Page 52 of Lifebound

“I did.”

“What…what…how?” Nobody said anything about mermaids to me. Helid never mentioned them—he saidfae!Not monkey monsters and not mermaids—just fae.

“The only thing you need to concern yourself with when it comes to mermaids is staying away from them at all costs no matter what happens,” Rune said. “Come on. Let’s get going.”

Just as he said that, we heard the same sound as before from somewhere behind the building, and I kept imagining it was a dong or something—anything made of metal that was being hit by a hammer.

“Hey, wait!” I said and followed Rune, and the moment we stepped away from the next two-story building, I saw exactly where the sound was coming from.

An animal that looked maybe forty percent like a rooster, was standing on a single leg, large claws wrapped around a thick piece of wood in front of a one-story building. It had colorful fur on its head, and its feathers had edges made of fucking metal if my eyes weren’t lying to me. Its beak was sharp and grey, and when it opened, and its tongue came out, it was forked.

A rooster with a forked tongue that sounded like a goddamn bong.

Suddenly I found myself with my arms around Rune’s because this wasinsane.I couldn’t tear my eyes from the rooster even when Rune looked down at me, at my hands around the curves of his biceps, but he didn’t push me away. For that I was thankful.

Because after another row of buildings, we came into this open space—a wide street set in triangular cobblestone lined with buildings of all kinds and sizes on either side. Most importantly, the residents of the Neutral Lands were out in the open, under the fresh sunlight to make it very easy for me to see.

My fingernails dug into Rune’s arm, but he didn’t complain. He just kept walking like he couldn’t see what was around us.

A man with two heads on his shoulder—a woman with purple skin—another with glowing white eyes—a man with two lizards on his forearms with their tails wrapped around his arms like accessories—another with a bald head and ablack mustache!

That last one might be the most traumatizing thing I’d ever seen.

Just kidding. I’m trying to cope here.

And, unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to stop looking or make a single sound no matter how many times my lips opened and closed.

“Breathe. You’re safe,” Rune said, again, as if he couldn’t see another woman standing in front of what could have been a shop, and she was waving her hands that were tipped withclawstoward the rooftop, while water dripped from the very tip. It wasn’t coming from anything at all, but the drops were materializing out of thin air then sliding down the reddish shingles.

When she turned, my legs stopped moving and Rune had no choice but to stop with me.

Her skin wasn’t green, but her noise was big and pointy, and she had fangs coming out of her lower jaw.

“Wi-w-w-w…”Witch! It’s a witch!I couldn’t speak, though. I could hardly breathe at all.

“By Reme, he didn’t tell youanything?”

Rune asked me that. He actually asked me that.

Then, when he realized I wasn’t going to answer, he stepped in front of me, took my face in his hands, blocked my view of the woman with the claws and the fangs, and said, “If you can keep your eyes down until we find a place to sit, I’ll explain everything.”

As if I had another fucking choice.

sixteen

I triedto keep my eyes down while we walked, I really did. But there were people who looked like Snow White’s dwarves and others who seemed to have been stretched far too long, with limbs no thicker than a weak tree branch and eyes that protruded from their skulls. There were women who had hair so long it touched the ground behind them, and a few more of those with glowing eyes. Another with the claws, though I didn’t see her face—I looked away as soon as I saw the claws—and a few more with two heads on their shoulders as well.

How could I not look?

Then there was the guy sitting outside a one-story building, smoking what looked like a cigar, with his heel over his knee and a brown cowboy hat on his head.

He might have been one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen in my life, almost as beautiful as Rune, which was why he stood out among the crowd. The way he moved, so slowly, almostseductively.The way he sucked on that cigar, then slowly blew the smoke out. His hair was dark and it touched his shoulders, his skin tan like he’d spent days sunbathing. He wore leather from head to toe, and his stubble looked like a shadow wrapped around his square jaw.

He must have felt me looking because then he looked at me and our eyes met, and my breath caught in my throat.

His pupils were slit like a lizard’s. And when he smiled, I felt this heat in my stomach, unnatural, completely irrational considering I was hanging onto Rune’s arm for dear life. But no matter how hard I tried to take my eyes off him, I couldn’t. It was like he had a hold on my mind, and I couldn’t even get myself to blink as he showed me more and more of his teeth.

Heat between my legs.

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