Boundless (Royal Sins #4)

Chapter 1

one

Ground underneath my knees.

My mind was a chaos of screams and shouts, of the sound of blasts of magic, of growls—and then my name on my sister’s lips.

Hands on my arms, on my face.

Two realities crashed onto each other right in my chest, knocking my breath out. Rune’s name was at the tip of my tongue, and ice-cold magic was at the tips of my fingers—but the sky was blue here, a bright blue, and the sun was shining.

No Rune and no Vair and no Midnight Palace.

I am home.

Which, really—wasn’t it just absolutely fucking hilarious?

“Nilah, open your eyes. Look at me, pup. Look at me.”

It was like a slap on the face, on my ice-cold cheeks, and I still felt the soft touch at the same time. My dad’s hands. His scent. His warmth.

His eyes, dark and wide and terrified.

A part of me was about ready to break out in a crying fit. I was with my dad—everything else could wait. I was safe now, he was here, and I could let go. I could scream to my heart’s desire until I let out every ounce of this dread that had filled every cell of my body.

But I couldn’t.

My dad was here, but so was I—and that was a problem. Rune was in Verenthia, in the Midnight Palace, having killed his own father with my help, and I had no clue what the hell happened next.

I had no clue what happened to Rune, or to Vair, or to me—I had no clue.

I couldn’t cry now. I couldn’t break down, even if my father’s arms were around me. Even if he was hugging me to his chest and telling me to breathe. Fiona and Betty were right there, too, their arms around the both of us.

A moment I had dreamed of so many times. It felt like years since I’d been away—years, not months. It felt like I’d been craving this very thing for fucking centuries, and now that I was here…

I couldn’t stay.

“Dad.” My voice sounded strange like it sometimes did. My dad stopped, and Fiona and Betty leaned back.

Wide eyes on mine. I looked at all three of them—perfectly okay. Pale, and in shock, but okay.

“I have to go.”

The words left my lips in a rush. I barely had enough strength to whisper them.

My dad narrowed his thick brows. “Go where?”

I was certain that my legs wouldn’t hold me, but I made to stand up anyway, and they did.

The earth could have been shaking underneath me—my God, it’s Earth.

The trees were all green, their bark so brown, so healthy.

The grass was smooth and shiny, the asphalt, and the sidewalks and the fences and the cars, so…

sophisticated. So advanced. After all I’d gotten used to seeing in Verenthia, this felt strange to me now.

This—the very place where I grew up, where I lived my whole life.

“Nilah, what’s the matter?”

Fiona.

I turned to her—my sister, the spitting image of my mother, just not her eyes.

Hers were warm and brown and wide, and I’d thought mine were like Mom’s, but I was just lying to myself.

They might have been like Mom’s once, when I was born, before Lyall found me in the meadow.

After that, they became the eyes of the Ice Queen of Verenthia, whose soul lived inside me.

I was not me.

“You’re scaring me, Nil,” my sister said, and I knew that. I saw it. Saw the way the three of them were looking at me, frozen in place, their hands halfway up like they wanted to touch me but they didn’t dare.

Even Betty was shocked out of words, which had never happened before.

And the neighbors were gathering, too, on the other side of the street.

Too much.

“I…I’m sorry,” I barely choked out.

Then I ran.

Call me a coward. Call me heartless—a proper fucking bad person for not being interested in spending a little time with the people that I loved, the people that I’d spent so long trying to get back to.

Call me whatever fits, but I still ran.

Dressed in the clothes of the Ice Queen, and wearing an apron still, brimming with magic that had no place in this world, I ran as fast as my legs allowed while the others came after me. The three of them ran, too, calling my name, telling me to stop, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t.

I could imagine what it must have been like for them. I could imagine how terrified they were to have had me popping out of thin air in front of them like that and refusing to even stop to talk to them—but Rune. Vair. The Ice Queen.

There simply wasn’t enough time.

That’s what I told myself as I went through the trees of the forest at the back of the house I grew up in, focused only on the magic that I could feel around me, the magic that would be there surrounding the Aetherway.

The portal that had taken me to Verenthia then.

The same portal that was going to take me to Verenthia now, too.

To the Neutral Lands or to wherever—I couldn’t care less. My legs would carry me. I would run all across the continent to the Midnight Court. Rune would still be there. I was sure of it. Rune would wait for me forever.

I wasn’t sure how long I ran for, or how fast, but when I finally felt the energy shifting in the air, I slowed down.

Green trees—and I found them so fucking fascinating, just like I did the trees on the other side that first time I laid eyes on them.

The smell, the sound of leaves rustling, of the animals running and flying all around me—it all made me feel like this was a magical world, not Verenthia.

Maybe it had been all along, and I just hadn’t realized it.

Not that it mattered now.

I was alone when I stopped in front of those trees between which was the Aetherway.

The first time I’d come to this part of the forest, I hadn’t felt the magic until I’d been but a foot away. I hadn’t seen the shimmer in the air, until it had been right in front of me, either.

Now I did.

Two oak trees, their trunks almost parallel to one another, their branches touching like they were reaching for each other. Like they were lovers forced by their roots to be apart forever. It made my stomach twist uncomfortably, that idea, but the shimmer took my attention next.

The magic was so obvious now. Incredible how it had looked almost invisible to me then, yet now I felt it with such clarity.

I felt every thread of magic that existed between those two trees, and I heard it buzzing lightly, pushing and pulling at my body the closer to it I got, until I was right in front of it.

“Nilah!”

Betty. I heard her voice and turned for a moment, but they must have been too far still because I couldn’t see them. By the time they got to me, I’d be long gone, in the forest of the Neutral Lands in Verenthia.

I’d be gone—again—and this time, I had no illusion that I would ever make it back alive. This time, all I could convince myself of was that I’d get to Rune in time and make sure he was okay.

He’d killed a king, with my help. He’d stabbed his own father, and even though the throne room had given him his throne, and even though those soldiers had called Rune king, there was an entire court there.

An entire fucking kingdom that could hurt him, accuse him of treason, or find any reason at all to end Rune.

That was the only thing I needed to know to step straight into the magic of the Aetherway with my chin up.

Forgive me, I thought—to my family, to the whole world. But I wasn’t ready to come back home yet.