Page 42 of Moonmarked

Goose bumps down my arms.

“It’s not a bad name nor a good name. It’s what my people call events or objects or people they cannot put in a single category, that’s all.”

“ButI amin a single category,” I insisted. “I’m mortal. I’m the prince’s Lifebound.” That sounded like a single category to me.

Maera turned to me again. “But not just.” Her shimmering eyes scrolled down my body. “You smell fae, but you don’t look it, and you haven’t shifted after my scratch. A fae would have. You’re no mortal because you possess magic inside of you, a lot of it. And you might be Lifebound to a dead man, which is not how life-bonds work at all, Nilah. If my wolf were to die, I would, too, and vice versa.That’sa life-bond.”

“The prince isn’t dead,” I whispered, feeling all kinds of strange all of a sudden, and more awake than I had been for hours, though my body was still weak. “Maybe…maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he lives.”

“Maybe,” Maera said with a deep nod. “You have a plan. I trust you will see it through, make sense of this…confusion.”

Confusion,she said. The confusion that wasme.My very existence.

Fucking hell, just when I thought I couldn’t possibly feelworseabout myself.

“Can you be honest with me?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to. Even though I would rather just change the subject and never have to eventhinkabout this again.

“Always,” Maera said with a solemn nod, and Itastedthe truth of that word as if I were a damn noxin.

“What doyouthink I am?”

At that, she paused. Clear to see that that wasn’t the question she had expected but she answered anyway.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” she told me. “And the truth is that I don’t know, Nilah. But what I doknow is that you will find out. Your heart has courage, and you have will. The rest will follow.”

I was jokingly going to say to say,that wasnotthe answer I was looking for at all,but…

“We’re here.”

It was like she suddenly stabbed me in the gut. My eyes opened wide, and I was suddenly looking about myself, sure that she was wrong, when…

The lake.

My stomach fell all the way to my heels and my heart broke into a thousand pieces at the sight of it for whatever reason. The lake’s surface was just visible in the distance through the trees, and the mountains beyond, just as I’d seen them when we were at Raja’s place. When Rune and I were swimming together in that very lake.

The actual lake is right there.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even form a single thought for a while, could only hold onto the fur of the dire wolf underneath me, not even bothering to try to make sense of that very fact at all. I could deal with all of it later, I figured. When Rune came and found me. When I told him about this, I could think it through then.

“The scent of the woman who wore those boots before you clings to this part of Blackwater. The sun rises here, which is why we were able to bring you all the way,” Maera said as we went for the last of the trees, closer and closer to the lake by the second.

“Why? You don’t like the dark?” I said absentmindedly.

“On the contrary. All our senses work better in the dark. It’s the vampires we don’t get along with.”

“Well, fuck, Maera. You didn’t have to bring me all the way here,” I said, feeling guilty now for having made them.

Feeling utterly shocked still that I’d actually made it allthe way here, and at the same time I didn’t believe it. Not yet.

“We did, and it was an honor. There are no vampires in these parts, only the fae. Her magic is powerful,” she said, raising a hand up as if she were touching the air in front of her.

Meanwhile, I was stuck on that word she said—honor.It was the first time in my life that someone had ever used it when talking aboutme.

Then we slipped between the last row of trees, and the lake was right there for me to see.

Every doubt I had until that moment disappeared into thin air. It was the same lake, the same mountains beyond, the same trees and the same scent—though so much more intense. I had been here.

I had really been here with Rune just a few days ago.

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