Page 101 of Moonmarked

Nowthesememories that came back to me now were ones I wished were dreams for real. Just nightmares I could leave to die in a dark corner of my mind and never revisit again.

“Wildcat, if someone hurt you in any way, I need to know about it. Tell me,right now,” Rune said through gritted teeth, my face in his hands, his eyes so dark so suddenly I couldn’t even see the silver threads in them.

“No, Rune, I’m fine. It’s just something that happened in the Gallery of Time,” I said, holding onto his wrists.

“What was it? Tell me everything,” he urged me.

And I did.

I told him about what the woman wearing green in the Whisper Room said in my ear, and how I lost Lyall and went looking for Rune, then went inside the Gallery of Time for some peace and quiet. I told him everything, held nothing back, and when I described to him half the portrait of the woman who looked just like me, something inside mebuzzed.Like raw energy, like something alive and hungry, trying to feast on whatever it could find inside me.

“Half of it was torn, though, so maybe I’m wrong. I didn’t see her full face.” Rune had stopped moving, breathing, even blinking as he looked at me. “I’m probably wrong…right? It simplycan’tbe.”

“Are you sure that’s what the plaque said?” he finally asked, and even his voice had transformed.

I nodded. “It was the Ice Queen, Rune. The same one they said you killed.The last sovereign of Ice—it was her.”

And she, somehow, looked enough like me that anybody would have believed we were the same person.

“Impossible,” he whispered, touching my face with his fingertips.

“Exactly. It’s impossible, so I saw wrong. It was dark, and…and half her face was gone, and…” Fuck, why was it so hard to breathe all of a sudden?

“Yes,” Rune said with a nod. “I’m going to check it myself, wilding. Don’t you worry around it—I’m going to find the portrait and I’m going to check it myself.”

My heart skipped a beat. A big part of me wanted to tell himno,beg him not to do it.

Because that part of me really believed that what I’d seen wasreal. There had been no misunderstanding, and I hadn’t been wrong at all—that portrait and that woman were real.

Naturally, I ignored it.

“Yes, please do that. And we’ll tell Lyall about it when we come clean, okay?”

“He’ll see us as a threat if we tell him now,” Rune said instead. “The entire court is very vulnerable. Trust me, Wildcat, now is not the time.”

“I don’t want to hide, damn it,” I said, a little louder than I intended, and my voice echoed in the tall ceiling. But the door remained closed, and nobody had come for us yet, so…

“Me, neither, but I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe,” he said before he kissed me. And I wanted to lean into that kiss, hold him close while I could, but…

“There’s something else, Rune.” I hated to even bring it up, but he was right—he needed to know. About the woman wearing red, about the knife that had been in her hand. The knife that she’d then put in mine before she ran away.

It was all too senseless for me, even as I spoke about it, and I hadn’t even allowed myself to dwell on it for long before I slept. But now that Rune knew, too, I felt a little better. He was from here, had grown up among these people—he would know what to do better than me.

Again, Rune was silent for a long moment, pulling me closer, resting his chin over my shoulder while I played with the ends of his hair, touched the skin of his chest, trailed the lines of his tattoo.

God, how I wished it didn’t exist right now.

“I wish you would just talk to your father and have thisthing removed, Rune. You’d be safer if you had your full magic,” I whispered after a while.

“That’s not an option, wildling,” he said and kissed my shoulder. “I’m plenty safe. Don’t you worry about me.”

“I do worry.” And no amount of him telling me not to was going to change that.

“There are times, when…” Rune stopped speaking, let his voice trail off, made me lean back so I could look at his face.

“What? What were you going to say?”

He closed his eyes, sighed deeply. “There are times when I’m sure Lyall had a reason for bringing me here. For keeping me here. For being my friend.”

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