Page 147 of Moonmarked

“I have to. Listen to me, Wildcat. We’re going to be okay, but we need to do this right, do you understand?” Rune whispered, and it was like the entire world was mine again.

I closed my eyes and more tears rolled down my cheeks. “I thought you…I thought you…”

No, I couldn’t even say it.

“I’m okay,” Rune said. “I’m not going anywhere. Look at me.”

I did. I blinked the blur of the tears away and I looked at him.

“You’re okay.”

“I am,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“Where were you, Rune? Why do you look like this, what?—”

“On purpose,” he whispered. “I look like this on purpose. And I have to go now, meet with the prince. Do not speak a word to anyone while I’m gone, okay? We can do this. We’re close.”

“Are you sure you can trust him?” I asked because I wasn’t.

“I don’t,” Rune said. “But that’s okay.”

“How? How is it okay?!” Because Lyall was a prince and he was powerful and he had a damn army at his back, too.

But Rune shook his head, brought his lips closer until they touched mine. “Trust me, wildling. Just trust me.”

I did. I trusted him more than I trusted myself, andwhen he kissed me, just a gentle press of his lips, I no longer felt as desperate.

For a moment, I hung onto his shoulders,felthim, felt all of him against me with my breath held.

Maybe it was my imagination, but he felt different. Still Rune, just…

“Different,” I whispered against his lips. “You’re different. What happened?”

I leaned back to look at him, but all he did was close his eyes and kiss the tips of my fingers. “I will be back.”

When he walked out of the door and closed it, his shadows slipped through the keyhole and the lock turned, I thought. I spun around with my heart in my throat and analyzed every corner of the large room I’d slept in so many times now, feeling like it was suddenly filled with invisible snakes coming for my neck.

Fuck, it was so hard to breathe.

The cloak Lyall put around my shoulders ended up on the floor. I kicked it all the way to the wall. Then I opened the balcony doors, hoping the fresh air would calm my racing thoughts, but it didn’t work. So much had happened in such a short time and I was afraid my body wasn’t capable of handling it. My limbs felt weak, frozen over, though my eyes saw no ice on my skin. I was at a risk of losing my mind for real.

A while later, I tried reading. It didn’t help, so I picked up a blank scroll and I started to write. What the seer said. What Lyall said. What the Seelie Queen said, too.

And Rune. I wrote about Rune, and still the seconds crawled just like before.

It was a very long night, indeed.

I didn’t hearthe door opening. I didn’t hear a single sound that would pull me out of sleep, yet my eyes opened all the same, and Iknewhe was here in the room with me. I knew it as clearly as I saw the weak sunlight chasing the night away beyond the windows at the side of the bed I slept in.

Rune.

With my heart in my throat, I sat up, wide awake within the second—and there he was.

Clean, his hair wet, his clothes untorn and without a speck of dirt on them.

He looked like a ghost in the dark room that was slowly lighting up with the rising sun, and I found myself praying, begging whoever would hear that he was real.

Then he came closer while shadows slipped out of his hands and moved to each corner of the doors, locking us in. He strode over to me like a man desperate, and I waited with my heart in my throat and my unblinking eyes on him.

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