Page 20 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

thirteen

There was nobody there—and I wasn’t sure how I knew this. There was nobody there but the set of doors on the left of the room were open. They’d pushed themselves open halfway and revealed to me only darkness beyond, nothing else.

I’d stood up without realizing it. I’d stopped touching the book, and the English words had turned to those symbols again, but that was okay. I’d already memorized their message, and it seemed I’d learned what I needed to learn from it.

The Ice Queen might have cheated her fate, the fulfillment of the prophecy—and I’d found the first piece of whatever puzzle this place wanted me to solve.

I was free to leave the room.

Suddenly, it didn’t seem so impossible anymore.

Suddenly, getting out of this palace and running back to the real world, to Rune, didn’t seem like a dream that was never going to come true.

As I followed Vair toward the doors with my heart in my throat, I believed that I was going to make it as if Rune himself was standing beside me and whispering the words in my ear.

I was going to survive this, cheat whatever fucking fate had brought me here, just like the Ice Queen had done.

I pushed the door open all the way when Vair slipped outside, and part of me expected it to slam closed on my face, but it didn’t.

With a weak screeching sound, the right door opened all the way and revealed to me another room with stone walls—but that was all I could really see.

It was dark, too dark, and even the lynx stopped two feet beyond the threshold.

“Light,” I whispered. “I need light.”

Ten torches came alive with that starlight-colored fire the same second I stopped speaking, and I had more than enough light to see everything in the…

“ Hallway? ”

That’s what it looked like. A wide hallway with torches on the walls made of pale stone, same as the floor. It went straight ahead only, and there was another set of doors on the other side, also made of silver-colored metal and embossed on every inch.

The lynx walked ahead, his footsteps soundless.

“Vair, wait,” I whispered, terrified to be alone. It was so silent out here, so… dead. “Where are you going? Do you know where this hallway leads?”

No answer. He only continued to walk ahead.

There was no way in hell that I was staying out there by myself, and those doors at the other end could very well lead me outside, so I moved, too. I rushed after the lynx, trying to control my breathing, the fast beating of my heart.

“Vair, hold on a minute!”

He slipped through the slightly open doors without turning his head. I looked back for just one second to make sure there was nobody following me, and I pushed the door open all the way to see the other side.

To see Vair sitting there right off the threshold, looking at the room in front of him.

A room—not the outside.

“I remember it,” the lynx finally said. “We’re in the queen’s bedroom.”

Ice-cold shivers broke down my arms and back. My heart skipped a beat, and all my thoughts came to halt for a good moment. I didn’t hear movement behind me at all until the door closed on its own. The lock didn’t turn, though.

“Fuck,” I breathed, hoping to release some of the pressure that had built on my shoulders. Hoping to get the fear to calm down a bit, stop making my hands shake so much.

Then Vair stood up and went deeper into the room, leaving me to follow.

It was just a bit smaller than the one I left behind on the other side of the hallway.

There was a bed on the far left, almost the same size as the one where I’d slept in the Queen’s Palace in the Seelie Court, covered in a silver duvet.

Torches on the walls, burning with those same flames.

A large desk made of glass and metal was just a few feet off the entrance, and then behind it two wide stairs led to the rest of the room, two sets of furniture, and large windows showing the dark sky outside.

As if hypnotized by the sight of the moon and the stars, I followed Vair around the table and down the stairs, beyond the recliners and to the wall that I thought was just ordinary pale stone, but it wasn’t.

It shimmered, the stone, and the smooth blocks had silver veins in them here and there.

It made it look like they were covered in frost, but no. It was just stone .

There were vines made of glass around the windows covered in dust, and these small glass balls on the walls that I could only imagine used to be filled with raw fae magic for light.

Every place in Verenthia had them, but this room also had a chandelier in the ceiling— not attached to it, though.

A chandelier as big as my entire body made of pieces of glass in the shape of snowflakes, and it was just suspended on air a few inches below the ceiling.

Drapes made of light silver silk were on the sides of the windows, and the walls had roses engraved on them, and they were covered in small mirrors in all shapes, bookshelves, vases that only held dust.

I reached out my hand for the vines made of glass near the windows, but I didn’t dare touch them.

Instead, I looked outside at the world that I thought might have stopped existing while I’d been trapped in that room—but it was there.

An entire city—a kingdom full of buildings covered in snow, silent, the streets empty, the starlight-colored lights hovering in the air every few feet.

An entire court of people, just like the Seelie Court.

It must have been late in the night because nobody was moving that I could see, which wasn’t much because of the tears that had gathered in my eyes.

I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, but I felt so much of it. I wasn’t sure what the point of being trapped in this place was, but my God, it was so fucking beautiful to be looking at the dark sky from here, at the kingdom covered in snow.

“This is where she slept.”

My own voice startled me, slipped into my ears and forced the chaos in my mind to settle, if only for a moment.

Vair was sitting atop the stairs that went through the middle of the room, right near that magnificent desk, and maybe it was just me, but he looked…

calm. Much more relaxed than he had been.

“The Ice Queen’s bedroom.” How fucking insane was it that I was standing here right now?

Vair gave me a curt nod. “What do you want to do first?”

Laughter burst out of me, short and powerful. But suddenly being here didn’t seem so… final. This place no longer looked or felt like inevitable death. It felt like…a stranger. Someone I could get to know.

