Page 17 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

“Then tell me what you know,” I said instead, and now that my mind was clearer, I saw better. Not because there was more light—there wasn’t. Whether it was day or night out there, I had no clue because the colored glass of the windows at the edges of the ceiling hadn’t changed a bit.

Or maybe they were LED lights of some sort? I’d have believed it if electricity existed in Verenthia.

“May I suggest food first,” the lynx said, and fuck, he sounded exactly like me, and it freaked me the hell out.

“No, no—no food. No…suggestions. Just—just talk. Tell me,” I said, trying but failing to hide my sudden panic, both from him and from myself.

“As you wish, Nilah Dune,” he said with such a human-like nod that I considered it a success that I hadn’t started running and banging my fists on those doors again already.

The real test was when the lynx stood up and came closer, and hopped onto the sofa, though on the other end.

Screaming was out of the question. My muscles were locked tightly, so all I did was watch him sitting down, those blue eyes always on me, his tongue long and pink as he licked his lips one more time, then spoke as if he were a goddamn human trapped in an animal’s body.

“You are in the Ice Palace of the Frozen Court. I brought you here and the palace let you through. It has since locked itself down, I suspect until you prove your worth, and?—”

My heart tripped on itself so many times it wasn’t even funny. “Wait, wait, hold your horses,” I said—to a lynx. Both my hands were up in surrender, but I hadn’t stood up yet. “What do you mean, the palace let you through and locked itself down—what the hell does that mean?!”

“It means the palace let you through and locked itself down.” He said this without batting an eye.

I wondered in what parallel universe would I have the guts to reach out and slap the hell out of a talking lynx.

“Yes, that is what I said. Now is the part where you say what it actually means!” I said through gritted teeth, and like always, the anger, the irritation helped. They were my friends in situations like this because they combated the fear better than anything else I’d come across so far.

“It means the palace let you through, Nilah Dune. It?—”

“ Just. Nilah. ” Fuck, I sounded possessed just now.

But the lynx continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “The Ice Palace has locked itself down since the Ice Queen has gone. I come and go, but it will allow nobody else through the doors of the throne wing. It allowed you .”

There went my mind, blank as a piece of paper. “Why are you talking about a building like it’s a sentient being?”

This, of all things, surprised the lynx. “Because it is. The throne wing knows. Its magic is rooted deep inside Verenthia, as ancient as the stars. It is the first structure of this palace. The entire court was built around it.”

“Well, fuck.” The words slipped from me, but the lynx continued.

“It locked down upon our arrival, however, and it will not let you go until you’ve proven yourself worthy of being allowed inside.”

I shook my head and actually smiled at this.

Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on my knees and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes for a moment.

God, this was so absurd I couldn’t even find a way to joke about it.

Here I was, covered in dirt, dressed in that same white dress that was torn in several places, my hair a mess I didn’t dare even check with my hands, sitting on a sofa together with this creature who was talking to me about sentient fucking palaces.

“I never said I was worthy. I never wanted to come here. Does the palace care about that?” I said, not really sure which aspect of this whole mess to pick to go through first. Or to try to, at least.

“It is not about wanting to be worthy. It is about belonging,” he said.

“You don’t make a lot of sense, you know that?”

To my surprise, he nodded, and it was so fucking weird I had trouble believing my own eyes. “I haven’t in years.”

“How so?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I am sure that you will need to prove your worth before the palace lets you go.”

There we went again. “ How ? My worth for what ?!” I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“That is up to you to decide,” the lynx said, his perked-up ears moving just slightly as if shivers went up to their tips. “You have to understand who you are…I think. You have to understand why you are.”

“But I do. I’m Nilah Dune, a human from Earth, the former Lifebound of the Seelie Prince. That’s who I am.”

“No, no, that is not it,” said the lynx, again, just like I would say it. The same accent, the same voice.

“How would you know?!”

“Because the palace would not hold you here if it were.” The words were so final I didn’t dare even argue, which was absurd all in itself.

“So…what now?” I asked, and I stood up, looked at the ce iling, at the walls that I could have sworn were closing in on me, though they hadn’t moved an inch.

“Now, you learn,” the lynx said, and he jumped off the sofa as well.

“Learn what ?”

“Frostfire magic, I think. And the truth about yourself.” Again, he looked confused, like he was having trouble remembering himself.

“I don’t want to learn frostfire magic—I am human.

Just help me get out of here, Vair. Help me,” I said, even though I knew it was pointless, but I was getting more and more desperate by the moment.

Because I was really starting to believe that this was real, and that I was truly here, and that a fucking building was holding me hostage, pretty much, and that I couldn’t do shit about it.

“I can’t do that,” the lynx said, turning his head to the side, like the very idea of what I said was madness to him.

“Yes, you can— you brought me here. You dragged me—I remember it. You can get me out the same way.” Had I not been so weirded out by the fact that he was a talking animal, I might’ve even gone closer to him just to make my point clearer.

“Even if the palace let you out, I couldn’t. This is where you need to be.”

Laughter erupted out of me. “But you can’t even tell me why!”

“You will find out, and then we’ll both know,” he said, and he was serious about it, too. Dead serious.

I never knew just how annoying I sounded when I was being serious, though.

“And what if I don’t? What if I can’t ?” I raised my arms to the sides. “What the hell am I going to figure out in this room where even the books are fucking empty?!”

“You must try,” the lynx said, unfazed by my screaming. “You must continue to try.”

