Page 2 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

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Trust me.

The words echoed in my head, filled my ears just as the color red filled my vision.

Blood. So much blood—and it was coming out of me.

The golden blade of the dagger in Rune’s hand was no longer visible to me because it was buried in my chest. It was inside my heart.

The white dress I wore had turned red with all that blood, and Rune’s hand was slick with it, too, and his eyes were wide as he looked at me.

As he held the dagger’s handle tightly in his fist and just looked at me.

Trust me, he’d said, and I did. Not that I’d had another choice, considering the Seelie Prince himself had given me the order to sit nice and still as I waited to be stabbed, but Rune had asked me to trust him, and I did.

Then he’d gone and stabbed me right in the chest.

Those big, wide eyes. So dark I saw my reflection in them, my pale face, my bright blue eyes, my mouth opened, prepared to scream—but no voice was going to come out of me .

No, I was going to die in silence. I was going to die at the hands of Rune.

Such a silly, impossible idea, yet here I was.

Somebody screamed in the room—the hall where the prince had been holding a feast to announce to his court that he was not dead.

That he’d only pretended to be dead so that he could catch and kill the people who’d tried to kill him, he said—and to announce that the Seelie Queen would step down from her throne soon, and Lyall would be crowned king.

A king— and his first act after “coming back to life” had been to trick me and Rune with that water in the bowl, to force us to do his bidding. His first act as the future king of the Seelie Court had been to kill the woman who’d come to this realm to save his life.

Not to mention Rune, whom he’d called a friend. Whom he’d tried to get rid of. Whom he’d made to stab me in the heart.

Rune stabbed me in the heart.

People were moving, yet I couldn’t look away from him at all. People were running and screaming, some laughing—Lyall—but all I could think about was the golden dagger and my blood pouring over Rune’s fist, and my heart that was no longer beating?—

Wait.

Suddenly, the outside world disappeared. A beat echoed in my mind.

My heartbeat.

My heart that was in my chest, beating fast, frantically, not stabbed by a golden blade. Not wounded.

Sound and sight and feeling came back to me at once. The cold that had spread underneath my skin was still there, and my heart that I could have sworn was frozen over was indeed beating, and the blood was still there, still pouring out of me—yet I didn’t feel the pain. I didn’t feel the blade.

That’s because it hadn’t really stabbed my chest.

I moved.

It was the strangest thing I would probably ever go through in my life because I stood up and I pushed the chair back, and at the same time…I fell . At the same time, my body collapsed to the side of the chair and hit the floor near its legs—all while I stepped back two feet and watched.

Watched Rune falling to his knees, looking down at his hand covered in blood. Looking down at my body, the one that was on the floor, shaking, bleeding. Dying .

My God, what the hell is happening?!

Then he moved, too, Rune, pushed his own chair away—and before he turned to the other side of the table, to Lyall who was still laughing, his eyes passed over me.

The me that was standing. The me with her heart intact.

He saw me. He looked at me for only a split second, while others all stared at the body, my body that was bleeding on the floor, the golden dagger still buried in my chest.

Everyone was looking at that Nilah; no one else was looking at me.

Possibilities were limited. The first and most sensible thought that crossed my mind was that I’d died and my soul had left my body, but no. Rune wouldn’t have looked at my soul the way he looked at me just now. He wouldn’t have seen my soul at all!

Now he was facing Lyall, dark shadows spreading from his fingertips, his magic so powerful I felt the intensity of it against my skin, and…

That’s when it hit me. It was an illusion .

This—the me on the floor, dying—was all an illusion.

Run, said a voice in my ear, a voice that wasn’t mine. A voice that I’d heard just moments ago before Lyall even came to our table.

Hessa, his ex-girlfriend, had whispered it to me with a smile on her face, and now it finally made sense. Run, she’d said, because she knew all of this would happen. She’d told me exactly what to do in this very moment when I had no idea what to even think.

And maybe I was in way over my head. Maybe I was making all of this stuff up, but I still ran because what else was there to do?

