Page 26 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

seventeen

The music coming from the box while the moon and the stars and the sun took turns to rise behind the castle filled my head. It wasn’t as haunting as I’d thought last night, or maybe my ears had gotten used to it.

I tried for hours. I ate when I was close to passing out, and then I tried again and again, did as Vair said, even put on the gloves when he suggested.

They did help. The music helped, too. I wasn’t as agitated as I had been the day before. My mind was forced to calm down, to follow the melody, each and every note, and the gloves against my skin were almost like someone was holding my hand or something. Weird, I know, but that’s what it felt like.

And Vair told me to focus on that, to focus on the music rather than my thoughts. On my feelings, not my common sense. Disregard it, he said. Disregard my own mind in favor of what I felt.

I had memories, though—memories of Rune that made the whole thing a bit easier.

He told me once that whatever I came across in Verenthia, I took its power when I reminded myself that it was normal.

This was all normal for this place, that it had been here long before me, and it would be here long after I was gone.

Normal. This was all part of the process.

It was then that I finally began to feel the cold underneath my skin grow in intensity. Not like it had before, both in the jail cell while Hessa fought the Seelie Queen and in the forest in the Mercove. It had been hard then, sharp, uncontrollable, but now it was just…heavy.

And it took its time.

“Why ice ?” I asked, eyes closed still, my hands covered in those gloves that fit me like they were made for me. “Why is it called ice magic?” It did feel like it was freezing all of my insides when it came, but my skin always remained warm. Normal.

“It’s called ice magic because of what ice is,” Vair told me.

“Ice captures and preserves. Silences. Can keep things still even while time moves forward. Ice is the best keeper of secrets, too. It’s control, restraint—and it’s absolute.

” When he spoke like this, and now together with the music in the background—fuck, I could listen to him for days.

“That’s the nature of ice magic. It doesn’t destroy and make, but rather captures and reshapes reality as we see it. ”

The only explanation I’d ever had of the magic of the Ice fae was what Rune had told me in that guest haven we’d slept in, on our way to Lyall. God, it had been just weeks, but it felt like years ago.

“How does one manipulate twilight?” I wondered because that’s what Rune said before—the fae of the Frozen Court could manipulate twilight, ice, and water. They were also the best hunters in the realm.

“One doesn’t manipulate twilight the way a Midnight fae does shadows. An Ice fae’s magic is strongest at twilight, that is all,” Vair explained.

“And water? Can you manipulate water, too—like the mermaids did?”

“Ice fae do have elemental power over water. Or they used to, before.” He lowered his head.

“Before what?”

“Just before,” was his answer, and the music stopped. It had slowed down without my even realizing it. “Go ahead. Spin it. Let’s continue.”

So, we did.

It helped to understand how this worked, even though I was still full of unanswered questions. And I was trying to push them away at first, to keep my mind clearer, but that pressure that the cold magic inside me had been building seemed to be easing.

That’s why I decided to speak again just a few minutes later—while keeping my hands in front of me and trying to summon that light.

“Did she have family, the Ice Queen? Did she have a husband or kids, or…or a sister?” I asked Vair as the music continued, my eyes half-closed and my mind half-focused on the sensation of the magic underneath my skin.

“No. She was alone,” said Vair.

Shivers ran down my arms. “There must be someone. A…a cousin. A friend. A lover.”

Vair was silent for the longest moment, never blinking his eyes. “I was her friend once,” he said in a whisper I barely caught. “Useless friend. I didn’t understand until it was too late.”

“Don’t say that, Vair,” I said because it was clear to see that he felt guilty.

A lynx who felt guilty about being a bad friend .

“It’s the truth,” he insisted—and what the hell did I know about the relationship they had?

“What didn’t you understand?”

“Why,” Vair said.

“Why, what?”

“Why she did what she did.”

I shook my head. “Why she cheated her fate, you mean.” He nodded. “But you don’t know how she did it.” I mentioned it again just in case it came back to him—like the mirror.

“I don’t remember,” Vair said.

We didn’t speak again until the first spark of light burned on the tips of my fingers.

Neither of us spoke.

The music stopped two more times, and on the third, I wound the key slowly, expecting nothing different this time, either. I hadn’t lied before when I told Vair that I was tired. So damn tired.

It almost felt like I was giving up.

Maybe that’s why, when the music started again, I could have sworn that the entire room inhaled together with me. Prepared to release a deep sigh.

But the melody spilled out of the box, as delicate as before but familiar now. The gloves, cool and incredibly light on my fingers, melted against my skin.

