the meadow in the line of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbones, the color of his hair that had grown past his shoulders, neatly combed over them. His skin didn’t glow with health like it had then, though, and he seemed to have lost weight, but it was him. It was the boy who’d saved me in the meadow, and I’d have known it in my heart even if I hadn’t seen him at all. Just to be near him was enough.

“Well?” the queen said. “Heal him—what are you waiting for?”

She stood behind me with Helid, right over my head, and I hated it.

So, I looked up and said, “Please give me some space.”

The queen wasn’t going to want to move, I knew that even before I said anything. But Helid grabbed her by the hand and pulled her back just a couple feet, and it was enough for me.

I breathed a little easier, and I could even convince myself for a moment that the prince and I were alone.

“Hey, you,” I said, and my eyes filled with tears instantly. His hands were folded over the red velvet cover, and I touched them. I put mine right over his, and something went through me, something that made me gasp. It wasn’t bad or good—it was just a feeling, like I imagined a ghost might feel if it went right through my body.

There were no ghosts here, though. Just the connection he’d created between us that day he saved my life.

It’s him, all right. He’s real.I hadn’t made anything up. All of this was real.

“I’m gonna need you to wake up now so I can smack you for never coming back to see me,” I said, and those tears streamed down my cheeks so fast now. I moved closer to him, put my other hand over his, and I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but…I did.

Somehow, in some weird way, I knew what to do—exactly what the prince had done that day he healed me. He’d put his hands on my wound and he’d let out his light and his warmth, and it had been over.Easy.

I let go of a shaky breath and moved my hands to his chest, right over his heart. I felt the beating of it, so slow and weak, and I closed my eyes tightly.

“Please wake up, Lyall. Wake up,” I whispered while I searched inside me for that warmth, that bright golden light that was a part ofhim.The light he’d given me from himself.

And I found it again, as easily as I had when I thought Rune’s life was in danger. It was right there, burning in my chest, and the more attention I gave it, the brighter it became. The more I called for it, and the more I pleaded with the prince to wake up, the faster it traveled down my arms and to my hands.

Light behind my closed lids. I pulled them open while I whispered,please, please,and it was indeed coming from my hands,slippinginto the white shirt the prince wore, and underneath it, to his chest. To his very heart.

For a moment, everything stopped. The whole world hung on a single thread.

Then came his next heartbeat—stronger this time. Steady.Alive.

A scream slipped out of me because of the suddenness of the energy that went through me. Again—it wasn’t painful, it wasn’t anything bad, but it was so sudden, so intense, and it leftmefeeling more awake and more alive, too. It made my own heart beat twice as strongly as well.

The prince opened his eyes.

My breath caught in my throat and my own eyes refused to blink. He opened his eyes, and they werehiseyes, golden and light and beautiful. They werehiseyes, the eyes of that boy, and when he slowly moved them down toward mine, the world stopped for the second time.

In that short moment, everything feltright.

Exactly as it was always supposed to be.

“N…N-Nilah?”

I burst out in tears once more, but I was also smiling because somehow, against all those odds, I’d done it.

I’d survived the fae realm, and I’d healed the prince of the Seelie Court.

Me. Nilah Dune of Lavender Hill, the weirdo, the crazy girl, the cuckoo.

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