Page 21 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

fourteen

The sunlight falling on my face woke me up.

I was lying on something hard, but my body was too numb still to know if anything hurt. Then I noticed the softness underneath my cheek—a pillow. I was lying on something hard, but my head was on a pillow that I most definitely hadn’t put there myself.

The memories rushed in and I sat up so fast black dots took away my vision for a second. A blink, and I could see that I was still sitting on the floor on that stair in the middle of the bedroom.

The Ice Queen’s bedroom.

I was in her palace, which was sentient, and which had trapped me in its rooms, and Rune wasn’t with me, but a lynx who spoke in my own voice was.

Had anybody told me last year that this would be my life right now, I’d have punched them in the face. I’d punched people for a lot less. For this, I’d knock all their teeth out because I’d be sure they were trying to mock me.

Look at me now.

“Good morning,” said my voice from across the room, and I wasn’t even surprised to hear it anymore. I was more surprised by the fact that it was daylight outside. The sky was a bright blue canvas with thick white clouds here and there, the moon and the stars gone.

By some miracle, my body didn’t hurt, or at least I didn’t feel it. I stood up and I went closer to the windows to see outside, and… “Oh, my God,” I whispered, both hands in front of my mouth.

The Frozen Court had come to life, and it might be the most beautiful place I had ever seen in this world and mine.

The snow didn’t glitter like frost—it glowed, soft and surreal, blanketing the world below. It wasn’t ice, not like back home. It was a different snow, gentler somehow. It curled across the rooftops and gathered in the hollows of trees like cotton-candy. So many trees. So colorful, so bright.

We were very high up, indeed, and from here, the entire court looked almost like a painting. There were people out there now as well.

Far below, I saw the figures moving, though I could only make out those who were closest to the palace clearly.

There seemed to be no outer wall of it here, though I wasn’t entirely sure how the palace looked from the outside.

But where there had been a large wall snaking around the Queen’s Palace in the Seelie Court, there was none here, merely what I assumed was a fence.

A woman with a scarf that trailed behind her like smoke.

Children running, chasing something that shimmered as it skipped over the snow.

Horses, some with carriages, some without, moving in all directions.

Guards wearing silver armor near that fence in the distance beyond rooftops of smaller buildings and a narrow river stream, and gardens—some dark, some colorful, some covered in snow .

I could see everything, but no one looked up at me. Like the world didn’t know I was here.

Or maybe…like nobody knew this palace even existed.

I pressed my hand to the glass of the window, half expecting it to break at my touch, but it didn’t. The window stayed cold and unyielding—just like everything else in this place.

“The court is starved of magic. Can you see it?”

This time, I was startled, but not because of my own voice. Because Vair had put his front paws on the edge of the wall near the window and had stretched his neck to look outside. Like that, he reached up to my waist.

“I…no,” I breathed. “No, I don’t. What do you mean, starved of magic? It looks fine to me.” More than that—this place, what I could see of it, was absolutely breathtaking—and it went on forever.

Beyond the buildings, big and small, the land unfolded in soft, endless layers. Sweeping fields blanketed in that same snow, dark blue rivers moving throughout the landscape like living things, and the one nearest to us, on the inside of that fence, steamed faintly as if the water ran warm.

Bridges arched over them everywhere and they looked like ribbons from the distance. And beyond it all, mountains loomed in silence, not sharp like those of the Mercove, but hunched, their snow-covered peaks brushed with gold from the still rising sun.

Yes— breathtaking was definitely the right word. So much more magical than anything Verenthia had showed me until now.

“The queen is dead. The court has no ruler. The magic is fading,” said Vair, and this time I turned to look at him .

“Doesn’t the Midnight King rule here now?” I’d been under the impression that he took over the Frozen Court.

“He is not the rightful heir to the Frozen throne. He tries, and he does command the queen’s army, but he is no ruler here,” Vair said, and I could have sworn that he sounded bitter as hell about it, too.

“He’s a bad man.” Which wouldn’t surprise anyone considering what he did to his own son.

“He’s not only a bad man,” the lynx said. “He’s a weak man, and those are the most dangerous kinds of creatures, my queen used to say.”

“The queen knew him well, I imagine.” If she gave him her army, then went to feasts in his kingdom, she must have.

