Page 72 of Lifebound

“They’re just big, that’s all. They don’t possess any kind of active magic. If it wasn’t for the dragons, they’d have been long extinct. Fae can kill them easily.”

And now my heart was about to soar out of me once again.

“Wait, wait, hold on a minute.” There were at least two questions in that sentence. “What do you mean,active magic?And what do you mean,if it wasn’t for dragons?”

Because I’d seen Game of Thrones, and if there was one thing that I could imagine to be worse than giants, it was dragons.

Rune chuckled.

He actually chuckled in almost complete silence, but that little sound traveled inside my ears and made a permanent residence in an irrationally big part of my mind.

“Does your voice always change so much in a sentence? Or is just when you’re especially terrified?” he asked, and I looked to the side as casually as I could so he didn’t see my flushed cheeks.

Something was wrong with me, I decided. I hated when guys laughed or even moaned—I used to legit close Caleb’s mouth when we were having sex. Ihatedit—so why did I suddenly want to do whatever it took to hearthis guychuckling again?

Wrong.Something was definitely wrong with me, and it was this place’s fault. The air, the ground, the sun—whatever.Itwas at fault for this insanity.

“Just when I’m terrified, I guess,” I muttered, and he was smiling, raising a hand in front of his mouth to hide it, but at least he didn’t make a sound. Just squeezed my hand in his a little, possibly absentmindedly.

“Active magic means magic you can actually use—like mine. Most fomorians have passive magic—like the Twinborn you met. Though they have magic in their veins, they can’t access it. They can’t connect to it the way they need to, to get it to alter reality in any way.”

“Oh,” I said with a nod because this I actually understood.

“And giants and dragons have coexisted in their mountains for a very long time. We don’t really know why but they’re very protective of the giants. They’ve made enemies out of every creature who’s ever tried to kill the giants and take their mountains. A dragon’s fire is one even fae can’t withstand.”

Goddamn it, his voice,said another in my head, which I ignored.

“Why would anyone want to take mountains from giants, if they’re willing to stay away from this place where everyone else lives?” I wondered.

“Greed. Those mountains are some of the richest in precious gemstones in Verenthia.”

My jaw hit the ground. “Are you serious?”

“I am. But nobody’s tried to even go near the giants in the last half millennium, and the stories are enough to keep everyone away for at least another thousand winters.”

I shook my head. “That’s so awfully…human.”And the words slipped from my lips. “I mean, not all, obviously, but greed is big with humans as well.”

Rune looked down at me as we went—this town seemed to go on forever and very little changed about the setting and the buildings.

“What’s it like in Nerith?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never actually been farther away than my state, which is Oregon, but it’s pretty much the same everywhere from what I can see on social media,” I told him. “The Internet has made it very hard to hide anything anymore.”

“And? What’s it like in your town?”

Something about his curiosity. “I don’t know—the same as every small town, I imagine. The people are assholes. There’s really only so much you can do. Movies, hiking, the mall, and we have a waterpark that’s open all summer, but that’s about it.”

“Why are the people assholes?”

“Because they are. They’re bullies and I hate bullies.”

Silence for a moment, and I wondered if I’d maybe said too much.

“Someone would dare bullyyou?” Rune said, and I almost said,aww! But then he continued with, “The Lifebound of a fae prince—and they dared to bully you?”

I flinched. “It was because of that, actually. I told everyone back home about the prince—I was only a kid. And…well, they thought I was crazy, so they pretty much made my life a living hell ever since.”

When he looked at me now, there was no sign of a smile on Rune’s face.

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