Page 12 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

eight

We went to sleep on the same mattress as before. Rune carried me and lay me down, and I thought I saw the silhouette of the people watching in the distance, but nobody said a word and my eyes were already closed.

By the time Rune climbed on the mattress behind me and wrapped me in his arms, I was asleep.

Then came the barking.

To me, it felt like I’d just fallen asleep, like I’d just felt Rune’s arms around my body.

But we must have lain down longer than that because my eyes barely opened and my mind needed a moment to wake up all the way.

To hear those barks more clearly—and to hear the screams. To see Rune standing by the foot of the mattress with his hands up and his shadows slipping out of his fingers in a rush, creating a black screen in front of me.

Cold exploded in my chest, sending shards of ice through my veins.

I was on my feet behind him before I’d fully understood where we were and what was happening.

They’d found us .

Lyall had found us hiding under a mountain in the Mercove.

“Wildcat, I need you to stand back,” Rune said when he turned to me and grabbed my face in his hands.

“No,” I said because no fucking way in hell .

“Listen to me—there’s a lot of them, and chances are he isn’t here personally,” he said, his eyes so dark they didn’t even reflect the floating light of the shapeless fae lights that were floating over our heads.

“ No, Rune. I will not stay behind.” I would say it as many times as I needed to—I’d had enough of letting other people do the fighting while I stood back.

“There’s nothing you can do against them. They’re?—”

“I have magic. I can use it,” I said, and someone screamed beyond that veil of darkness he’d pulled up around us like an extension of the rock that shielded us from the rest of the cave.

I could have sworn it was Hessa, and my heart jumped. With it, more of that ice-cold sensation spread all about me, making me think it might freeze my limbs in place, but it didn’t. I could still move just fine.

“These are trained soldiers, damn it,” he said, and he sounded panicked now as he looked back at the darkness.

“Then move!” I pushed him back with all my strength, knowing he wouldn’t get going otherwise.

“We run,” he said, breathing heavily, his left hand raised at nothing a second before a black ball of shadows appeared and began to expand—the shadow pocket where he hid his weapons. “At the first chance we get, we run away from here. We cannot win against them. We have to run.”

“We run,” I said, and more screams and more barks filled my ears. “Rune, just move?— ”

“Promise me,” he said, and when I tried to push him again, he grabbed my face in his hand and stopped me. “Promise me that you’ll run.”

“I promise I’ll run with you when we make sure nobody’s left behind.” It was the only promise I could give him because it was the only promise I could make sure to keep.

Cursing under his breath, Rune closed his eyes for a moment and let go. “Stay close to me,” he finally said, and pulled a large silver sword out of his shadow pocket. “At all times.”

“I will,” I promised him, and by the time the next scream pierced through the cave, we both jumped into the wall of darkness side by side.

Not entirely sure what I was expecting to find, but the cave looked much different now.

Fires burned everywhere, real ones, and no fae lights were floating about except for the one over my head that had taken on the shape of my bird.

The dogs were barking, all four of them, and Merenith and Hessa and all the others were by the cave’s entrance fighting fae wearing golden armor with swords and knives and magic, while the ground shook and groaned like the mountain was threatening to collapse on our heads.

“We’ve been compromised!” Merenith called when she saw us running, as if we couldn’t see it for ourselves.

But the soldiers couldn’t break through more than two at a time because the entrance was too narrow, and so far, it seemed the others were able to keep them off with magic and weapons.

Six Seelie soldiers were on the ground already, not moving, possibly not breathing—but more would be out there. Many more.

Only when I saw them sprawled all over the rocks did reality truly hit me—Lyall had really found us. He knew we were in here, and now we were trapped.

But…

“The exit,” Merenith said. “We block this path and we take the exit.”

I had no fucking clue where the exit she spoke of was, but Rune seemed to understand what she meant because he stopped running when we were still ten feet away from the crowd, and he grabbed my arm to stop me, too.

Merenith stepped back and Acul the Ice fae took her place in front of the entrance. Merenith’s eyes were wide open and she only looked at Rune when she threw away the daggers she’d had in her hands, the blades as big as my forearms.

“Together,” she said, breathing heavily, blood on her left arm and cheek, her blonde hair undone and all over the place.

She looked like a completely different person with that wild look in her eyes.

“Together,” Rune said with a nod, then turned to me. “We will block this entrance just long enough to get out the other way.”

“What other way?” I asked, fingers numb with all that cold that was constantly moving down my arm and to my hands.

“Move it, bastard!” Hessa shouted from ahead as she spun around with her sword raised and cut off the head of the guard who’d been in front of her.

Cut it right off, and the head flew and hit the wall, then rolled and rolled on the floor…

Bile in my throat.

“There’s another exit that leads out into a forest near the shore. We can hide in it until they leave,” said Rune, pulling me behind him. “Merenith knows the way. We just have to follow. Stand back for now, Wildcat.”

He sounded so calm now, not at all panicked, and I envied him for it. “I can help,” I said, while Hessa screamed, “ Any time now!”

“Not now,” Rune said, and that look in his eyes was so final. “Stand back.”

I did.

God help me, I moved back and watched as he and Merenith raised their hands toward the entrance where more and more soldiers were coming, and more magic was being thrown like fucking bombs against the men and women trying to keep them back.

“On my mark!” Merenith shouted, just as blinding white light brightened up her hands and grew at the same speed that Rune’s ball of shadows did.

I stood back and I was sick to my stomach seeing the bodies and the blood, and hearing the sound of metal clashing against metal, the body pieces falling and rolling on the cave floor.