“I’ll die without food and water—I’ll rot in this fucking room.

” God, my throat hurt, but my heart hurt more.

Because who knew where the others were, where Rune had ended up?

Who knew if he was wounded, if he was looking for me?

Who knew if he believed I’d died—or was taken by the Seelie guards? Fuck.

“Don’t be silly, Nilah. You will not die. There is plenty of food and water here.”

My hands were in my hair and I nearly pulled all of it out of my skull. “What about the others, then? The other people who were with me—what happened to them?” What the hell happened to Rune?!

“There were armed Seelie soldiers, and others, unmarked. The frostfire you released kept them down until I took you away, I imagine.”

“So, they’re not dead or anything?”

“No—not unless someone else killed them. Like I said, frostfire doesn’t kill, even when it keeps one in limbo for days and weeks. It preserves the body in perfect condition.”

My legs let go, too weak to hold me, but luckily, I fell on the edge of the sofa again. Shaking my head. Trying to make all those words stick to my mind and make sense.

“I’m stuck,” I whispered to myself. I was stuck in a room with a talking lynx, and I had no fucking clue what the hell to do about it.

Then the creature was right there in front of me, sitting on his legs, so close I could touch his fur if I reached out a hand. Too shocked to move away, I only looked at his face, those sharp eyes and sharp teeth. His fluffy, silvery white fur that looked almost like he was covered in snow.

God, he was absolutely beautiful in an unreal kind of way.

Exactly like the creatures in Lyall’s Illusion Game, and maybe that’s why I found myself raising my hand for real.

Maybe that’s how I was convinced to actually reach out a shaking finger and touch the edges of his fur right underneath his chin.

The lynx didn’t move.

The lynx didn’t disappear to give me a fucking token.

This was not Lyall’s game. I was not stuck in his playground. I was not being manipulated.

And the fur against my fingers was as real as it was soft.

“How are you possible?” I heard my own self say—my voice coming from my lips, not the lynx’s. I never thought I’d actually live a day in which I wouldn’t be sure who spoke when I heard my own voice.

“Magic,” the lynx said. “I am made of it. Of the sorcerer who made me, and the Ice Queen who brought me to life.”

My heart skipped a beat. “The same Ice Queen who owned this place, right?” This fucking room that had trapped me inside itself, and that was sentient, if a talking lynx was to be trusted.

“The queen who ruled this kingdom,” he said, the words rolling off his tongue the same way they would from mine. “The rightful heir of the Frozen throne.”

“And now she’s dead.”

Thy lynx stopped moving. I wasn’t exactly sure if he breathed at all, but he became still as the walls for a second, blue eyes on me but I doubted he could see me.

“Perhaps,” was what he finally said.

“What do you mean, perhaps ? The Ice Queen is dead. They say she was killed in the Midnight Court, don’t they? I don’t know much but I know that. I know the guy they framed for killing her.” Rune. A six-year-old child—and they said he killed a queen .

So fucking absurd that I still found it almost funny.

The lynx turned around then, and began to pace forward and back, head down, tail low.

I got a good look at him for a moment—his height and his silvery white fur, the way it shimmered just like the forest had done after I…

exploded, for lack of a better word. The shape of his muzzle and his ears and his paws— how is he real?

“The Midnight Court,” the lynx said. “The Midnight King.”

“Yes. They blamed it on his bastard son. I know the story. They framed a six-year-old boy,” I said and sat up straighter.

“But regardless of that—the queen is dead, and I am stuck in this palace now, and I want to fucking know why. ” It wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

Not after being kidnapped and dragged here by the ankle. It wasn’t too much to be angry.

Yet the cold underneath my skin was far from trying to force itself out of me the way it usually did, which was strange all on its own.

“I don’t know,” said the lynx, and he was still moving, still looking at the floor.

“You don’t know why you brought me here, but you knew enough to find me and then drag me all the way to this place?

Again—a bit convenient, don’t you think?

” I said, sticking my fingernails in my palms to stop myself from screaming, both because I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere if I lost control, and because the lynx.

The way he looked. The way he moved.

Fucking hell, he really looked stressed out. As stressed out as I was.

“I don’t know what happened, just that she went to the Midnight Court for a feast in her honor,” he eventually said .

“She died at that feast. They claim a six-year-old boy killed her because of some prophecy.”

He raised his head then. “The prophecy.”

“Yes, the prophecy that said she was going to be killed by the son of the Midnight King—you should know this! You’re a talking lynx, for fuck’s sake—you should know all this better than me!”

My heart hammered in my chest. The lynx sat down in front of me slowly, those wide eyes, so blue. So icy.

So identical to the eyes of the Ice Queen in that portrait.

To mine.

This place was going to fucking drive me insane for real, if it didn’t kill me first.

“The prophecy,” he whispered in my voice. “The prophecy did not kill the queen.”

“Yes, it did. They said it did. They said Rune killed her and he was banished for it.”

“No.” My mouth opened to argue, but he beat me to it. “No—the queen was never going to let the prophecy be the end of her.”

“Well, I don’t know what she was going?—”

“Survive it,” he cut me off. “She planned to survive it...”

As he said this, the lynx, he sounded like I did when I was just thinking of something. When I was just realizing something or having a fucking epiphany, and that’s what those wide eyes of his looked like, too.

“How?” I said, and my own voice was dry. Weak.

The lynx said, “I don’t remember.”

So, yeah—that got us nowhere fast.