My legs somehow held me, and I ran past the people who were gathering, coming closer to see better, to see my dead body on the floor that wasn’t my body at all—all the while Lyall laughed.

All the while the ice underneath my skin spread and spread and it promised to explode, and tear this entire fucking palace to pieces, starting with me.

Please, please, please, no… I begged my own self, my own body, my heart that was frozen over, yet it still beat, and strongly.

I begged my own self not to explode in whatever the hell kind of magic was inside me that shouldn’t have been there at all, because if I did, they would know.

If I did, all of these people would know that Rune didn’t actually stab me in the chest. However he’d managed to pull this off, it would have all been for nothing if Lyall saw me running, and…

Hessa.

Her face filled my vision. I recognized her only moments ago—she was the woman from the Gallery of Time, the one who’d come for me with a knife, and then had left it in my hand and ran. She’d been wearing a ballgown then, a red mask on her face, but now I saw her clearly .

And she saw me, too.

Where people looked past me like I didn’t exist at all as I went around them to get to the doors, Hessa, who was just outside in the hallway, both hands on the edge of the door frame, was looking right at me.

Her whisper echoed in my ear. I tried to get to her as fast as my shaking legs allowed, and I made it.

My God, I somehow made it all the way to the doors, to the guards who had come closer, their hands on the handles of their golden swords, none of them even looking my way, like they couldn’t see me there at all.

Only Hessa.

Her hand reached out toward me. I sprinted the last few steps and took it in mine, and she pulled me out into the hallway with all her strength.

The pressure released from my body, like the floor of that hall had been made of quicksand, about to pull me under.

The air changed instantly, too, became lighter, colder.

My ears worked better as if by the push of a button, and I heard the noises clearer.

I heard the music continuing to play. I heard the absence of screams.

“Keep running!”

My hand was in Hessa’s, and she gripped it so tightly her nails dug into my skin and drew blood. I didn’t feel the pain, though, as I tried to get her to let go. “Wait, wait—Rune! I have to wait for?—”

“No time! Rune will find us when it’s safe,” she insisted.

And I believed her.

Maybe because she’d put that knife in my hand, and maybe because Rune knew her and seemed to trust her, but I believed Hessa.

So, despite my instincts screaming at me to get back to that feast, to Rune, I ran forward, down fancy hallways and under floating fae lights, in whichever direction Hessa guided me.

The cold underneath my skin no longer threatened to tear me to pieces, distracted by my body’s movement, but my heart still beat like a hammer in my chest.

Half of the places I ran through with Tessa were a blur that didn’t even register in my memories because the sight of that blood, my blood dripping down Rune’s hand still remained in front of my eyes every time I blinked.

So fucking surreal—so powerful, that image, almost like I’d seen it before c.

Almost like the entire illusion had been a repetition. Deja-vu.

I wasn’t sure how long we ran, but I did notice when the lights began to dim, and when Hessa pulled me down a long and narrow set of stairs.

We were descending.

A floor, and two, and three. Where the hell am I?!

Magic, bright and golden, lit up the corridor we’d been running through, and in a blink before it took my vision away, I saw the guards.

Three of them had been in front of a barred door in the stone walls—not a single painting or lantern on them, only thick stone blocks.

Then Hessa let go of my hand and began to move too fast for me to actually see her limbs.

That golden light? Her magic. It flew lightning fast and slammed onto the soldiers, who didn’t even get the chance to reach for their swords before they were hit.

Everything happened so fast. The tension in the air grew instantly, the magic thick against my tongue, and I froze in place as I watched Hessa with her golden gown kick the ass of three Seelie soldiers like she was taking a stroll on a Sunday morning .

The ease and the grace with which she moved—it reminded me of Rune.

How he’d fought those masked men in the tunnel, had killed one of them; how he’d sparred with the moving trees in the dark; how he fought against the giant in the Crown’s Gauntlet.