Then, everything was gone.

“ NOW! ” Merenith screamed at the top of her lungs, and both her light and the darkness coming from Rune’s hands shot forward right where the soldiers were coming through.

The others, all that was left of what they’d called the Broken Crown, jumped to the sides and against the floor to get away a second before the Seelie and Midnight magic crashed against the hole in the wall and against the four soldiers who’d just made it inside with lights of their own in their hands, ready to attack.

They never got the chance .

The mountain shook at its foundation when the magic made impact.

Dust and pieces of rock, small and big, fell upon us like rain.

The dogs barked and howled like it was the world’s end, and my God, it felt like it.

As I struggled to keep my balance and not fall to the ground, I was thrown back to that underground tunnel all over again, and I experienced it as if I was still there.

I saw the ground shaking and the ceiling caving in, falling on us, trying to catch us under.

Then my name on Rune’s lips pulled me back to the present, and I saw him reaching out his hand for me while the others were already on their feet and running—back where we came from, deeper into the cave.

The dogs and the people, bloody and wounded, were following Merenith who had a big ball of golden light floating right over her head.

Meanwhile, the entrance of the cave was gone. Rocks, big and small, had closed it completely, and they’d fallen over the bodies of the fae soldiers, too, burying them underneath.

I didn’t have it in me to even feel bad. They were here to kill us, and if Lyall had come himself, he was most likely very close, too.

Now was not the time to feel bad. Now was the time to run.

I grabbed Rune’s hand and I moved, my legs carrying me forward though every inch of me felt numb from both the shock and the cold that had frozen over each one of my bones—yet I still moved.

I moved fast and my step didn’t falter, and the dogs ran ahead with Merenith.

Hessa was right behind her, turning to look at us every few seconds, as if to make sure we were still there.

But we were .

The ground was still shaking and the ceiling was still threatening to fall apart on our heads, but Rune’s shadows had spread over us like a giant umbrella, and none of the rocks falling down could get to us.

I have no idea how long we ran, how many rocks we passed, and how many narrow passages that barely fit us we went through, but my hand was in Rune’s the whole time, and as long as I could see him, see that he was okay, I had no trouble keeping up.

We were going to make it out of this mountain together, and it didn’t even matter how we’d been found.

Then…

“Rune!”

Merenith’s voice filled my ears and suddenly everyone stopped moving. We were in a tunnel that was just wide enough to fit us both comfortably, but the light that was constantly moving with Merenith ahead had stopped, and so had she.

The others who were in front of us stepped to the sides and she raised her hand toward us. “I need you,” she told Rune. “I don’t have much energy left.”

Rune didn’t hesitate.

With my hand in his, he shot forward in between the people bleeding and breathing like we’d been running for hours—and then Merenith stepped aside, too, and waved at what looked like a pile of rocks at the very end of the tunnel. A dead end.

My stomach fell. A voice whispered in my ear that maybe this was a trap. Rune said before we couldn’t be found, unless someone knew exactly where to look—and who could have told Lyall and those soldiers where we were except the people who were here with us?

I turned to look at them just once—eighteen of them standing by the walls, watching Rune with hope and fear in their wide eyes.

But Rune was already unleashing his magic, and he never once let go of my hand as his shadows extended from his fingers like living things, slithered their ways between the rocks, big and small, and disappeared somewhere behind them for a heartbeat.

“Step back,” Rune said, then pulled me behind himself.

The rocks moved at the same time, flew from the pile on all sides and hit the walls like something had pushed them inward from the other side. Rune’s shadows.

Dust in the air, more visible because of the bright light slipping in through the giant hole where that pile of rocks had been.

I held onto Rune’s arm as I watched the dust settle and the small rocks fall from the low ceiling, thinking it was fae light that was coming through to us from the other side.

It wasn’t, though. It was sunlight.

“ Move! ” Hessa shouted, and with a hand on my back she pushed me and Rune forward, straight for the hole that was twice the size of the one we’d come through last night.

My heart hammered, but the cold had retreated and my hands didn’t quite feel so numb anymore. Rune led the way and took us through a short tunnel where small pieces of rock were still falling down, settling on the ground—and then we were outside.

The air was warmer, saltier, and the sunlight was soft against my skin. The trees started not ten feet away from the edge of the mountain, down a steep slope, and they were dense and colorful, perfect for hiding, I thought.

Rune stopped by the edge of the slope and looked at me as the others poured out of the hole in the wall, continuing to jump and run toward the trees .

“Run?” I said breathlessly, and he nodded.

“Run.”

So, we did.

The sunlight lost most of its strength when the large trees that could have been poplars shielded us from the sky. The dogs ran with us and Merenith led the way once more, without a light burning over her head this time. We could see just fine.

When I looked back, I could see a little of the mountain towering behind us, too, dark grey, pointy rocks against the pale blue of the sky. It looked wrong, that mountain, but the farther we ran, the less of it I saw.

Trees, trees, and more trees. Salt in the air, against my tongue, and it was hot outside, so hot my dress was sticking uncomfortably to my back from sweat.

“Keep going,” Merenith called from ahead. “Keep moving, keep moving!”

“ Where ?” I asked as we went, and Rune had deliberately slowed us down until all the others were ahead, and he and I were the last ones of the group, with Hessa right in front of us. “Where are we going?” Because all I saw ahead were trees.

Hessa looked at me for a second but didn’t answer.

Rune said, “Away. As far away from here as we can.”

Which basically meant that there was no plan, and we had no direction.

We were screwed.