Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis Page B

He wasn’t worthless. He could move—walk—laugh. He wasn’t trapped behind Amara’s eyes anymore.
    At dinner he was nauseated and jittery, more concerned with picking out Amara’s thoughts than anything else. He’d scared her. He’d assumed she’d been gone, but her thoughts now made it clear he’d been wrong. How did that work? How could he sense her normally but not when he steered her body?
    Amara was a mess as she worked and ate. Nolan’s name cropped up in her thoughts every few seconds, sometimes as signs and sometimes as sounds. The word sounded odd in her mind—the syllables too choppy—but it was his
name
. She’d never thought his name before.
    Nolan hardly touched dinner, giving half-there answers and disappearing for too-long blinks that had his parents exchanging knowing looks.
The pills aren’t working
, they had to be thinking, and, for once, they were wrong.
    After dinner, he found himself scrubbing even the bottom of the dinner plates twice. He kept the dishes low in the sink incase they slid from his hands. The Dunelands startled him too often for him to take risks holding anything fragile.
    Scrub, rinse, stack. The water soaked into his fingers. Soap bubbles covered everything, popping open with the scent of lemon.
    Nolan hadn’t meant to freak out Amara. When she’d first drawn him in, she’d been away from her family and working at the Bedam palace—Drudo palace, now—for only a few months. Nolan had been five; Amara must’ve been around the same age. The years worked differently there, and so did the days. Amara’s were longer by over an hour. It made time hard to calculate.
    At first Amara’s magic had pulled him in only while he slept, then also when he consciously closed his eyes. Within months they’d reached the here-and-now point of every last blink. He’d never stopped being scared it would progress further. He’d ended up in a coma twice before, when he was nine and thirteen and had given up on fighting to stay in his own body. At some point, he knew it might not matter how much he fought.
    He remembered the first time Amara had pulled him in during the day, when he’d hidden in the school bathroom, pressing his eyes shut and suddenly unable to move, suddenly trapped in that other body. In that world people shepherded him—Amara—left and right, teaching her to cut vegetablesand sew and carry the horse-fuzz after stable servants sheared Elig horses. Nolan hadn’t even been able to wrinkle his nose when she scooped up the manure.
    So he understood Amara’s fear at being controlled. He shouldn’t take over like that. He’d only meant to let her know about him. Still, the thought—oh, the thought of finally balling those hands into fists, or pointing her eyes where he wanted to look … Was he supposed to go back to spending half his life trapped? Pretending he wasn’t there?
    From the living room, Pat shouted, “Nolan! You done? Want to watch a movie?” Some murmurs followed. “Or do you need help washing up?” She sounded less excited now, although Nolan didn’t need to hear that to figure out Dad was behind the addendum. He must’ve made her ask in the first place, too. Pat knew too well what answer to expect.
    â€œThanks. I’ve got homework.” Actually, Amara had asked Jorn for permission to nap after dinner, and Nolan could use the quiet of her sleep to think.
    â€œYou sure? The main actress has huge boobs!” Pat tried nobly not to giggle. Nolan imagined joining them—Dad ribbing Pat while he worked, Pat faking annoyance because she was watching the movie—then a stab of unease from Amara caught his attention. He lowered another glass to the counter and—
    â€”Amara’s grip on her topscarf tightened. She stood by herbedroll, exhausted, unable to convince herself to pull her scarf out of its