Page 31 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

It was very straightforward, not going to lie. I wasn’t going to sugarcoat this for myself at all. “You’re dumb as a rock, Nilah. Really, really dumb,” I told myself for the fifth time in a row.

And I expected Vair to say, “Don’t speak like that about yourself,” again, like he had done the first four times, but he was already tired of my bullshit, it seemed, because this time he only gave me a look, then continued down the stairs.

I held on tighter to the navy-colored cloak I’d gotten from the queen’s closet.

It had a big hood that covered my head completely, and it was also thick enough to keep me warm.

Vair insisted that I’d need it, both for heat and to keep me concealed, and I didn’t really argue.

I put it on, together with the most comfortable leather shoes in the closet, and I was running for those stairs like my tail was on fire, terrified that the palace might change its mind somehow and make them disappear.

So far so good, though. The stairs were still there, and no wall had popped up in front of us, though we’d been descending for a little while. Five floors, maybe more?

“I’m just saying, I should have seen it sooner,” I muttered when Vair really didn’t say anything. “It was obvious. It was me all along—Jesus Christ, Vair, I look exactly like her. I saw it. I saw her face, and I still couldn’t figure it out.”

“You could—you simply weren’t ready,” the lynx said. “That was what the palace was trying to do. Make you ready for whatever it is you will find out there.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Well, look who finally seems to have answers.”

But Vair wasn’t bothered. “I don’t think I was ready, either.” Which all made good sense, but…

“I though the palace was testing me.”

“It was.”

“But you just said that the point?—”

“I know what I said, Nilah, and I will use your voice to say it again—the Ice Palace is as old as Verenthia. It both needed to understand you and to prepare you to understand it when the time was right. To understand the truth.”

I sighed. “Well, if the Ice Palace were a person, I would kick him in the balls for this, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Vair said.

“Wait, does that mean—” But, of course, he didn’t let me finish.

“The palace let you out, Nilah, but you still have a long journey ahead of you. This is not the end—merely the beginning, I think.”

“I know that. My journey is across the continent and to the Neutral Lands. To the Aetherway—with Rune.” And I was going to get there as fast as I possibly could .

Vair stopped walking.

The stairway was sort of spiral, though not exactly, and it had no railings, just thick stone walls dotted with lanterns on both sides. I had no idea how many floors we’d descended, but we could finally see the door. Just the edge of it from here, beyond the curve of the wall, but it was there.

There was a door—the palace hadn’t just tricked me. There was a door, and it would lead us outside.

But again, Vair had stopped walking and he was looking up at me in a way that made me stop walking, too.

“The door is right there,” I told him, pointing ahead.

“You think leaving Verenthia behind is the right choice for you, Nilah?”

“It is. I have to get back home. My family?—”

“ Without knowing who you really are?”

I paused for a second. “I know who I really am.”

“Liar,” he whispered before I’d even finished speaking.

“You told me you were a mortal, but you’re not.

The Ice Queen of the Frozen Court cheated her end through you.

You look like her. You wield the same magic as she did.

Her mirror shows you your reflection—do you really want to tell me again that you know who you are?

Do you really want to tell yourself that? ”

Fuck me sideways.

I was going to. The words were right there at the tip of my tongue— I know who I am, damn it!

Except that wasn’t really true, was it? I hadn’t in a long time.

And, sure, I’d ran from the fact that I looked like a dead queen and I could do magic that I shouldn’t have been able to do, and then a sentient palace played games with me until it made me figure out what the hell had happened to its queen—but that’s just it, I didn’t know.

I still had no clue what had really happened, and how the queen did what she did, and why.

“Rune,” I whispered, and my legs felt so weak so suddenly that I had to sit down right there on the stairs.

Vair came closer, sat down right next to me, looked me right in the eyes, and he was so close that I saw my reflection in them. I saw my own eyes in his.

“Rune will wait, Nilah. It’s safer for you if you make this journey alone.”

I reached out a shaking hand for his face as I shook my head.

Vair didn’t move away. Instead, he said, “It’s safer for him. ”

My fingertips touched his nose. Real. Vair was still real. “Why do you have the same eyes as me, Vair?”

And he said, “I see through them.”

