Page 30 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

twenty

The book I’d found in the drawer of the desk wasn’t big, but it was heavy.

All those crystals—diamonds that reflected the light like they had magic in them, and the dark ones, too.

They were black, almost entirely, like Rune’s shadows were trapped at their very center.

I could have sworn that when I ran my fingertips over them, they hummed with power, with magic. Frostfire magic.

I could actually tell the difference now when it came.

The ice magic, which Vair referred to as only ice magic—like it was a small, insignificant thing—was fluid.

It flowed with ease and didn’t mind me trying to control it.

Which, by the way, who would have thought that magic wanted to be independent, too?

Because frostfire sure did. It wanted to be asked and begged and pleaded with, and when I felt it coming, it was like a layer of ice all over my insides, which was what I’d always felt since Maera scratched me.

If only someone could tell me why .

If only this book in my hands could tell me what in the hell the Ice Queen had done, how she’d cheated her fate, so that I could get out of here and go find Rune.

But no. The book hidden in the desk wasn’t a book of answers.

It was a book of spells. A grimoire , Vair called it, and it had all kinds of spells written in Veren.

The pages were crisp white, and the ink didn’t move when I touched it, didn’t translate itself for me.

The symbols remained no matter how many times I went through them.

I walked the three rooms that the Ice Palace so generously allowed me to roam, but all I had in front of me were dead ends.

No way out.

Even sleep refused to take me. I lay down on the bed, and then on the furniture, even curled up in an armchair until my back started screaming, hoping for a little escape, at least. But I couldn’t bring myself to keep my eyes closed for longer than a few seconds at a time.

The image of that broken mirror remained in the center of my mind.

Something about it.

Something about the energy and the weight of it in my hand.

Every time I put it back in the drawer, I picked it back up a few minutes later, and I couldn’t even tell you why.

That’s how I ended up hours later sitting at the edge of the crystal dais of the throne room, with the broken mirror on my lap.

Maybe I followed Vair because I didn’t want to be alone.

He moved around all the time, but he seemed to like this room better than the rest. Said it was the fresh air, but I thought it was just the memories this place brought him as he stared at where he said the queen used to sit in her throne chair.

Eventually, I lay down on the platform, which, again, wasn’t cold at all. I lay down with the mirror in front of me, eyes half-closed, body tired, mind overcrowded.

I wondered how she did it, if she used this very mirror. I wondered how one went about surviving certain death because that was a big deal, apparently, even in a world where magic was part of the ordinary, just like breathing.

Because these things I knew for sure, didn’t I? The Ice Queen was meant to die, but she found a way to cheat that fate. To basically escape the prophecy. She used this mirror to do it—I was certain of that, too. Somehow, she used this mirror and maybe that’s why it was broken.

The mirror that the sorcerer told me to find.

It was this , wasn’t it? My eyes opened wide once more as the memory replayed in the center of my mind. Vair moved, too, and at first I thought I’d said something out loud, but he barely glanced my way before he slowly walked to the open door and slipped out of the room.

“Bye to you, too,” I muttered, running my fingertip over the edges of the broken mirror. “Why, though?” I asked it in a whisper. “Why would a guy chained to a piece of rock tell me to find you?”

He said the mirror was gone after the queen’s death, but he was wrong. It had been right there in the drawer of her desk, yet he’d sounded like he was sure someone had taken it.

As if this place would even let anybody in to try. It hadn’t even let in the Midnight King who had control of the entire court, had it? Only Vair.

And…only me.

My eyes closed and I sighed deeply, sitting up on the platform again, my mind spinning. “Why me?” I asked—the mirror or the palace, it didn’t really make a difference. Nobody was going to give me an answer anyway.

“Why now?” I gripped the handle of the mirror tightly anyway and basically screamed at it like a lunatic. “Why me ?! ”

A whole palace that could hide doors and make them appear in walls, that could take rooms from one floor and somehow just put them on another, that could make trays full of food appear anywhere and at any time—yet it let me in.

It let Vair drag me all the way to that room before it trapped me— why me?

