Chapter 17
seventeen
I struggled to find words. To form thoughts. To trust my eyes.
The prince was there, towering over me, just slightly shorter than Rune in height, though their build was nearly identical. His skin glowed like he’d spent days sunbathing, and his eyes sparkled, and he was light where Rune was dark. He was clarity where Rune was mystery.
The prince is alive.
The thought echoed in my head infinitely. “How?” I barely choked out.
“I’m okay, as you can see,” he said, looking down at my body like he was concerned. Like he was making sure I was okay. “I’m so sorry to have had to put you through all of that, Nilah. I didn’t think you’d run away, I swear it. I didn’t think you’d disappear the way you did.”
My head shook over and over again, and nothing mattered anymore—not the throne room, not the queen or the soldiers. Just him.
“I don’t…I don’t understand.” I understood nothing at all. My mind had never been a bigger mess—and that was saying something considering everything I’d had to go through since I came to this realm.
“Perfectly reasonable. If you want to sit down—” Lyall actually reached out a hand to touch my shoulder.
I moved back on instinct— don’t touch me, dead guy!
Of course, I didn’t say it out loud.
“I’d rather stay here,” I said instead because I wasn’t about to go anywhere until I understood what the fuck was going on here.
He didn’t like it. He did a good job hiding it, but a flicker in his eyes showed me how unexpected my reaction was to him.
Good thing I couldn’t care less about what he liked right now because things had gotten so out of hand, I was this close to convincing myself that none of this was even real. No way. Not possible.
“Of course,” the prince said with a nod and leaned back, as if to give me more space. “I’m glad to see you’re okay, Nilah. I was worried.”
Now this sounded almost funny.
“Here I thought you were busy having a knife buried in your chest,” I said before I could help myself, my voice dull, cold, different. Like I was really a different person altogether.
There was something about him.
I couldn’t really put my finger on it or maybe it was just all the trauma I’d had to go through the past few days, but there was something about this whole thing.
And something about me as well. That cold inside me that had come out of nowhere to rival the heat, and I couldn’t make sense of any of it yet.
“I know you saw that, and it was unnecessary,” Lyall said, closing his eyes for a moment.
“Again, I’m really sorry that you had to go through that.
I promise you, I tried to find you. Sent my best hunters after you, and the seer used my blood to track you, too.
I gave her as much as she needed, but then you disappeared.
” He shook his head for a moment. “How did you do that? I knew you hadn’t died—but how did you disappear? ”
“I didn’t disappear. I had to run, jump in the river and hide in chests full of fabric just to get out of the palace,” I started.
“No—that I know of. We tracked you into Mysthaven. That’s where you disappeared—like you didn’t even exist anymore.” Slowly, he took a step forward. “Was it a sorcerer, Nilah? Did they hurt you?”
“No, I—” I stopped speaking when my right forearm began to throb lightly, as if to remind me of the wound that had been there just yesterday. To remind me of Maera. How she’d scratched me, how she pushed me off the edge of the cliff.
Could it be ?
“Maybe. I don’t know what sorcerers can or cannot do. They didn’t hurt me, but I barely escaped with my life,” I ended up saying. “And I was almost a hundred percent sure that you hadn’t died because I was still alive—but why? How ?!”
The prince only watched me in silence for a good moment. The guy I’d actually come to the fae realm to save. The guy who’d once saved me.
Such a handsome man, he was—and so fucking powerful. His aura screamed it, infused the air around us, and I could have sworn that I tasted it on my tongue. Raw and golden and vicious—as warm as the light that went off inside me.
It was different, though, the taste of his magic. I always thought it was the same, that he’d given me a piece of his own with the life-bond, but now I could tell that it was different. More golden, more vibrant—a different kind of heat, even if the intensity was the same.
“There was no other way, Nilah. I needed them to believe they’d won. My only choice was to fake my death.”
I paused for a moment.
What the actual fuck? That was most definitely not what I expected. “Who? Who is them? ”
“The people who tried to kill me,” Lyall solemnly said. “The people who poisoned me. Them.”
Fuck me sideways.
For a moment there, no word came to mind. My mouth opened and closed, but what the hell could anybody say to that? He’d faked his own death?
My God, that actually made sense. One thing finally made sense for once! I’d seen him on the ground with a knife sticking out of him, and I always knew that he wasn’t dead. I just never would have guessed that he did it himself.
“They almost succeeded about a year ago. I ate something I shouldn’t have, and it would have killed me if it wasn’t for you.”
I stepped back, shook my head, considered bursting in tears—or laughter.
Luckily, I was able to control myself before I did either. “Not me— you ,” I finally said. “You did the life-bond. You saved me first, Lyall.” And ultimately that was the reason why any of this had even happened.
“Well, yes, but?—”
“ Prince Lyall.”
The voice sent shivers down my back. I blinked and the throne room came into view again.
I’d been so focused on this man in front of me that I’d forgotten where we were, that we weren’t alone. That his mother, the queen of the Seelie Court was sitting right behind him on the dais.
“It’s Prince Lyall to you,” she said, those blonde brows arched as she looked down at me.
I didn’t even get to have any kind of a reaction toward her before Lyall raised a hand and turned his head to the side just slightly. “Not now, Mother,” he said, and he sounded irritated.
Fuck.
The tension in the room grew, and I was sure that the queen would lose it. She did not look like someone who’d take being shut up lightly.
Except their relationship must have been very different from what I thought because all the queen did was sit back and rest against her throne, continuing to watch me with those cold, calculating eyes.
“I’m really glad I bound us together all those years ago, Nilah.
It saved me, that accident. And when I woke up, I had to act quickly.
It was my only shot. If they think I’m dead, they will let their guard down and come out of the shadows.
