Page 26 of Lifebound

So many words.

My brain was threatening to malfunction any second now, but I still somehow got one question out of my lips. “Why not just ask him then?”

The man lowered his head, dragged himself closer to the table, and folded his hands over it. “Because, Nilah, he’s sick. He’s fallen into a deep sleep from a disease that is unknown to us, and we cannot heal him. We cannot wake him. He is barely hanging onto life,” the man said, his eyes wide, earnest, but I never even got the chance to process anything before he dropped the last bomb on me.

“And you’re the only one who can save him.”

eight

Silence in the kitchen,deep enough that I heard the beating of my own heart, and thatdraggingsound, too—just my thoughts beating up one another, dragging each other across my skull, trying to make better sense.

Needless to say, it wasn’t working, and it was a bloody mess in there.

“How?” Dad said, and I’d almost forgotten that he was there, sitting next to me. “How would Nilah be able to heal someone like…likeyou…”

“A fae, yes,” the man said with a nod.

Fae—just like in the books. The fuckingfantasybooks that weren’t supposed to be real.

“How can my daughter heal afaewhen she’s…she’snotone?” Dad continued.

“Because she’s Lifebound to my nephew, Mr. Dune,” he calmly said. “Before, when they first met, and your daughter was dying—our seer couldn’t really see from what?—”

“Snakebite,” I said, and my own voice took me by surprise.

“I see,” the man said. “Well, when they first met, and your daughter was dying from a snakebite, my nephew created a life-bond between them when he healed her. It’s very complicated magic so I won’t attempt to explain it to you, but those who are bound cannot die by disease or magic while the other lives, and they can be healed from anything—save from a beheading—by their Lifebound. Does that make sense now?”

It does.

My God, it actually made sense.

I shook my head and breathed and blinked.

“But…but how is this possible?” Dad said. “I never…I never really…I…” He couldn’t finish speaking.

I knew what he was thinking—he had never believed me when I told him about the boy and the snakebite.

“All is possible through will and magic,” the man said. “So goes a saying from home. I’ve left my nephew’s side so I could come here personally and speak to you, Nilah. Plead with you to come save him while there is still a little more time left.” The man slowly rose to his feet, and my dad followed. My legs wouldn’t have held me if I’d tried, so I stayed put.

“He saved your life once without hesitation, without asking for a reward. That is my nephew—his heart is carved out of the same gold that makes his eyes.” He nodded deeply. “Now, he is the one in need of you. Will you choose to save him?” The words weighed a hundred pounds each on my shoulders. “Or will you let him die?”

Someone must have pulled the ground from underneath my feet and the chair from under me because I was no longer sitting down. Or standing. Just…floating somewhere in the dark.

Dad spoke—I recognized his voice, though his words couldn’t quite reach me. Light couldn’t get to me, either. This darkness that came over me so suddenly was unforgiving. Fi took my hand in hers, and I felt her skin against mine while the man said something, too.

Echoes in my ears. A tiny bit of light was coming from somewhere—far away, I thought at first, but it wasn’t. It was shining from my own hands instead, right there underneath the skin of my palms. Like my veins, my flesh, my bones were really made out of gold, and that gold was ignited. Ablaze.

Just like the light of the boy who saved my life.

No hesitation.

He didn’t ask for anything in return.

He just healed me, hid me, and left.

The memory of his young, beautiful face stood at the center of my mind and forced the darkness to let go of me. Something inside me moved, something deep that I could feel even if I didn’t know what it was. A voice in my head whispered words I had never heard before, but somehow, I understood their meaning.

It was a calling. I was being called to save the life of the boy who saved mine, and the strangest, most powerful urge to do just that came over me in an instant.