Page 25 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

“I don’t know,” Vair said, and I didn’t expect anything more, but… “She wore those often.”

This definitely made me look up at him. “What, the gloves?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod. “She liked fabrics and shimmer, and she liked her hands concealed. Something about her mother when she was still alive…”

Vair looked to the side as if he were trying to think—and I already knew what happened when he did that.

“Wow,” I whispered picking up the gloves and looking at them with a new eye. “Her mother.” Something about the idea of the Ice Queen having parents, which was ridiculous. “I keep thinking about her as this… statue or something. I can’t picture her as a person for the life of me.”

“She was,” the lynx said. “She was an extraordinary queen. A kind queen…when she was.”

I waited for him to continue, to give more sense to that sentence, but he didn’t. That was all I was going to get. She was a kind queen when she was. Now she was a dead queen.

“A queen who liked shimmer and music and to cover her fingers.” The image I’d seen in that painting, both in the Gallery of Time and the mist over the seer’s bowl came alive in front of my eyes.

Then Vair said, “She always kept them with her mirror, though.”

It was like a large hand made out of ice slapped me across the face.

I put the gloves down and looked at him. “Mirror?”

“Her mirror,” the lynx continued, sitting there exactly like an animal would.

“What mirror, Vair?” Because I knew about a mirror. And this place had mirrors on the walls, too, and I’d told him about the sorcerer and about Helid. About the image of the seer. I’d told him all of this when he’d demanded my truth, and he hadn’t reacted.

“The queen’s hand mirror that was given to her by her mother, together with the grimoire of the sorcerers. The one she always kept hidden away, together with these very gloves.”

There he went, reciting the words as if they’d been there inside his head all along.

“What the fuck.” It wasn’t even a question.

“Close your eyes, Nilah,” Vair then said, and he still didn’t get it. He genuinely didn’t look like he remembered.

I put the things aside and I rose to my knees and I dragged myself all the way to him. “Vair, where is the queen’s mirror?”

He blinked slowly, his pupils suddenly dilated, like he just realized I was in front of him.

Sometimes I wondered if he was… okay. He certainly didn’t look like it at times like this.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“But you must. Remember when I told you about the sorcerer tied to the altar in Mysthaven?” I urged him .

“Yes, Mysthaven has always been an extension of the Frozen Court, since the first royal Ice family. Sorcerers make their altars to worship in them. Divination magic works best through worship,” he said, completely disconnected once again.

“Vair, no.” I went closer still until my knees were right in front of his paws.

I leaned down a bit, too, so we were face to face.

Our eyes, identical, locked. “He told me to find the mirror. Remember that? When he thought I was the Ice Queen—he told me find the mirror , before he does .” Vair froze completely, didn’t move or blink.

“Helid, too—the Seelie Queen’s brother. He told me to find the mirror.

And in the painting, the image that the seer showed me—do you remember?

The Ice Queen had a small mirror made of silver in her hand.

She had it in her hand in the painting.” I’d told him this word for word before, and it hadn’t clicked then.

It did now.

Vair stood up on all fours and finally reacted, looked at me like he actually knew what I was talking about.

“She did. She always had her mirror with her.”

“Right, right—so where is it now? Because I told you this, Vair—I told you about the sorcerer and about Helid, and I need to find it. Where is it?!” I was this close to grabbing him by the fur and shaking him until the answer came out of those jaws.

Luckily, I didn’t need to because Vair turned to look behind him and said, “There.”

The desk.

The big desk made of metal and glass, at the legs of which he always sat. Where I sat to read and eat most times, too.

The desk.

I jumped to my feet so fast vertigo hit me, but I was already pushing back the armchair I’d dragged to it days ago.

It really was an absolutely beautiful piece of art, the entire thing.

It was mostly made of silver-colored metal, engraved on every inch, and the top of it was thick glass, below which a landscape was carved—a landscape that I thought might have been the Frozen Court a long time ago.

Same rivers and same hills and same mountains I could see outside the windows, without the buildings and man-made changes. Fae- made changes.

“Where? Where is it?” I said, inspecting the edges, the pieces of wood at the sides and the corners, and I moved all around to the back before I realized that Vair had sat near the front left edge and was looking at the table like he couldn’t quite believe it was there.

“Is it there? Is it—” I went to him, pushed him to the side a little, started to inspect the corner, where the tabletop met the leg.

It was engraved with these intricate designs—which was why I couldn’t have possibly noticed a straight line going through it even if I’d been stuck in this room for a hundred years, if I didn’t know where to look.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, touching the edges, running my fingertips along the line of what could only be a drawer. A small, perfectly hidden drawer right there near the corner.

“How do you…” I searched for a handle but there wasn’t one.

“How do you open this thing, Vair? Where’s the damn handle?

!” I was panicking a little bit, but it was a good kind of panic, one that was mixed in with excitement when you were on the cusp of a discovery that might set you free from a damn building holding you hostage—that kind of panic.

“Magic.”

I stopped moving where I’d sat on the floor underneath the table, searching for a way to open the drawer, but I couldn’t even see it from the thick piece of wood that covered the entire underside.

“Magic?”

Vair looked at me. “Frostfire. The queen’s frostfire is the only thing that could ever open this desk.”

My mouth opened and closed a few times. “Well, fuck, Vair!”

But he said, “I think this is why. I think this is why you have to learn it. I didn’t see it before, but… this is why.”

I flinched. “Or I could just ask the palace for a hammer and break this desk down to pieces until I get to this drawer.” It sounded so much easier than learning magic.

“Don’t be silly, Nilah. It’s magic—it cannot be broken with hammers.”

Double fuck . “But…but…what if it isn’t in there?” I asked. “The gloves were in the closet—what if she left the mirror somewhere else?” I dragged myself from under the table and looked at the room again.

“Maybe,” Vair said—which was no help at all.

So, I said, to the room, “Can I have the Ice Queen’s mirror, pretty please?”

Worth a shot, I figured, but I still knew that nothing was going to happen. The room didn’t magically make a mirror appear in front of me.

“How about this drawer, then? Can you open this drawer for me?” I asked it next, but this time Vair answered.

“It cannot. This desk is made of the queen’s magic, not Verenthia. It is separate from the palace.”

“Of course,” I muttered, sitting on the stairs again, eyes squeezed shut. “Of course, it’s separate—of course.” The one thing that could have potentially gotten me out of here right now, and it was in a drawer I couldn’t fucking open.

“Breathe, Nilah,” Vair said. “This is good news. ”

“But it’s not. Not for me.” My hands slid in my hair and I grabbed fistfuls, half my mind made up to just pull until my scalp was on fire, just to feel something else other than this helplessness.

This dread. “I’m tired, Vair. I’m tired.

” The tears slipped down my cheeks. “I’m tired of this room and this palace, and these secrets.

I’m tired of being thrown from one disaster to the other.

I’m tired of being away from Rune. I’m tired of missing my family. I’m just so, so, so tired.”

Vair said nothing. My tears continued to fall. I stayed there, seated on that stair for a long time, waiting for something to happen, waiting for anything to make sense.

But nothing ever did unless I made it, until I forced it, until I fucking tried. So, eventually, I got my shit together, wiped my cheeks with the back of my hands and said, “Let’s get started.”