I didn’t try to force anything, or even think of being focused or distracted—what would be the point?

I didn’t even bother to imagine light burning in the palms of my hands or bursting out of me the way it used to.

I didn’t imagine shimmer or anything at all—I just listened to the music and felt the fabric of the gloves on my skin.

The real questions didn’t take long to melt in with the melody, the questions that mattered. One question in particular—to know who I was . My need to understand this madness I was somehow a part of.

I don’t know why but this time, the magic didn’t retreat, and the music didn’t fight to distract me. It wrapped around it instead—around that single question that I’d had since I met the seer, that terrified me to my bones, that I had tried to get away from with my whole being since.

Maybe that was my problem. Maybe that’s why the moment I wasn’t trying to convince myself that I didn’t belong here and that I had nothing to do with Verenthia or with this palace that kept me prisoner— it’s just a mistake! —I felt…free.

The magic slid down my veins— slid, and though it was cold, it didn’t feel like ice. It felt like water instead. The music faded away and right now all I felt was the whisper-touch of those gloves against my skin.

Water.

Except when I opened my eyes, the light on the tips of my fingers wasn’t wet.

It didn’t burn, either, or freeze. It was exactly like those fae lights I’d seen all over the realm.

Exactly like the bird that Rune made me, my friend, who was just light, but I missed it terribly.

I missed what it meant—that Rune was with me. That Rune was nearby.

Now he wasn’t, but this little light on the tips of my fingers felt the same, and it was easy. My God, I’d tried so hard to both push it and pull it back, hide it from my own self, try to keep it in—and it was as easy as not trying to do any of that stuff.

“I did it,” I whispered, both in awe and surprise, but there was also a part of me that thought this was normal. Just like all the other normals of Verenthia.

“Ice magic,” Vair said, stepping to the side of me as he, too, looked at the light. “That is ice magic. It isn’t frostfire.”

My stomach sank. The light on my fingertips died down almost immediately. I turned to Vair, shaking my head. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

The look he gave me—like he really believed me to be mentally challenged just now. “It isn’t. Close your eyes and try again.”

Fuck me. All that good mood and relief flew right out the window at the same second. “You know, you give a lot of orders for someone who uses my own voice,” I muttered.

Vair took his place again and raised his chin. “Eyes closed.”

Asshole.

I closed my eyes, just like he said. Here we go again.

It wasn’t working—not that the fact surprised me. I felt so close for once, like I might actually get it right, but every time a tiny amount of magic came out of me, it wasn’t frostfire, only ice magic, said Vair.

Only ice magic—as if that was a small thing.

But it wasn’t, not even close. I was a human from Earth, and I was sitting here in a sentient palace making magic with my hands, deliberately, and I wasn’t even about to die!

Magic that came out of me calmly, that didn’t burst out of my skin like it meant to tear me to pieces.

Granted, I would have no clue what the hell to do with it other than look at it, and I did. Even when Vair told me to keep my eyes closed, rely on my feelings instead of my senses, I constantly had to be seeing that tiny light because holy fuck I can do real magic!

If only he were human, Vair would understand. This was the stuff I thought magic was my whole life. Without the curses and the spells and the using live beings as sources—just a beautiful glowy light that sprung to existence at my call.

Fascinating, really.

And it wasn’t even close to enough.

I thought I was being so stealthy, that Vair couldn’t tell I was peeking through my lashes—until he produced a piece of black fabric from God knows where and dropped it on my lap right from his jaws.

Could have sworn it was a tie at first, but no. It was just a piece of black fabric, and Vair told me to blindfold myself.

I kid you not.

Apparently, he thought my senses were the problem, that they helped me to try to control the magic. Of course, I told him that I wasn’t trying to control shit, but he insisted that I was—I just didn’t realize it. And who was I to argue with a talking lynx?

Against my every instinct, I put the fucking blindfold on, and Vair was certain that it was going to work now.

It had to, he said, except I didn’t feel any better.

In fact, I felt worse. I couldn’t see anything, or touch anything that wasn’t those gloves, or hear anything but the music—and I was so damn thirsty!

So, I asked for water breaks again and again, until the sun began to descend toward the horizon slowly. I looked at it through the windows as I drank, and I almost begged the sun to stand still, not move, just wait for me there .

But time didn’t wait for anyone here, either, just like it didn’t back home.

Another day done, I thought. Another failure to weigh down my shoulders.

Then the door behind me opened.