Page 24 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

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Trapped.

I was the prisoner of a fucking palace, even if Vair refused to say so. Even if he insisted that the palace was merely making sure that I was worthy .

The thing was that I didn’t fucking sign up to have my worthiness tested or proved! I was dragged here by this very animal, and somehow, I couldn’t even bring myself to be mad at him .

No, I was just mad at myself.

And I continued to get madder every time Vair said, again, and every time I tried to sit still and control my heartbeat and control my breathing and tried to call for the frostfire inside me—but it refused to come.

“You’re forcing it,” the lynx told me. “Remember what I said. Frostfire does not accept control, only guidance.”

“I’m trying, ” I said through gritted teeth, but Vair didn’t give a shit.

“Try better.”

At that point it was only a matter of time before I lost it for real, and so I wasn’t surprised when five minutes later I found myself picking up that stupid glass vase that refused to break and throwing it against the floor again and again until my arms got tired.

Fuck, I was so angry I saw red. How dare this place keep me hostage in a dead queen’s fucking bedroom?!

Vair said nothing, only watched me pick up the vase and throw it against the floor and the walls like a fucking lunatic.

And I didn’t plan to stop because it felt good to be moving, to be throwing things, to want to fucking destroy everything in my path .

It felt really good, but then I threw the vase against one of those flower designs on the wall near the half-broken vanity table, and it actually broke.

The wall broke—or so I thought.

I stopped moving. A piece of moonstone bigger than my fists fell off and rolled on the floor, but even before I could start to panic for breaking the fucking wall, the music started.

It only played for a single second, but it was music, a melody—and when what I thought was a piece of stone stopped rolling near the first stair in the middle of the room, I realized it was actually a box colored the same as the moonstone walls.

A fucking music box with a silver-colored winder on the side.

“Fuck.” The word slipped from my lips and I was pointing at without even realizing. “What the hell is that?!”

I could see that it was a music box, obviously, but why would it be hidden inside a fucking wall?

Vair looked up at me passively. “Help.”

He said that with a straight face.

Even when I laughed, and even when I told him that I really didn’t see how a music box hidden inside a wall was going to do anything for me, he claimed that it was the palace’s way of helping me, and he assured me that it was safe to go closer, that it wasn’t going to explode in my face or anything.

Eventually, I did.

Eventually, I sat on the floor to inspect it as the flames on the torches grew bigger the farther down the horizon the sun slipped.

The lid of it was indeed shaped like a rose bloom, just like the roses engraved on the stone walls.

Except this one was made of wood painted a silver grey.

It was not made of stone—and whether it had always been there hiding in plain sight, or whether the palace had really given it to me right now as help, it didn’t much matter.

The inside was incredibly beautiful. It was a castle made of moonstone, almost entirely white, with five towers and a million tiny windows, and the velvet cushion it stood on inside the box was that same lilac-pink color of winter roses depicted in the paintings.

The queen’s favorite flowers, according to Vair.

The flowers whose scent Rune had remembered when Raja took the seal off him—but I didn’t dare think about what that could mean yet.

Around it, there were these thin sticks that held up stars and the sun and the moon behind the castle, and when I reached a shaking hand to spin the winder, it worked.

A moment later, the most hauntingly beautiful melody I’d ever heard filled the room.

The moon and the sun and the stars moved up and down, too—the sun remained alone for a moment, then sank behind while the moon and the stars climbed up.

It wasn’t an instrument I could name that played the melody.

It was something new, something I was sure I’d never heard before.

I don’t think I even breathed as the notes climbed higher then dipped low—until the music stopped altogether .

I stayed there, looking at it in silence for a long moment.

“Sleep, Nilah. Tomorrow, we start again,” Vair said.

I wanted to argue, of course. Day three was already done and I was not even close to finding a way out.

To finding Rune. He must have been going crazy by now, wondering where I was—but I was too exhausted.

I couldn’t even think straight right now.

I was too angry, too weak, and I had barely eaten all day because my stomach kept turning, threatening to make me throw up.

And whatever it was about that music box, I found myself picking it up. I took it with me to bed, lay in the middle, and spun the winder all the way.

