Page 29 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

“Don’t be silly. Even if you jump, the palace will not let you go.”

The wind blew in my face, ice-cold and whispering in my ear to get back. Get inside. Don’t do anything stupid, Nilah!

Probably my own instincts, not the wind, but still.

“Get down, Nilah. You’re wasting time.”

I laughed. “ I’m wasting time?! Are you serious right now?” Because I wasn’t the one holding me hostage here—it was this fucking palace!

“You could be thinking calmly about the next part instead of trying to run, simply because you can’t.”

I looked back at the asshole of a lynx for a second. “I will jump.”

“But you will not get out.” He didn’t even blink his eyes when he said this.

And I thought, what the hell. I wasn’t going to stay here any longer, so might as well try it. It was a second’s decision, wasn’t it? It was a crazy decision, but I had become crazy locked up in this place.

I was batshit fucking crazy.

So, I jumped.

I couldn’t believe my own damn eyes, but I let go of that pillar, and I jumped off the window, into the darkness, fully aware that I was going to break to pieces.

That’s why I was shocked and couldn’t even scream when my legs hit the ground not a second later.

The ground in the middle of the fucking throne room.

A moment passed, then another. I blinked and blinked, arms out to keep my balance, my feet against the stone floor, my legs somehow holding me—and I looked.

At the window where I just jumped from, the empty dais, and Vair sitting there by the wall watching me passively as if to say, are you done now ?

Then I screamed.

Loud and hard and for as long as my lungs could manage it—I screamed like the world had just fallen right over my head.

“You are seriously disturbed! ” I screamed, at Vair or the palace or the entire fucking realm—who cared?

“And you need to calm down.” The lynx stood up and made his way toward me. “Calm down, Nilah, and think. ”

So fucking frustrating because he was right. My heart was still slamming against my ribcage, and I could barely catch my breath because I had jumped. I had really jumped from that fucking window—seriously, Nilah!—and it hadn’t even worked.

And as much as I wanted to continue to scream my guts out at this whole fucking place, I knew that wasn’t going to get me anywhere. No, I needed to stop and I needed to think. I needed to find the next piece of this fucking puzzle and force this place to let me out.

Tonight, not tomorrow. Tonight.

The broken mirror didn’t show me my reflection no matter what angle I turned it. It also didn’t actually do anything at all no matter how tightly I held it in my hands or how much magic I gave it.

“It’s not it,” Vair said after what was probably a whole hour of sitting there on the floor, looking at it, trying to make it do pretty much anything at all. Anything.

The mirror didn’t care.

“Yeah, no kidding, Sherlock.”

He ignored me completely as he paced in front of me back and forth, looking down at the floor, deep in thought.

He wasn’t panicked or sad right now—on the contrary.

While I kept searching for doors that might have popped up while we weren’t looking, the spark in his eyes became brighter and brighter like he was actually gaining hope.

Like he thought there really might be a way out of here.

“It first needed you to understand what had happened,” the lynx whispered.

“And I did. I figured out that the Ice Queen cheated her fate—which was to die. But we’re still not even sure if she did, in fact, die, so…” I looked down at the mirror, at a loss for words.

“Then it needed to taste your frostfire,” Vair continued, like I hadn’t spoken at all.

“Which you think was so I could find this mirror.” I showed it to him. “You were wrong, weren’t you.”

This time he did hear me. “I wasn’t.” Vair stopped in front of me, looked at the mirror. “I wasn’t wrong. You found the mirror. The Ice Palace knows your frostfire.”

“And now ? Now what? Because I’m still stuck here, if you hadn’t noticed. There are no doors, no way out.”

Vair sat down and licked his lips. “We needed to get your senses out of the way to reach your frostfire,” he told me. “What is standing in your way now ?”

“Nothing.” There was nothing in my way—he could see it.

“Something is,” Vair insisted. “You want to leave. You’re impatient.”

“Yes, well, I’ve been kidnapped and brought here by you and now a damn building won’t let me out—of course, I’m impatient!” That I even had to say that was ridiculous.

“No, no,” the lynx said, shaking his head. And it was still weird as fuck to witness him doing that. “You won’t allow yourself to see, Nilah, and I think that is it.”

“See what? I already did the magic thing!”

“The reason,” Vair whispered, and I clamped my mouth shut. “The reason why.”

It clicked, though I almost wished it hadn’t. “The reason why the Ice Queen cheated her fate?”

“Yes. The reason why.”

I shook my head, looking down at the mirror on my lap. “Because she wanted to live? That’s not very difficult—everybody wants to live, queen or no queen.”

Vair came closer as he said, “If that is the truth, which I believe it is, then…” He came all the way to me, his button of a nose almost touching mine, and I was too shocked to even move back. He wasn’t usually one to get so close to me for no reason.

“How ?”

The word seemed to pop in the center of my mind, though I knew Vair said it. It felt more like my own thought, which was possible considering he sounded like me.

“How did she cheat her fate?” Vair asked, and again sat down in front of me, his front paws touching the tips of my bare toes.

“How am I supposed to know that?” It seemed like an impossible question. “She did it with magic, yes, but I know next to nothing about it.”

“That’s okay. We don’t need to know the exact way or spell. The palace will only need a piece of the whole picture…I think.”

I flinched. “And if you’re wrong?” Because another day was definitely done, and it looked like I wasn’t leaving here tonight after all. I had no clue how much longer I could keep going.

“If I’m wrong, then you try again.”

I laughed. “Easy for you to say when you’re not being held here against your will!”

“Hush now, child. Think.”

With that, he turned around and walked back toward the open door calmly, leaving me all alone in the gigantic throne room without a clue what the hell to do next.