Page 18 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

twelve

“All you have to do is ask.”

It was almost funny when he said this—and not even because he was a talking lynx.

“Ask… who ?” Because I was hungry and I needed food. The sleep had done me well, but my stomach was growling still. And the fucking doors still refused to open, to let me out.

“The palace,” the lynx said. “Ask the palace for anything you need.”

“I need to leave.” I said the words slowly, separately, so he didn’t miss a one.

“What you truly need,” he had the audacity to say.

I shook my head, spun around and looked at the stone walls, at the windows up there on the ceiling that still refused to let through more light, and I said, “I truly need to see, don’t I? I need light. I need to?—”

But I never got to finish speaking because as soon as I said light, all the torches that were mounted on the walls came to life with a white fire at the same time.

A scream stuck in my throat. Every instinct in my body demanded that I start running, and I would have had a single door been open in this room, but there wasn’t. There were only walls, and torches on them, lit up with flames that were a mix of silver and a pale gold—like starlight.

Footsteps, and the lynx was in front of me. I saw him so much more clearly now with all that light. “And food. You truly need food. I can hear the rumbling of your insides.”

My hands shook. My stomach twisted and turned what felt like forever, and I said, “Food. I need food.”

I’d have never believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

Even after witnessing a lizard trying to kill me with spit, I’d have never believed it if someone told me that one of the long tables a few feet behind me would move.

The top of it would flip, turn to the other side—the other side that was full of dishes.

Plates and bowls and glasses and silverware, like they’d been glued underneath it, and had just waited for the tabletop to flip to reveal themselves to me.

Even the glasses full of liquid, all three of them.

Caught between laughing and crying, I remained there even when the lynx went closer and sniffed the air, as if he were searching for something.

I remained standing when he then looked me dead in the eye and said, “This is food made for servants. The palace took it from their kitchen, and nobody has reason to poison servants. It is safe to eat. Come.”

All those words, yet their meaning was lost to me for a good long while. The lynx was patient, though. He waited for me to wrap my head around the fact that there was now light and food in this room, simply because I’d asked for it. I’d asked a room for it, and it had delivered.

Eventually, my hunger took control, and my legs carried me to the table.

There was bread and rice and meat and vegetables, tea in a cup, water and wine.

There were small bowls full of creams and powders, and I couldn’t even tell you what I ate or how it tasted, just that I remained standing even when the lynx suggested I get a chair.

I remained standing, and I ate and cried in silence until I was full.

That would forever remain one of the strangest moments of my life.

The designs on the doors made out of silver-colored metal were even more beautiful than I’d realized. There was enough light in the room now that I saw every curve and every edge, every shape embossed on them. Even the handle was shaped like a feather—and it still wouldn’t budge when I tried it.

Both doors that would lead me out of this room were locked.

For a while, as the lynx sat there by the table where I’d eaten and watched me, I inspected the walls, the paintings—mostly of roses that had this gorgeous lilac-pink color—and the shelves full of books. Empty books. Cold books.

I inspected the light of the torches, too, and something nagged at my brain as I did, something close to a memory, but I still couldn’t put my finger on it.

Flames the color of starlight—such a strange thing, but they did give off plenty of light so that I wasn’t even afraid anymore.

I could see every corner, could see every little detail surrounding me, and the lynx lay there in plain sight—there was nobody else in here with us.

I didn’t think anybody could find me here if they tried, and that was the source of the bursts of panic that came over me every now and again. Rune couldn’t find me here, and if I didn’t figure out how to open those doors, I wasn’t going to find him, either. Maybe until it was too late.

Lyall’s face was right in the center of my mind’s eye.

The way he spoke. The way he smiled and laughed.

How well he’d hidden his true nature from me, had made me fight against my own instincts, and made me blame myself every time I considered that maybe he wasn’t the good guy he pretended to be.

All because I remembered the boy he had been when he healed me in that meadow.

All because I had no clue that someone so young and innocent looking could be a fucking mastermind and plan for the whole thing to happen.