Whether I meant the palace or the queen, I had no clue.

“I actually need to use the bathroom so badly.” Otherwise, my bladder was going to fucking explode.

“As you wish,” Vair said, and when he turned his head to the left, toward the wall at the side of the queen’s bed, what I’d thought was a silver frame of a mirror moved. Pushed back. Opened.

It looked like the palace really was going to give me everything I needed, after all.

The bathroom was just as fancy as the one in the bedroom in the Seelie Court. It had a toilet and a tub and a basin and hot water—and a showerhead that was square and wide enough that I felt like I was standing underneath a waterfall.

Not really sure if the shampoos in the glass bottles were old or if this palace had somehow brought them up for me today or something, but I used them and they smelled heavenly.

Like flowers and snow, but with a twist. The towels were white, the hems sown with silver, and they smelled clean.

I wrapped myself in them when I walked back into the bedroom, wondering how long it would take my clothes to dry if I washed them by hand.

“There are clothes here,” Vair said when he took one look at me, like he’d read my mind and knew what I was thinking.

And just as he said that, another door framed with silver closer to the bed clicked open.

A built-in closet just like the one in the Seelie Court, except the colors here were so different.

Colder. Icy whites and silvers, deep blues and lilacs, minty greens and bloody reds.

To think that an actual queen had worn these clothes made me want to stay away from them, but I wasn’t going to sit here wrapped in towels.

“Do you think the palace would mind?” I whispered to Vair. “Do you think the queen would have minded?”

Vair was silent for a heartbeat. “Does it matter?”

It did not.

So, I ended up picking a pair of charcoal-black loose pants, and a silver-white shirt to wear, just this once. They fit like they were made for me instead.

I tried not to think about it at all, and it was easy, thank God. Easy to distract myself with my surroundings, to inspect the mirrors and the furniture, the empty vases, the snowflake chandelier.

Then there was the desk.

It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, with thick, beautifully engraved legs, and a landscape carved out of metal in the middle, complete with a glass tabletop so that I could see every detail, every line and every mountain, every river depicted in this work of art.

It was the only thing in this room that was covered in dust somehow, and it looked too fragile to even touch it. I was afraid I’d ruin it.

Then there was Vair .

He’d lain down at the edge of the top stair, chin resting on his paws as he looked ahead at the windows, at the sky beyond.

I tried to open them, but they wouldn’t budge.

I thought some air might do me well, but the palace must have suspected I’d convince myself to jump out eventually.

We were high, too high, and I couldn’t see the rest of the palace I was in without sticking my head out the window, but maybe there was a way.

Maybe I could even break this glass, I thought—but only if I found no other way out.

“This is where I was born,” Vair said. He must have felt my eyes on him, inspecting him, too, while I stood by the desk. Because he was still the most curious, unusual thing I had ever set eyes on in my life, despite all I’d seen. “This is where she brought me to life.”

“You sometimes sound like I do when I’m in pain,” I said, almost absentmindedly.

“I am,” the lynx said.

Now I felt sorry for a talking animal.

Taking in a deep breath, I went to sit with him on the stair. Though I’d eaten and I’d showered, and had even slept in that room, I was tired, I realized. The sky was dark, and I had no clue what time it was, but fuck, I was exhausted.

“You were close to the queen, I take it.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “I was.”

“Do I really look like her?”

“Yes.”

A knife could cut right through my gut just now. I’d asked him because I’d expected an I don’t know , but Vair raised his head and turned to me.

“You look exactly like her, and also very different.”

“Different, how?” I said with barely any voice .

“A different person,” the talking lynx said. “That’s all I can remember.”

“Why, though? Why can’t you remember? What can’t you remember?”

“Everything,” Vair said. “Most things. I was her companion. I was with her all the time, yet I can hardly remember the shape of her face without looking at you.” Again, those bright blue eyes turned to me. “I don’t know why. I was lost for years until I felt you.”

Well, fuck. “Lost, how? Where?”

“Here, I think. I…” The lynx turned to the windows again. “I slept a lot.”

There went my train of thoughts, crashing into invisible walls again. “I’m…I’m sorry.” And I had no clue what the hell I was sorry for.

“She did something.” My stomach twisted.

“The queen?” He nodded. “What? What did she do?”

But Vair didn’t know. “I cannot remember.” He really did sound exactly like me when I was in pain. When my heart hurt.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said, imagining it was Rune saying those words to me. “Whatever the reason why you brought me here, we’ll figure it out.”

“I know, Nilah. The stars know the truth, even if I don’t remember it. It will find its way eventually. It always does.”

Heavy words coming from a lynx.

“The truth,” I whispered, leaning to the side to rest against the metal leg of the table. Not the most comfortable place, but I was resting. I could see the moon from here just fine. “I’ve been chasing the truth for what feels like a lifetime now, and I have yet to find it.”

Vair said, “The chase isn’t over yet.”

Maybe he was right—I had no clue. And for whatever reason, my mind was blank and my instincts calm right now.

My eyes were half-closed, too, as I thought of Rune, hoped he could hear the thoughts in my head right now, know that I was okay.

Hoped that he was okay, too, and that I would wake up tomorrow and I would find my way out of these doors.

We’ll be all right, Wildcat, he whispered in my ear before I slept right there, sitting on the stair. And like always, I believed him.