Page 22 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

“This is the queen’s bedroom. We’re in her chambers, and the throne room shouldn’t be far. The closer to it we are, the more hesitant the palace will be if it has any doubts.”

“See—you lose me completely when you talk like that, Vair. Not that you don’t lose me the whole time you use my voice to speak with, but especially when you talk like I’m supposed to know how any of this works.

” I pressed my lips into a tight smile. “Please assume that I just got here in this realm and I know nothing at all about sentient palaces and fae queens and the likes—okay? Can you do that for me?”

Vair blinked .

Vair turned his back to me and walked to the center of the room without a single word.

Fucking hell, that was ice-cold.

“Start searching,” he said when he jumped up the two stairs in the middle of the room.

“For what ?!”

But he said, “You’ll know it when you find it.” And he lay down near the desk’s legs again, rested his chin over his paws, and stared out at the sky with eyes half closed.

I searched every single book the Ice Queen had had in her room. I put as many as I could on the pretty desk, dragged an armchair to it, and I went through every single cover—while I ate breakfast.

All I did was ask for it, and this time the tabletops in the room didn’t flip to reveal to me a fully set table. Instead, the door of the bedroom clicked open just slightly, and when I gathered enough courage to go see the outside, I found a silver tray full of food right there by the threshold.

Surreal.

But I was hungry, and time was running out, and so I picked up the tray and I ate while I went through the books.

I paid attention to the food, too. The strawberries that had a slightly different taste than those back home, and the bacon, and the boiled eggs, and the slightly sweet milk like someone had mixed honey into it—I tasted everything, and it was all delicious.

But the books that were on the shelves had nothing to tell me .

Most were tales, just like the ones in my bedroom at the queen’s palace in the Seelie Court. What wasn’t tales was written in those symbols in Veren, and this time nothing translated for me when I touched it with my hand, no matter how long I kept contact. Nothing changed.

“It’s not it,” I realized when I was close to the very end of the last pile of books I’d brought to the desk. “This isn’t it, Vair. This time the answer isn’t in a book.”

I looked back to where the lynx was standing, near the windows, looking out at the dark grey sky, the sun just starting to set.

I’d had my back turned to it, so I hadn’t seen how much time had passed, and the tray with the dishes from breakfast was still there on the desk’s edge.

Fuck, I was starving again, and my ass was numb from sitting down for too long because I’d brought four huge piles to the desk the last time I got up to get more books.

“If you say so,” the lynx said with my voice, and the look he gave me was so fucking heartbreaking. He looked so hopeless just now. So lost.

“Do you, um…do you eat or something?” I muttered, grabbing the tray from the edge of the table.

“No. I feed on magic,” the lynx said and turned back to the windows. So… sad , it was killing me.

“Right. Right. I’m just gonna, I’m just…”

I nodded my head back at the door, but Vair didn’t turn to look at me at all. So, I just turned and pulled the handle down with my elbow, and the door opened with a weak crack. It opened, and I put the tray down on the floor right where I’d found it.

“Thanks for breakfast, I guess,” I said to the empty hallway ahead, and I tried—I really tried not to feel stupid, but it didn’t work. “If I could have some dinner, too, that would be great. Um, I?—”

The words caught in my throat.

A door had appeared on the right wall of the hallway.

“Vair?”

My voice came out hushed, but it still echoed in the hallway. I was frozen on the threshold, looking at the door that was so wide it could have been two sets of doors together, but it was only one, and it was made of wood, reinforced with silver-colored metal every few inches.

Then Vair stepped outside the bedroom with me, his eyes on the door, too.

“That…wasn’t there before.” Pretty sure I said this. “That door was most definitely not there before. I’m sure of it. A hundred percent sure. A billion percent sure.”

Vair moved forward, his steps soundless. “No, it was not.”

Thank God. I hadn’t been stupid enough to miss this gigantic door when I first came to this bedroom—it really hadn’t been there before.

“Maybe we did it. Maybe we found the second piece of the puzzle!” Maybe those books I’d opened and read had been the answer, and I just hadn’t realized it.

With new energy rushing through my veins, I ran forward, heart in my throat, hunger forgotten, and I grabbed the large, hooped knob of the door. It didn’t burn, it didn’t sting, it didn’t push me off—it was just metal, and I pulled with all my strength.

The door didn’t budge.

“Help me!” I told Vair, like I forgot for a moment that he was a lynx, not a man. He had no hands to pull with.

“It won’t open,” he said instead, but I shook my head .

“Maybe it will. Maybe it opens on the other side. C’mon, push with me!”

I pressed my shoulder against the cold, pale wood and I pushed with every ounce of strength in me. Vair did, too. Putting his back legs on the door, he pushed as hard as he could, and the door didn’t budge. I could have been pushing against the stone walls and it would have had the same outcome.

Still, I didn’t stop until I was breathless and I had sweat beads lining my forehead.

“ Fuck !”

I sat on the floor then, racing to catch my breath, angry, terrified, but most of all hopeless. Vair watched me curiously, ears twitching at the word.

“You have not found what the palace wants you to find yet, Nilah,” he told me, and he wasn’t breathing heavily at all.

In fact, he wasn’t breathing, period. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t eat. I bet he didn’t sleep, either, even though he sometimes closed his eyes. Even though he thought he did.

It hit me in that very moment—Vair wasn’t really alive. He wasn’t a real creature, even though he wasn’t an illusion, either. He was…something else.

“How do you know that?” I asked eventually.

“Frostfire,” he said. “I am almost certain that you will need to learn about your magic before you can walk out of this palace. Or at least prove to it that you can own it. Use it.” He lowered his head. “You have to prove to it that you have it.”

I shook my head, and when I looked up and saw the tray full of food in front of the open door to the bedroom, I laughed a little.

It looked like dinner was already fucking served .

“This place is going to drive me insane, you know that?”

The lynx stood up and went back to the room slowly. “Sanity is only an illusion. Come.”

And just like that, he hopped over the tray and went into the room, leaving me alone in the hallway.