“They’re identical to mine. To…hers.” I always thought I had my mother’s eyes, and her hair, but I didn’t.

My hair was much lighter, and her eyes had been blue—just blue.

Until I came to this fucking place, I never really noticed that mine weren’t.

Not just blue, more like a mixture of a hundred different shades of teal.

“Because I don’t have senses of my own, Nilah. My queen gave me hers to use.”

“But I didn’t give you my eyes or my voice—so which is it that you’re using?

Mine or hers?” All this I said in a whisper that wanted to refuse to leave my lips.

Facing the truth and all the right questions was hard.

Fucking hell, I never really knew just how hard it was, but I had to.

Because this had already become too much, and I needed answers for real. I needed them.

For a moment, Vair was silent. He didn’t move when I touched the fur on the side of his face, his muzzle longer than that of a real lynx.

Sometimes he looked like a cross between it and a fox.

Kind of like that silver fox I’d seen in the Illusion Game.

So beautiful it was difficult to believe he was real even now, but he was.

Not just because he was right there and I could touch him, but because I felt him.

I was realizing now that I’d stopped panicking for a moment—I felt Vair. I felt his heart. His energy. And he felt almost exactly like the little bird that Rune made for me with his light.

A friend, even if he’d dragged me all the way here against my will.

“Does it make a difference?” the lynx finally said.

And I thought about that, too, as I touched his whiskers next. “Not unless we want to know if she’s really alive somewhere, somehow. If you’re here still and she gave you her senses to use and you still have them…”

“She’s not.” Vair closed his eyes when I scratched under his chin. “She’s not alive.”

“I thought you weren’t sure.”

“I am now. The Ice Queen is gone—I feel it,” he whispered. “She’s not alive, Nilah.”

“Then how are you?”

His answer was a purr-like sound as he leaned farther down. He wanted me to keep scratching him, I thought, so I did.

The door was right there. And we were sitting on the stairs still, the decision hovering in the air.

The thought of not seeing Rune again tore me apart. Every instinct in my body demanded that I run out right this second and go searching for him, scream out his name until he heard me.

But …

“Something bigger is at play here,” Vair said when he leaned back to look at me.

“What do you mean, something bigger?”

“Something beyond what we currently know.” And he was dead serious. “You have the vial the seer gave you. I will take you to Virlorn to search for the truth, but you must go alone.”

I knew that name. “The Quiet.” The land of the forgotten, where Rune was supposed to take me . “I don’t want to go alone, Vair.”

“It’s safer that way. Nobody knows where you are. Nobody will know where you’re going until you want them to. Nobody can use that knowledge against anybody, either,” he said. “That is what I think the queen would have done.”

“I am not the queen,” I said through gritted teeth, but fuck if every word he said didn’t ring true.

Suddenly, all I could think about was how Rune almost lost his life because Lyall got jealous and he wanted to get rid of him. Because of me.

Suddenly, all I could think about was that cave with those people from the Broken Crown who’d had to fight for their lives because Lyall was coming after me .

What if Vair was right? What if I kept hidden until I found the truth—the whole truth—first, and put an end to all this madness?

“But you are smart enough to make the right decision,” the lynx whispered. “Then we can find whoever you want.”

I couldn’t believe it.

Holy fuck, despite every voice in my head and every instinct screaming at me for Rune, I could feel myself nodding. I could feel myself agreeing with Vair, believing he was right .

Because he was. My God, he was. If Rune wasn’t with me, he wouldn’t be in danger, would he? Lyall wanted me, and chances were he would know it the moment I found Rune. He was a prince, soon to be king, and that came with power. Even more power now that he wasn’t pretending to be dead.

And if I stayed away, if I figured this out first, there would be no need to put Rune in danger. Because let’s face it—I couldn’t just leave Verenthia like this, without knowing the truth of my very existence.

“The truth first,” Vair told me. “Then you can make your choice.”

With that, he stood up and walked down the remaining stairs and to the door, then turned to look at me, waiting.

Tears in my eyes but I stood up. My heart was in a million pieces, but I also knew that this was the right decision. I wasn’t going to go after Rune right away, and that was okay. Tomorrow was just a few hours away, and by this time the next night I would be with him for sure.

No time to waste.