Page 98 of Lifebound

A small scream escaped me. Sound filled my ears again.

Rune was almost to me, moving much faster than should have been possible, shouting, “Run!”

Run.

He wanted me to run.

I turned around and I tried. I urged my body to move with all my strength, but my legs were so heavy. I couldn’t move my arms at all, and the more people gathered around me, pointing their fingers at me, the more my strength escaped me.

Goddamn it, it was like I was in junior high all over again, going into the school yard while people pointed at me and laughed and called me my own personalized nickname. These people here were creatures with glowing eyes or two heads or wearing animals around their necks—and they were still the same.

But I didn’t realize until it was too latewhythey were laughing, though.

Until Rune wrapped his hand around my arm and tried to pull me to move faster. Until he was right next to me, and he saw that Icouldn’tget my arm away from my torso.

“I’m…I’m…”Freezing,I wanted to say, but I never got the chance.

Someone screamed in laughter. Rune’s eyes were two dark spheres that showed exactly how extra-murderous he was feeling, a second before he leaned in and wrapped his arms around my body.

“Hold on tight,” he said in my ear, and if I could move my jaws, I’d ask himwhy?Why the hell couldn’t I move and why were these people looking at me and laughing?

I didn’t expect the next moment to last an eternity, though. I didn’t expect the ground underneath my feet to give up and let me go, and I didn’t expect whatever magic was wrapped around me topull me downas if it wanted to take me straight to whatever hell was under this continent. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. The world around me disappeared and the sound of the people faded away into nothing.

All I had was Rune.

The warmth of his body, his arms around me kept me in one piece because whatever was pulling me under like that was threatening to tear me apart, too. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink, couldn’t think about anything else other than wishing he would continue to hold onto me, to not let go until it was over.

And it wasn’t over for a long time.

twenty-seven

It feltto me like I was being dragged and pulled through holes in the ground while being paralyzed by magic I couldn’t even see—until that same magicspitme out of itself with that same strength. Like that invisible shell that had been about me had finally thrown me out.

Rune and I both hit the ground on our side, and we started rolling, though his arms weren’t on me any longer, and I could suddenly move mine. I could use them to stop rolling before I hit something with my body and broke a bone.

Eventually, I did. Eventually I stopped spinning and rolling, and I sat up because my legs were still too numb to hold me. I blinked my eyes to see better, and at first I thoughtI couldn’t,that I was still blinded by that magic, but then I realized it was just the darkness.

The sky was dark. The moon was far away and far too small to give off any real light, and we were no longer in Cloakwood that I could tell.

Fucking hell, we were in another place entirely.

“Rune,” I whispered, surprised that I could even speak as I took in my surroundings. There were trees, normal trees—for Verenthia—that started not thirty feet ahead of us, and then there were others far to the right that lookedblack. Completely black—trunk and branches and leaves and all.

Behind us were one-story buildings made out of grey bricks. The soil underneath us was dry and there was very little light coming from those buildings, white light the same as that of the bird Rune had left me with. The bird that had long since disappeared.

Rune moved.

He’d rolled a few feet away from me, and he pushed himself to sit up, eyes wide open and alert as he looked at the darkness at our sides, and the buildings at our back.

His eyes locked on mine for a heartbeat. Then he pointed his finger ahead of us, and he whispered, “Get to those trees at whatever cost.”

He said it so slowly that I barely heard it, but when I did, my body moved like it was at his command. The normal trees that stopped abruptly where the extra dry soil began—that’s where I needed to go, and that’s where I would be going.

Rune was on his feet, and so was I, by some miracle, and then we were running. I still had no idea what the hell had happened or where we were, but we could talk later. As soon as we got to that forest, we would talk about everything.

Unfortunately for us, it wasn’t meant to be.

Something wrapped around my legs while I was still halfway to the forest and held them together as tightly as that magic had held my entire body. Before I knew it, I was falling forward.

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