That’s exactly how Hessa moved, too, and just as she pushed the last guard against the bars at the end of the corridor with her bare foot on the back of his neck, she raised her hands in the air.

They were glowing golden, and the light that exploded when she clapped them over her head felt like it shook the entire palace.

I was pushed to the side, too, though I was at least fifteen feet away, and I fell against the wall in shock, mouth and eyes wide open.

Stars in my vision for a few dozen blinks, so the next time I saw the view in front of me, Hessa was pushing the limp body of the last guard against the wall, where she’d put the other two.

“Help me!” she shouted, and I moved as if my body was at her command.

I wasn’t thinking, though—wouldn’t know what to think still if I tried. I just went and grabbed the guard by his leg and pulled him toward the other end of the wall with Hessa.

His chest was moving, rising and falling slowly but steadily. He wasn’t dead, and neither were the other two.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what the fuck we’re doing down here?” I said, my voice high-pitched, my nerves getting the best of me.

Hessa turned to the barred door—one I knew. One I’d seen before. One I’d gone through just a few days ago, side by side with Lyall.

Right after he came to pick me up where they’d imprisoned me in a cell because he claimed that his guards hadn’t known who I was.

Red hot rage ignited in my chest—or at least I expected it to be hot . Instead, it felt like a layer of ice was spreading all over me again, just like before.

“I’m a little busy at the moment, Lady Nilah.

Please step aside,” Hessa said breathlessly, pushing her hair away from her face as she went closer to the barred door.

The one that I had barely seen as we walked through with Lyall because I’d been so terrified moments before. Terrified that Rune had died.

Hessa had the key to the ancient-looking brass-colored lock that chained the doors together.

“It was you,” I said as she turned it, then pulled the lock off, threw it on the ground. “You gave me the knife—it was you.” As if I still had any doubts left. As if I still suspected my own self.

Hessa looked at me only for a heartbeat, and then she pulled the door open.

“How will Rune know where to find us?” I asked when she walked inside and raised her hand, her palm glowing with the light that came out of her and floated over our heads.

Torches mounted on the walls. The heavy scent of hay hung in the air. I covered my mouth and nose against it because it brought back the memory of all I’d felt the last time that scent was in my nostrils. God, those feelings made a mess of my insides so fast I was going to throw up.

“He’ll know,” was all Hessa said as she slowly moved deeper into the wide corridor.

Cells on both sides, most doors open, most spaces empty. The corridor ended in a round area, this, too, full of cells, these locked, used. All but one—the same cell where I’d been locked in that night.

My limbs suddenly froze when Hessa stopped in the middle of the room and turned around slowly, her golden light following her eyes, moving closer to the cell doors…

“Hessa, what are we doing here?”

My voice sounded strange again, like it wasn’t my own at all.

Because suddenly I realized that this could indeed be a trap.

Suddenly it occurred me to that Hessa could have been playing us, and she could be working for Lyall to get me down here in these cells again—why the hell wouldn’t she?

I’d seen how she spoke to the prince earlier.

Like he was the light of her life, the sun in her sky.

Then she cried out.

It was a small cry, one I was sure escaped her involuntarily as she shot for the jail cell right next to the one I’d been in. I saw nothing but darkness at first, and then the light disappeared, returned to her hands as she attacked the lock on the door, no longer bothering to search for a key.

It wasn’t difficult. She pulled the barred door open and moved inside the cell, and I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried.

I grabbed a torch with a dancing flame in my shaking hands, and I saw the moon outside the barred window of the jail cell when I was at the threshold. I saw the bed frame and the hay.

I saw the man lying on the ground in the corner, eyes half open, a golden beard covering half his face.

That the torch didn’t fall from my hand was a miracle. Hessa was already by his side, trying to pull him to sit up straighter, and he did look more awake as he tried to move. As he tried to hold onto her while Hessa cried. Hessa kissed him—forehead and eyes and lips.

Then he looked at me and I felt like my soul left my body for real this time. Because it was Helid, and he looked more dead than alive.