“She did. He has been obsessed with her for decades. A man who doesn’t know the meaning of empathy claims to be in love—she despised him more for it.”

If the lynx had slapped me across the face with his fucking paw, I’d have been less shocked.

“Are you serious? He was in love with the queen?” Because I’d never before heard of it. Never could I have even imagined it.

“He claimed to be,” said the lynx, those strange eyes closing for a moment, before he pushed himself off the wall and onto the floor, shaking his head, his entire body like he was trying to get rid of a bad memory. “I don’t remember much, but he is as cunning as he is cruel.”

I thought about it for a second. “Vair, how did she do it?” I whispered. “How did the queen cheat her fate?”

Silence for a good long moment.

“I don’t know.” Which was exactly what I’d expected, but somehow, I was still disappointed.

“That’s okay,” I said, more to myself than him. “We will figure it out. We know that she did it; otherwise, this place wouldn’t have let me out of that room at all. She did it, and now we only have to figure out how.”

“It’s impossible to stop a prophecy,” Vair said, looking up at me with those wide eyes, terrified. “They are the only parts of the future that Reme will not allow to be changed—it is why seers can see them. It’s what the word prophecy means in Veren— the unchangeable future. ”

“So, think about it, Vair.” I fell on my knees in front of him, sat on my legs.

“Try to remember. You know what she did, and why she did it. You said you were the queen’s companion—you must know.

” And wouldn’t it be so easy to just have him remember exactly why I was here and what this palace wanted me to figure out, so that I could be out there and on my way to Rune already?

“I have,” the lynx said. “I’ve been trying for almost two decades. The memories aren’t there anymore. They’re…gone.”

“Gone, how? Memories don’t just disappear.”

“They do, when you die,” he said.

“But you’re alive.” I could see him. I was talking to him right now.

A pause. “I shouldn’t have been,” he whispered.

It made my stomach twist. “Don’t say that.”

“No, no—I should have died when the queen did. I was tied to her. I…I don’t understand.” And he sounded exactly like I did. Exactly like me.

Maybe that’s why it hurt to see him like that because I knew what he was feeling.

“Yeah, me, neither.”

I sat on the ground and pulled my knees up, looked out at the white clouds in the sky. Fuck, it was like a different timeline to be here—winter, when in the Seelie Court and the Mercove it had been summer.

“Maybe…” I wondered, shaking my head. “Maybe that’s how she did it. Maybe she cheated her fate through you .” Because if Vair claimed he should have died with the queen and he hadn’t, maybe she used him to cheat fate somehow.

But… “No,” the lynx said.

“How do you know?”

Again, that look, like he was completely lost, but when he spoke, he still sounded a hundred percent certain about this. “Because I feel it. She did not use me. She used…”

Fuck, the way my muscles locked and my heart stood still. I watched his mouth and waited with my breath held, and…

“Something else,” Vair finally said. I almost rolled my eyes.

“ What else is there to use?”

His eyes almost sparkled when he said, “Magic.”

Yes, magic.

I’d grown up with fairy tales back home, and though there were plenty of villains to learn from, magic had always been this magnificent sparkly pretty thing that made good things happen to good people.

I’d always tried to imagine what the world would be like if everyone had magic, and I always thought it would be better.

That people across the world would be happier, and that there would be nobody sleeping on the streets, no children starving, no polluted water, no wars.

All our problems would simply disappear with magic.

Except now I wasn’t so sure anymore. Now that I’d seen the dark side of magic much more clearly, with curses and prophecies and cruel kings beyond my imagination, I was thankful that we were magic-free back home.

I was thankful we didn’t have curses and people who could do spells by sacrificing other living beings.

“There must be a way,” I told Vair. “Just like that book in the other room…”

Suddenly my heart jumped. I stood up, looked around the bedroom, chockful of hope all at once when I said, “Show me where to look to find the next piece of your puzzle.”

I said the words slowly and clearly so the fucking walls that pulsated with their own light could hear me. That’s how fucked up my life had become.

Talking to a room? Pfft. On the daily. It and I are the bestest buddies.

Except the room wasn’t best buddies with me, it seemed, because nothing moved. Nothing changed. Nothing shimmered or vibrated, none of the books on the shelves or any other item in the room.

Vair and I looked at one another.

I shrugged. “Worth a shot.”