Page 28 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

nineteen

It had been hiding there under that book, turned upside down, the shape of it unmistakable. The metal, the small gemstones that decorated it—it was the very same mirror that the Ice Queen had had in her hand in that painting that the seer showed me.

It was the mirror.

“What is it? Do you see it?” Vair said.

My hand was steady when I reached for it, the gloves still on. I don’t know why I expected to be pushed back or at least to feel something when I wrapped my fingers around the handle, but I didn’t. It was just a mirror, and nothing stopped me from pulling it out of the drawer.

I lowered to my knees so that Vair could see it, too, when I turned it over, terrified of facing my reflection in it, but…

“Broken.” Pretty sure the word came from my lips, but it didn’t much matter at that point. I only ever heard my own voice in this place; it no longer mattered who said what.

The oval-shaped mirror surrounded by gemstones was broken, and a piece of it like an upside-down triangle was missing from the middle.

“She broke it.”

This time the whisper definitely came from Vair, but I didn’t even pay attention because there was no reflection on the pieces that were still attached.

No reflection—just white , like the mirror couldn’t see me right there in front of it. It refused to reflect me.

“This is wrong,” I said, and I couldn’t even tell you why. I stood up, raised the mirror and looked at the walls…

“I found it. I used frostfire and I found the mirror. It’s here,” I said, and it was still just as difficult not to believe that I’d lost my fucking mind for talking to a room, but this was my reality now. “I have the mirror. Let me go. It’s right here—let me?—”

A noise cut me off—something moving. Something heavy, and it was coming from outside the bedroom door.

My heart stood still for a good moment, and then I was running, my bare feet barely touching the stone floor. The mirror was in my hand when I ran out into the hallway, hoping, praying with every fiber in me that the palace had given me a way out.

I stopped for the second time when I realized the door that had appeared in the hallway was open. The gigantic thing made out of wood and metal that I couldn’t get to even move a little bit before was now halfway open, just like that.

My eyes closed. My legs refused to move still. I felt the heat of Vair’s body as he stepped out, too, stood there near my feet, and looked ahead curiously.

“Well, Nilah?” he eventually said. “Do you want to see where this door leads?”

Not outside .

That much I already knew. The door didn’t lead outside because my ears were working just fine, and all I could hear was silence.

My eyes were working, too, and all I saw was darkness.

Licking my lips, I squeezed the mirror in my fist and nodded, and together, we went for the door.

It was so big that it fit us both through even though it was only open halfway.

The other side was dark, but there were windows here and I could see the stars outside, just a handful that weren’t hiding behind clouds.

I breathed in deeply and I could tell just by the sound of it that the room ahead was vast.

Then I said, “Light.”

Light sprang to existence everywhere at once.

Two large chandeliers on the ceiling brightened up with magic.

Raw fae magic. Lanterns on the walls, not torches, were suddenly brighter than flashlights, dotting the stone walls that were different here from the queen’s bedroom.

A pale grey, but no silver veins went through the blocks.

It was just ordinary stone, not moon stone, I figured.

And the room the palace had brought us to was a throne room.

I stepped deeper inside and the air shifted, like the palace itself exhaled.

The flames in the lanterns burned, and the windows taking up most of the right wall of the room had no glass in them, yet the entire room was so still it felt like stepping inside a different world altogether.

No ice on the floor, no frost coating the walls, but there was what I thought might be snow , thick and soft, lying in drifts in the corners.

Pillars made of stone that was almost completely white were everywhere, holding up the high ceiling.

At the far end was the dais—a crystal platform that reflected the light like a gigantic gemstone. No throne was on it. No chair of any kind, which was strange as hell.

The ceiling was a dome made of frozen glass that cast spectral colors across the room—pale blues, silvers, hints of violet. No guards. No sound—just silence and marble and light, yet I couldn’t for the life of me shake the feeling that I was being watched. That the room itself had eyes on me.

Fuck.

“It’s her throne room,” said Vair, and he went ahead, walked slowly, silently. “The palace must have brought it up. It used to be on the ground floor.”

“Brought it up? What do you mean?—”

I stopped speaking myself when I followed him deeper into the room and saw outside—goddamn, we were high up. Like, very high up, higher than we were in the queen’s bedroom—which, what the actual fuck?!