“There’s nothing here,” I said, and I had to actually look at the lynx at make sure that he hadn’t said it with my voice—that’s how fucked up this entire situation was for me. How little I could trust my own senses. My own mind.

“Everything you need is here,” the lynx said. “You must search to find it.”

“Search where ? The doors are closed! What, you want me to search under the furniture, is that it? And what the hell am I searching for?!”

To make a point, I strode over to the sofa where I’d slept, and I went down on my knees and looked underneath it.

Nothing but a thick layer of dust.

“You’re searching for what you need to know to walk out of this room.” The lynx was suddenly in front of me.

“And how do I find out what I need to know?”

“Books.”

I pressed my lips. “You heard me just now when I told you that the books are empty, right?”

The lynx walked backward a couple of steps. “The right one won’t be. ”

Laughter burst out of me. Really fucking hilarious. But what other choice did I have other than to stand up and make my way toward the longest desk and the biggest shelf behind it?

“This is nuts, Vair. Fucking nuts. You bring me here and you tell me that this place is sentient and that I need to find something without giving me a clue what it could be!” And I was still laughing because I’d cried enough.

Before, and while I’d eaten, too—no more tears were left in me, not right now.

“I cannot tell you what I do not know,” he said, following me to the shelf, and he sounded confused again. “But the palace will. It will know.”

With the book I’d grabbed in my hands still, I turned to him. “Know what exactly?”

His wide eyes glazed over for a second, like nobody was home. “Whether to keep you or let you go.”

Keep me, he said, like I was a fucking pet or something.

And what the hell could I do to a fucking building ?

Nothing at all, that’s what. So I held in the scream of frustration that had built in me, and I opened the dark green covers of the book. Empty.

I couldn’t tell you what went through my head specifically.

Not one thought or image stuck as I went through every single book on that table, then proceeded to the ones on the built-in shelves on the stone wall.

Everything just tried to get hold of my attention all at once.

Image after image, sound after sound—of blood and laughter and shimmer and kisses and screams and magic—it all had turned into chaos in my mind.

Blank page after blank page mocked me each time I picked up a new book.

The lynx remained in the room with me, moving from one side to the other almost completely soundlessly, yet I knew where he was now at all times.

I knew that if he spoke, I’d hear my own voice in my ears—and maybe that’s the reason why I was in such a chaotic state right now.

Little had made sense to me since I crossed through the Aetherway and into Verenthia, but this definitely took the cake.

Hours could have passed—or mere minutes. I went through the first three rows of shelves, opened every book in them as if I didn’t know they would all be empty, and my arms were tired. My legs were tired. My fucking mind was tired.

I fell against the edge of the table, eyes squeezed shut tightly. “Here’s a plot twist for ya, Vair—this room never plans to let me go. It plans to keep me here forever.”

No laughter came out of me because when I said the words, I realized, they could very well be possible.

Fucking hell, I could be held by a fucking building indefinitely.

“Ask yourself this, then— why would it?” The lynx sat on his hind legs to my side, and I’d already gotten used to the way he moved by now, I realized. How he…took his time with every movement of his body, either intentionally, or because he… forgot how to move and had to figure it out as he went?

That’s what it seemed like to me.

“You tell me. You brought me here,” I said.

“The Ice Palace has no intention of keeping you here forever if this isn’t where you belong.”

“But how am I going to convince it that I need to get out of here? I need to get out of here, Vair!” Fuck, I needed to find Rune before it was too late.

“Ask it,” the lynx simply said.

My mouth opened and closed. Ask it, he said. That’s all—ask a fucking room.

All right then. Fine . “Give me a book that isn’t empty.”

The words left my lips in a rush, and I didn’t actually think it was going to work.

It did.

Something moved to the far right, close to the very edge of the built-in shelf. A book with a slim spine. Its dark blue cover was shimmering, and it was vibrating in place.

I’d lie if I said I wasn’t scared shitless, but only for a moment. My legs carried me forward, and I didn’t allow myself to think at all until I was in front of it.