Page 38 of Lifebound

“Come, Nilah. Our horses await.”

I turned, heart in my throat, trying but failing to keep my eyes on Helid’s face and not roaming around the trees, the strange leaves, trying to make sense of the fact that they were real.

But then I heard the neighing.

The five guards had continued ahead, and they indeed had horses tied to tree trunks not twenty feet away. My breath caught in my throat when I spotted them—white, almost twice the size of a normal horse, all seven of them. They were possibly over a head taller than me at the shoulders.

Horseback.I was going to have to mount one of those horses and ride it.

Helid must have noticed that I wasn’t responding because he came and grabbed me by the arm, then gently guided me forward.

The horses moved. They were real. They were so white I’d have though they were albino, but their manes and their tails had color. Brown and grey, deep and light.

“There’s no need to be afraid. These are Summer Stallions, and they are the easiest to ride. They connect with you and they watch after you. Tell me, have you ever been on a horse’s back before?”

“No, I-I-I…” I shook my head, took in a deep breath. “No, I haven’t.”

“That’s okay. We’ve brought you an older horse, one with more experience than most. This here is Aro, and he is, if I’m not mistaken, a hundred and twenty summers old.”

There went my brain again, emptying itself to make space for this new information that refused to stick to any kind of sense I knew.

“Immortal horses.” That’s what I gathered from what he’d said.

“No, no—not immortal. Horses are not immortal. They have a lifespan of about a hundred and fifty summers, but they do die of old age,” Helid explained. “All you have to do is put your leg in here and the other across the saddle. Orif will help you.” He stepped back and one of the guards—the same one who’d caught Betty’s sneaker aimed at his face—came forward.

“Requesting permission to touch,” he said, and I was going to saysure, man,except he apparently wasn’t talking to me at all.

He was talking to Helid.

“Granted. Do be careful,” the man said, and if I wasn’t about to mount a fae horse that made me feel smaller than I ever had before, I would have had a thing or two to say to him about speaking inmyname aboutmybody.

As it was, the man—Orif—stepped behind me and put his big hands around my waist. He pulled me up like I weighed nothing at all. It was easy to put my foot in the stirrup, and my leg on the other side.

Everything was happening so fast. I was suddenly sitting on the back of a giant horse and a saddle that was hard and slippery and too fucking big for me, and the horse was alive and he was moving, and someone put reins in my hands as well.

I hardly saw anything. Helid spoke, but I didn’t understand a single word as the panic came over me, made my ears whistle.Breathe, Nil, breathe,I told myself, but it wasn’t working.

Everything was happeningwaytoo fast. I couldn’t think straight, and the panic was catching up with me. At first, I’d thought it was for the best that I wouldn’t have the time to dwell and wonder.What-ifs were a real pain in the ass I didn’t want to deal with.

But this might actually be worse. Right now, when I could hardly breathe and was pretty sure I was going to die by falling off this horse and breaking my neck, I wished I was drowning inwhat-ifs.

Then I was moving.

The black dots in my vision began to fade. I blinked my eyes a thousand times until I could see again—the horse’s neck and head—so big!—in front of me, and the saddle that I had to squeeze between my knees so I didn’t slip off, and the other horses as well, two in the front, one by my side, and another three behind.

The guards and Helid were there with me, and they were actual fae, and they knew what they were doing. They looked like they had control over themselves on those horses, and Helid was smiling at me.

That could only mean that Iwasn’tabout to die, right?

“Trust Aro, mortal. He will not let you fall.”

Mortalhe called me again, except I didn’t even dream of correcting him this time. My life was passing by right in front of my eyes and I held onto those reins with all my being.

“Just…just no running,” I said, and Helid laughed as pleasantly as before.

“No running,” he agreed.

Ahead we went.

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