Page 24 of Lifebound

“Why are you here, Mister?” I asked, feeling more and more like myself because my instincts were a bit at ease now. If he’d wanted to attack me, if he’d wanted to hurt any of us, he could have. He wouldn’t have wasted time talking.

“If we may sit down, Mr. Dune,” he said to my father, waving at the sofa in the connected living room to the right.

Except I didn’t plan to let him into the living room at all, so I said, “Right here’s fine.” And pointed at the dining table. “Right, Dad?”

The man smiled.

Dad said, “Right, right, of course. Please, have a seat.” And he let go of Fiona’s hand to go pull the chair for the stranger.

I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her to me, my heart suddenly hammering again.

“Hey, I’m okay,” Fiona whispered while Dad and the man settled at the table. She looked up at me, Fi, and she was smiling a little.

“You sure? You’re not hurt or anything?”

“I’m fine,” she told me. “It’s real, Nil. It wasreal!”

“Girls, sit,” Dad said, waving for the two chairs next to his, while he sat across from the stranger. The other men who seemed to be there as guards stayed where they were and didn’t move an inch. Eyes ahead, their hands folded in the front, like they were made of marble instead of flesh and bones.

Fiona and I sat down. The stranger’s eyes remained on me and Ifeltit even before I saw it.

“I’m all ears.” My voice shook a little, but he heard the words.

“Certainly.” The man pushed back his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and he looked around at the table, and the carpet underneath his brown leather boots like he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Or maybe he wasn’t sure if it wascleanenough.

“I came here, Nilah Dune, because I and the entire Seelie Court, and especially my nephew, are in great need of your help,” he started.

My ears must have not been working right. I looked at Dad and Fi to my sides, just to make sure that they’d heard the same thing.

Dad’s face was still as expressionless, but Fiona’s smile continued to get bigger by the minute. She was afraid, yes, but she was also excited—a look I hadn’t seen on her since our very first Harry Potter movie marathon some three years ago, if I remembered correctly.

“And where is your nephew?” I asked the man, trying to keep my mind calm, my heartbeat steady. We were sitting down, and we were talking—there was no need and no time to panic.

No time to dwell on the fact that this man had pointy ears and golden eyes and Dad and Fi could actually see him. He was really there, and I was really not crazy.

No time.

“He’s back home in the Seelie Court of Verenthia.”

He’d said that name before. “I’m sorry—where?”

“Verenthia, our great realm.”

Realm,he said, and he didn’t even bat an eye about it.

“When you sayrealm,do you mean something like Hogwarts?” Because that’s whatIthought when I heard that word.

The man looked confused. “Beg your pardon?”

I licked my dry lips. “Doesrealmmean that you have to…say,walk through a walland hop on a train to get there?”

“No, no, we do not walk through walls—unless said walls are illusions, of course. And we do not have trains, either.” Again, he didn’t crack a single smile.

Not Hogwarts,which, really, after all this timeshouldn’thave disappointed me the way it did.

But I was curious. “Thenhowdo you get to, um…your realm?” Because I couldn’t remember that name he mentioned for the life of me.

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