I thought I shouted again, but there was no echo in the tall ceiling. The words had remained inside my head when I closed my eyes and tried not to throw the stupid thing on the floor, break it to pieces for real.

That’s why I felt the energy.

That’s why I heard the almost humming coming from right there in front of my face. From between my hands.

From the broken mirror.

My eyes opened, my breath stuck in my throat. The two pieces of the mirror showed me my eyes and my nose, each from a slightly different angle.

I screamed.

The mirror slipped from my hands—I couldn’t help it. Thankfully, I was sitting down so it didn’t fall to the floor. It only fell on my lap.

And it was still showing me my reflection.

My head spun. For a moment there, I’m pretty sure I passed out seated because it felt like I traveled to a different place mentally, that I wasn’t in the throne room at all.

For a moment, it felt like I saw a whole other world—or rather heard it through a veil of darkness that refused to let me see.

I heard voices and music and laughter, felt silk against my skin just like when I had those gloves on, and tasted shock on my tongue all over again as if I’d just swallow a handful of those berries.

I must have passed out because when I blinked and I saw my reflection in that mirror again, the reflection that hadn’t been there all night, I felt like I just woke up. I felt like I’d fallen on that platform from the ceiling, and I was breathing like I was running, and…

My hands shook so badly when I grabbed the mirror from my lap again.

“Me. ” My whisper barely reached my own ears. Suddenly things clicked into place, and so many pieces were still missing, but some were there.

One was there, and it was screaming at me together with the pieces of my reflection.

Of course.

Of course, the Ice Queen cheated her fate. “She did it through me .”

My heart jumped. I stood up, looked up at the ceiling, at the night sky beyond the window, and I said, “It’s me. I am how the queen cheated her fate— me. ”

A heartbeat of silence.

Then the walls groaned.

A miracle I didn’t let go of the mirror this time, but maybe it was because my entire body locked down—both from fear and from magic. Icy magic, the kind that froze my insides. Frostfire.

And the dais moved.

Right before my eyes, the large crystal block cracked before I’d had the chance to draw in my next breath. It cracked violently, like it was an animal, a beast roaring. A sharp, echoing split rang through the room as a seam carved itself clean down the center of the crystal.

Everything went still again for a second.

In the next, the two halves shifted apart just slightly, revealing a narrow vein of—not entirely gold and not entirely silver—light at their core. Something was rising from it, and I didn’t breathe until I realized that it was a throne.

A throne chair was fucking growing from the crystal dais, its back high, its arms jagged and clear, shaped entirely of crystal that pulsed faintly with silver light.

The throne had emerged like it really had been hiding inside that dais all this time, and now, somehow, it had let itself out.

“By Reme…”

My own voice saying those words, but I wasn’t even surprised to realize that Vair had found me.

He was standing right beside me, and he was looking at the freshly sprouted throne chair, too.

It was only a guess because I couldn’t tear my own eyes from it yet, but at least I was breathing.

Air was going down my throat. The mirror was still in my fist.

And the silence that followed my voice was deafening.

I was looking at the throne chair made out of fucking crystals that looked like very, very clear ice, with a dark blue velvet cushion, and three sharp edges rising from the back.

I couldn’t believe I was even thinking it, but it fit.

From the only image of the Ice Queen I’d seen, both in half the painting, and in the mist the seer had shown me, this throne chair fit that woman perfectly. I could almost see her sitting there.

But before I could make up my mind to utter a single word, something else moved, something out there. In the hallway, outside the big door that led to the throne room.

I couldn’t tell you what went through my head in those moments—either it was completely blank or my mind was overwhelmed with too many thoughts and nothing stuck. The mirror was in my hand and the throne chair made of crystal was still there, but I was running .

Out the door and into the hallway, to see that a brand-new doorway—a round one—had opened on the opposite wall, and on the other side was a stairway that led down.

I stopped there by the wall, counting the small lanterns on the walls of the stairway before it curved to the side to where I couldn’t see—but it didn’t matter. Because now I knew what was going on.

“I’m free.”

The palace was finally letting me go.