While the melody played, picked apart my soul and sewed it back together, I slept.

I woke up at dawn again. The sun had just started to turn the sky grey when my eyes opened.

It no longer felt strange to sleep in the queen’s bed, and I didn’t even think about it at all when I found the music box between my hands still.

I hadn’t moved a single inch overnight, and my stiff neck and back were proof of it, too.

Vair was already by the bed’s edge, sitting on his hind legs, watching me. The flames dancing atop the torches knew to get brighter when I made my way to the bathroom—or maybe it was just the palace.

And, no, it was no longer strange to think that the building I was in could hear me and could choose to turn up the lights when I needed it, to bring me food when I was hungry. Nothing was strange to me anymore—I’d already seen too much.

The flames burned even brighter when I opened the closet to find a new pair of pants to wear.

The clothes I left in the bathroom when I changed were never there again when I went back to pick them up, so I guessed the palace took care of them, too, but there were more.

The closet in the wall was huge, and there were always more clothes, all kinds of clothes, most very…

queenly. I skipped the stuff with the silk and the lace and the glittery fabrics, and I went all the way to the end—the closet went on to the corner of the wall, and the door sort of slid back like a large panel—searching for a pair of pants like the ones I had on the day before.

So many things in front of me, and I always forgot myself when I was going through the closet.

I was a girl after all. I saw a closet full of gowns and I wanted to inspect it forever.

That’s why I was positive that there hadn't been a small drawer at the edge of the closet right over the pair of pants identical in fabric to the last ones I wore. I’d seen the back of the closet—made of wood and engraved with vines colored silver—and I’d inspected the actual drawers full of undergarments and accessories I wouldn’t even know how to put on if I tried.

However, now it was right there.

The drawer was small, just a few inches wide, and it had a single round handle in the middle made of silver and covered in glitter, almost like it was trying too hard to get my attention.

Naturally, I opened it.

Inside, the space was even smaller than I thought it would be, and in it were gloves.

They didn’t look anything out of the ordinary—made of blueish white satin and threaded with silver, which seemed to be the queen’s favorite style judging by this closet. I picked them up and inspected them, sure there would be something else in the drawer, but there wasn’t. Just the gloves.

“Another helping hand, perhaps?”

When Vair spoke from behind me, I almost screamed at the top of my lungs.

“Fuck, Vair, fuck,” I spit instead, my heart pounding in my chest, but the lynx didn’t much care about my reaction, as usual. His eyes were on the gloves I was holding in my fists instead.

“Two helping hands,” I said with a sigh, waving the gloves around, more to distract myself than anything. “Thanks, oh mighty Ice Palace, for giving me gloves to wear while you hold me hostage. Appreciate it—really, you’re far too kind and generous.”

I moved around Vair, picked up the music box and went to the other side of the room to sit on the floor. I wasn’t hungry—I was just eager to start, to see if this day was going to be more productive than the last. To see if maybe this time I was finally going to make it out of here to go find Rune.

“I’m ready, Vair. C’mon, let’s get started. The sun’s almost up.” I sat cross-legged on the floor, the music box on one side, the lid closed, and the gloves on the other. Whatever the reason why this place had decided to give me these, I didn’t have time to dwell on it.

“Certainly,” the lynx said, coming to sit right on the second stair in the middle of the room. “We can begin any time. Close your eyes and breathe.”

Breathe. I hated it when he told me to do that, mostly because it never seemed to get me anywhere.

This time was no different. My heartbeat did calm down and so did my breathing, but…

“Do you think she’s still alive, Vair?” I said, my eyes half open already and focused on the gloves. “Do you think she’s somehow sending these things to me?” Because it almost— almost made a bit of sense or at least more sense than a sentient building.

“No. Even if the queen was alive, she would not be sending you these gifts,” Vair said, and he sounded exactly like I sounded when I meant something, yet I still had a hard time fully believing it.

“But why would the palace send me a music box, though?! Why send me gloves—it’s just…” It was silly in the face of everything that was happening, but I still couldn’t quite say it.