Page 14 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

ten

My heart beat.

I felt it only faintly, right there in my chest—not stabbed, not wounded, but whole, every beat full and complete.

Which was strange as hell because I could have sworn that I’d died at least three times in the past day.

By Lyall’s order, by that cold that had sliced its way out of me—and by a creature that had no business being real, that had dragged me away by the leg while mermaids watched, only their foreheads and eyes out of the surface of the Mercove sea.

Such a strange memory that my own self challenged. No way was it real. No way.

Except I’d been here before, hadn’t I? Since the day I crossed the Aetherway, I’d been in this position so many times it wasn’t even funny anymore.

So as absurd as the idea that I was still alive sounded, I believed it.

It had happened before, and it sure as shit was going to happen again, considering I was in a world full of people and creatures who could do magic and curses at a whim .

Putting aside the doubt, I focused on my senses, on trying to open my eyes, trying to hear whatever there was around me.

Silence—that’s all. All I heard was silence, and while I struggled to open my eyes, I tried to feel underneath me, to understand where I was lying.

Something hard and cold—stone. Smooth stone was underneath my hands, and for a second, it threw me off. For a second, I was convinced I was still in that cave with Rune and what remained of the Broken Crown.

Until I remembered the screams and the magic and the blood. Until I remembered that we’d been found by the Seelie soldiers, possibly by Lyall himself.

And Rune was not with me.

The sudden fear and panic opened my eyes all the way. I sat up with my breath held, ready to scream out his name the moment I was able to actually use my voice—and I finally saw where I was.

A room. A large hall with a ceiling so tall I barely saw it. A dark hall with smooth stone floors and walls, and furniture, old and covered in dust, and paintings wrapped in silver frames, and wooden tables that hadn’t been cleaned in a long time…

I was on my feet before I knew it, and my legs somehow held me. My heart was beating frantically, shaking me like a drum, but I was standing and I was blinking.

I was all alone.

The room was big, huge, bigger than that bedroom where I’d slept in the queen’s palace.

It was cold here, too, and I kept expecting a white cloud to come out of my lips every time I breathed but it didn’t.

Every inch of my flesh had risen in goose bumps as I spun around and around, trying to take in every little detail that I could in the dark, trying to find a way out.

Doors.

Two sets of double doors, large and on opposite walls of the oval-shaped room.

They were made of metal, it seemed, embossed and engraved in figures I couldn’t make out, because the only light that came through here was from these tiny windows at the edges of the ceiling right where they met the walls.

They were made of colored glass and the light that came through could have been from the moon or the sun.

There was no way to know because they were colored a deep blue, those small windows, and they went all around the tall ceiling, so high I had no hope of ever getting to them to look outside.

But I could always get to the doors.

I didn’t give myself another moment to look, to make sure I really was alone, to see everything there was to see around me. I just ran for the doors on the left that were closest to me, and I basically slammed against them with my whole body.

Locked.

The handles were big and made out of silver-colored metal, curved and smooth against my hands, and no matter how many times I pressed down on them, or how hard, the doors wouldn’t give. They were locked and the keyhole was empty. No key anywhere near them that I could see—but that was okay.

Surely the other doors would be open, I thought, and so I ran for them even faster, and slammed against the metal even harder.

They, too, were locked.

I wasn’t exactly sure how I made it all the way to the middle of the room again, right where I’d woken up, spinning around and around, trying to make a door that would open on those stone walls out of sheer will, just manifest it into existence, but it didn’t work.

No new door appeared anywhere that I could see, and no bird made out of blue light found me, and no Rune-no Rune-no Rune.

I screamed.

The sound ripped out of me and it took me by surprise, too.

I screamed with my everything and for a good long while, until I had no more breath in my lungs.

I didn’t collapse, though. Instead, I went to the first doors again and I tried to open them.

I went to the others and tried to kick them, but all I managed to do was hurt my foot.

I moved back and forth for possibly ten times before I got dizzy, and before my legs decided to give up on this madness.

The doors were locked. Whoever had brought me here had trapped me in this room and I wasn’t going to get out no matter how hard I kicked.

I sat on the floor, shaking, tears streaming from my eyes, the unknown a dark cloud over my head just waiting to strike me dead.

With my knees against my chest, I closed my eyes and lowered my head and I willed time to go back to when I was with Rune, when his hand was on mine, when we were running together.

But time didn’t work that way, unfortunately. And the only thing that changed as the moments ticked by was the sound of my crying slowing down, then fading away completely.

Magic was such a strange thing .

You saw it working with your own eyes, saw the way it altered reality, the way it became real itself, and yet there was always a part of you that suspected you made the whole fucking thing up.

Or maybe it was just me.

Who was I kidding—it was definitely just me. Fae didn’t go around doubting their sanity and their own senses, their own memories about magic. They were born with it, raised with it, it was a part of their daily lives since forever.

Then there was me.

A freak of nature. Something that shouldn’t have even existed. Something too complicated to even have a name—other than that word, noxavira. The shadow between truths.

Now, I was tempted to laugh.

Instead, I looked at the doors across from me and I imagined magic. That same magic that a part of me was still convinced only existed in my imagination.

It was there, though, right under my skin.

I felt it slithering down my veins, cold and sneaky, scary as fuck to me.

The warmth had been different—I’d been used to it coming and going, making shit float on air whenever it pleased.

I’d been used to it. The devil I knew, I guessed—but this devil was a whole other story.

I’d been so sure that cold would kill me when it came out of me, but I was still alive.

And if it had covered that entire forest with that strange silvery white—which could’ve been some kind of snow or even drops of water—in the Mercove, it was going to blow up these doors, and take these fucking walls down, too.

If it didn’t kill me this time, that is.

The next time I stood up, I didn’t shake.

I didn’t cry. My cheeks were dry, my eyes still swollen, but that was okay.

I always forgot that I had magic to wield the same way as the creatures who lived in this fucking realm, but I also always remembered.

I wasn’t helpless. I was getting out of this room before whoever had brought me here came back.

Then I could run all the way back to wherever Rune was.

To be completely honest, I didn’t have a clue what the hell I was doing when I pressed my hands against the embossed metal of the doors.

Roses and vines decorated every inch of them, but I didn’t have it in me to even appreciate the art in the state I was in.

I just closed my eyes and lowered my head, and I called for that cold sensation the same way I used to call for the warmth.

I willed it to come out of me, rush down my arms and to my hands, then tear these doors off their hinges.

I’d done it before, possibly just hours ago.

That cold had erupted out of me and it somehow hadn’t broken me apart to do it.

But it had come out of me and it had rendered the entire forest silent.

It was surely going to be strong enough to break these doors the same way it had broken the ground.

The memory was fresh in my mind. Silvery white and cracked earth and bodies still on the ground and a silver creature with my ankle between its teeth—it was all very fresh, and the cold was there, too.

It beat inside me together with my heart, and I recognized it.

Tried not to be afraid of it. Tried not let the panic take over, but control it, just like I did the heat those times.

In the cavern and then again in Mysthaven with the werewolf men.

I can do this, I thought, and the cold rushed down my arms, just like before.

The problem was, when I willed it to come out of me, just burst right out of my palms, it didn’t. For some reason, it refused to gather and gain intensity like it had done before. It refused.

Rune had said it himself, though—I was a very stubborn person, so I didn’t give up the first time.

I didn’t even give up the twentieth time.

I switched doors, went from one side of the room to the other, and I felt the cold and I called for it with all my strength, but it just wouldn’t come.

Not even close to what it had been in the forest, or even before in that cell room with the Seelie Queen.

I remembered what it had felt like then, distinctively, and it wasn’t half as powerful now.