“How is this possible?”

“The Ice Palace,” was Vair’s answer.

“What the hell, Vair, what the hell…”

My voice trailed off as I went closer to the windows to see outside—and I did.

My God, I saw all of the Frozen Court, I thought, and there was no wall around it, indeed.

But there were gigantic ice shards that I could only see in some places through the hills and the buildings, ice shards that rose up from the ground like the fucking teeth of a gigantic animal.

More than that—I felt the cold air against my skin, the smell of snow and roses, and I finally saw the palace.

Pale stone blocks. Silver vines going up the walls. And a sea that stretched to the side and went on forever, merging with the dark sky above.

The Eternal Water. It was the sea that stretched behind each of the fae courts and to the edge of Verenthia.

Yes—the edge, because this realm was not a globe. It had a beginning and an end, and though I couldn’t see it from the darkness, I knew it was there. Because I could see the other kingdoms as well.

The Unseelie Court, and the Midnight one far on the left of the palace, but the windows must have been to the side of the throne room because I couldn’t see to the right where I knew the Seelie Court was.

Lights burned atop the courts, colors like those pictures of the aurora borealis I’d seen back home.

I held my breath as I watched, the land so vast it was like I was just realizing Verenthia was indeed a whole continent.

It was massive, and it was right in front of my eyes—yet I couldn’t reach it.

I was stuck in a palace that refused to let me go.

“This is where she sat.”

I turned, half surprised to find I wasn’t alone. The lynx was sitting on his hind legs right in front of the crystal platform.

Without thinking, I went closer.

“There’s no chair,” I said in wonder, though the dais itself was beautiful. So… new. Not a speck of dust was anywhere in this room, now that I thought about it. The floor was perfectly clean, too.

“There used to be,” Vair whispered. “This is where she belonged.” His voice— my voice—grew stronger. “This was where she was meant to be.”

“Do we know why that prophecy even existed?”

“The stars decide about the fate of the realm,” Vair said, and he sounded bitter just now. Almost hateful.

Which was the reason why I didn’t ask him to explain. Instead, I went closer to the dais, the thick crystal it was made of perfectly smooth on the outside but cut in a thousand different lines on the inside. I was tempted to think it was fake, made of plastic or something, but it wasn’t .

“This is it,” I said, slowly bringing the mirror, putting it over the dais. “I did the magic you wanted me to do, Vair. I found the mirror of the queen. I did everything.” I looked up at the ceiling, at the beautiful pieces of glass it was made of. “Now, will you let me go?”

No answer.

“You know what the queen did,” Vair whispered. “You mastered her magic and found her mirror.” He looked up at me. “But…there’s more.”

“No.” Shaking my head, I stepped back. “No way, Vair. I can’t take more. I don’t want to do more—I want to get the fuck out of here, right now.”

“It’s not so simple,” the lynx said, head lowered, that look taking over his eyes—the one that meant he was trying to remember. He was trying to find a reason—but guess what? I couldn’t care less! Not anymore. I didn’t give a shit about this palace’s reasons—I did not care!

“I’m getting out of this place tonight.” I stepped farther back, looked up at the ceiling.

“You can’t do that,” the lynx said, and that made me laugh.

“Watch me.”

The next ten minutes found me banging my fists on stone blocks, searching for doors that I knew were hidden here somewhere because there were always hidden doors wherever there were fae involved.

I couldn’t find any, and demanding from the palace to let me out this instant didn’t work, either, and so I had the brilliant idea of climbing up on the ledge of one of the windows and considered jumping off all the way to the ground.

The problem was, we were very high up —I suspect for this very reason; why else would the palace bring this room up here when Vair said it used to be on the ground floor—and there was no river going around this palace, it seemed.

In fact, I couldn’t fucking see the ground from up here, just darkness and a few lights, and I had no clue what the hell waited for me down there if I did convince myself to jump.

I had moon magic in me, didn’t I? That’s why Maera had scratched me before she threw me into that dried riverbed. My bones would heal again if I broke them.

Would my skull, though?

“Nilah, get down from there.”

Vair was behind me. I didn’t look, just held more tightly to the pillar that separated this window from the next. Wrapped both my arms around it.

Fuck, this is high…