If they think I’m dead, I buy myself time to catch them before they try to kill me again. ”
“Wait, wait, hold on a minute—they still think you’re dead?!”
“Yes, of course. I still haven’t caught all those who are plotting against me. I will need a bit of time to find them,” he said.
“Fuck, Lyall,” I whispered, turning to the side, suddenly unable to stand still. I needed to keep moving, stretch my legs, clear my head.
“But…but that man, he…” The memory of that morning when I healed Lyall came back to me eagerly. “He called me a murderer. Told the guards that I had killed you.” I still heard his voice echoing in my head— MURDERER!
“It was all part of the plan. The guards would see my body on the floor—which was simply an illusion—and the word would spread that you had done it. That you had come to heal me, but instead unbound yourself from me and killed me while I was still weak. It was the only believable story.”
“Except I’m a mortal, Lyall. Nobody is going to believe that I could have unbound myself from you, and then killed you in a room full of fae!” It sounded as absurd to say it out loud as it had in my head.
“But the story we told was that you aren’t really mortal, that you’re actually fae.
We even used that excuse to justify the fact that you survived on the way here without the royal guard escorting you.
” Lyall stepped closer, reached out his hands for mine slowly, giving me all the time in the world to move away.
I was simply too shocked to, so his hands closed around mine, and he squeezed my fingers a little, his skin warm. Soft.
His eyes were wide and earnest when he said, “Please understand me, Nilah. I thought once the guards brought you inside my bedroom again, I could talk to you, tell you the truth, and all would have been well—but then you jumped.” He smiled, shook his head like he was in awe.
“You are incredibly courageous. I did not see that coming at all.”
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe that, had I not jumped, those guards would have grabbed me and taken me back into the room, and Lyall would have come clean, except…
Rune told me to jump .
Rune’s voice had whispered in my ear, and he’d told me to jump, had made sure I survived the swim, had taken me to the irrigation canal with his shadows.
Rune wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think I was in true danger.
I stepped back, pulled my hand away from his. “So, what now?” Lyall looked down at his own hand like he was surprised to find it empty. “What happens now? How will you find the people responsible for trying to kill you? And what does that mean for me?”
“I have my ways,” he said, putting both hands in his pockets slowly. “I will find them, rest assured. I will not be fooled a second time.” A sad smile stretched his lips, one that every instinct in my body believed.
He was honest, Lyall. Stripped bare in front of me, his eyes wide, the gold in them clear.
“As for you, Nilah, we can undo the life-bond any time you please, and then I will personally take you back home,” he told me. “Say the word and we will do it—tonight.”
Tonight.
I could be unbound from the prince this very night, and then I’d go home. To my dad and to Fi and Betty— home. I would be home in a matter of days, and then I would never see this place again.
Wrong.
That’s what the voices in my head said, all of them and at once—wrong . It felt wrong. It sounded wrong. This whole thing was plain fucking wrong.
I lowered my head, looked down at my feet, and my reflection on the shiny surface of the floor caught my attention.
My bright blue eyes, my light hair that fell like a curtain around my face.
This girl staring back at me was not the same Nilah I had been when I passed through the Aetherway.
So much had happened, and so much was inside me now, the heat and the cold and the feelings— entirely too much.
And most importantly?
My eyes moved to Lyall’s reflection, as he, too, had lowered his head to look at mine on the floor. He was not the same boy he had been that day in the meadow either. He’d grown. We both had. We’d changed.
And I would be a fool to trust him now.
“Well, Nilah? Will you forgive me? Will you let me make this right?” he said when I raised my head again. His voice dripped sweetness. His eyes looked so earnest.
Wrong, went the voices in my head.
“Yes,” I said with a nod.
His face broke into a smile unlike any I’d seen. He was the sun for a moment there, as bright and as golden and as alive.
“Tonight then,” he said.
“No.” The word that came out of my lips was so final, I almost surprised myself.
“I will need time, too, Lyall. I can’t agree to be unbound now.
So much has happened. I’ve had to go through a lot to get to you and then to run away from you.
” I raised my head higher. “I am in no condition to make this decision right now. I hope you understand.”
It was the best I could give him. Maybe he really was the guy he said he was, and maybe everything he told me right now was the truth, but our life-bond was my only leverage. He could not hurt me as long as we were bound. He could not kill me unless he wanted to kill himself.
No, I would not agree to cut ties with the prince—not yet.
Not without speaking to Rune. Not without knowing all there was to know about this situation first. Because I’d been unprepared, to say the least, for Verenthia, and I’d had to go through some shit because of it.
I’d had no knowledge of the people and the ways of this realm, and I had enough of not knowing.
Before I decided to be unbound, I was going to make sure that it was the right decision first, no matter how long it took.
Lyall was silent for a moment, and the queen sitting on her throne had her eyes closed, a hand over her mouth. I knew they couldn’t force me for this—Rune said that to be unbound, both parties had to be willing for it to work. They couldn’t force me, but how far would they go to… convince me?
Finally, the prince nodded his head deeply, almost bowed in front of me. “As you wish, Nilah. That is very smart of you, if I may say. I understand that you want to take your time and build your trust, and I will be honored to have you at the palace as my guest. What do you say?”
Guest at the palace, he said.
“I would actually like that.” Because Rune lived in the palace, too, somewhere, and I would find him. No matter where he was, I was going to find him by the end of this night.
Lyall smiled like I just gave him the world. He offered me his hand, and this time I willingly put mine over it. “Then let’s get you settled, clean and dressed. You deserve nothing less, my Lifebound.” Leaning down, he planted a warm kiss over my knuckles.
And when he leaned down, my eyes locked on the queen’s.
I was willing to bet a limb that she was plotting my demise even before I left the throne room.