Page 32 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

I forced my body to move. I walked down the stairs as the tears silently slipped from my eyes, and I pushed the wooden door open with all my strength. Like that, dressed in the dead queen’s clothes, wearing the dead queen’s face, I walked out of her palace, and it didn’t stop me.

Outside.

I had been trying to get outside of that palace for so long now that I was constantly expecting my surroundings to change, for a wall to appear in front of me, to lock me in again.

It didn’t.

I really was free.

Vair stayed beside me every step of the way. We must have come out a side door, the only one on the stone wall at the end of those stairs, and we were definitely in a part of the palace that people didn’t frequent.

Or maybe it was just late.

I had no clue if it was past midnight yet or not, but not a soul was in sight as we slipped out the door and down this pathway surrounded by trees that looked more dead than alive, the colorful leaves barely hanging onto the thin branches.

The air was cold and the night dark, no moon in sight, but as we walked down the narrow path, Vair’s silvery white fur was almost luminous.

We didn’t see anything at all until we were on the other side of the trees, and I was terrified, yes, but I also had a calm about me that didn’t let my heartbeat speed up.

Then I looked back where we’d come from.

It was the same palace made of pale, almost white stone blocks, as the one inside the music box.

The five pointy towers and the many windows—my God, it was the same palace.

This one was big, huge, so much bigger than I would have thought, possibly even bigger than the Queen’s Palace in the Seelie Court, and I couldn’t even tell which part of it I’d been in because all of it looked the same to me from out here.

“Keep your eyes ahead,” Vair told me because I almost fell a dozen times turning to look back.

And he was right—it was no longer important, no matter how haunting the entire building looked against the dark sky.

And to know that at least a part of it could actually close doors and make others appear on the walls whenever it pleased?

Yeah, safe to say I was not coming back to this place anytime soon.

“You know the way, right?” I asked.

“I do.”

I pulled the fabric of the cloak closer over my chest. It was thick and I wasn’t cold—my blood was rushing—but I felt better knowing nobody could really see me through it.

Not that there was anybody to hide from, to be honest, but still.

I could just make out two fae in the distance, both men, both wearing dark clothing, walking together, holding some kind of a box between them.

They were far away, but I could make out the color of their hair just fine—a blond much lighter than the golden hair of the Seelie fae. A blond identical to mine.

Whether they saw us or not, I wasn’t sure, but they didn’t look at us, didn’t approach us, didn’t seem curious at all, which was a relief.

We kept going.

Beyond the trees, there were archways rimed with frost and snow, with carvings of animals on them that were half faded, like they’d been here a very long time.

Must have been some kind of a garden we walked into because the archways led to a path lined with statues of fae women and men, some whole, some broken at the ankles, or with missing faces.

I couldn’t tell you whether they were meant to look like that from the beginning or if something had broken them, but…

“ Fuck, ” I breathed when we reached the other end and saw the actual gardens—as wide as those in the Seelie Court, except these were basically a grave of frozen vines and petals and brittle thorns, curling around rusted benches and shattered lanterns.

Only a handful of them still held that light that wasn’t gold, but wasn’t silver either, and the shadows danced with our every step.

I continued to look back, constantly expecting someone to be following us, but we were still alone, and Vair didn’t seem worried.

On the contrary—his every step was precise, relaxed, unafraid. It helped me convince my own instincts that I was safe, that there was no risk, nobody coming to eat me in the dark.

We were just fine.

The gardens went on for a long time, but about halfway through, parts of them came alive.

Flowers with bright petals, some closed and some wide open like the sun was high up in the sky.

They were at the end of every step in every small garden shaped like a star for possibly a hundred feet—but the working lanterns were only a few so I couldn’t really see very far ahead.

Benches were placed along the sides, gazebos and tables here and there randomly, some with a bit of snow gathered at their legs, but the flowers were all alive.

It was cold out here, though I didn’t really feel it from all the emotions going through me, and the cloak over my shoulders—but it seemed too cold for flowers.

Then Vair said, “Winter blooms.” He must have noticed how I was looking around with my mouth wide open.

“They’re beautiful,” I said in a breath, and the air fogged up in front of my mouth a little bit. The tip of my nose did feel a little numb, too, now that I paid attention.

“Those are winter roses,” he said, nodding his head to the right, to where there was a row of those isolated gardens surrounded by cobbled pathways, and the flowers there were ones I’d seen before—in paintings.

The large roses with lilac-pink petals that looked like they were thriving under the darkness and against the cold air.

“The queen’s favorite.” That’s what Vair told me.

They were beautiful indeed, and the deeper we went, the better we could smell their scent—roses, but with a twist. A spicy twist that my nostrils adored, apparently, because I couldn’t stop sniffing even though the air was ice-cold.

Was this the scent Rune had remembered? Had he really remembered when Raja took off his seal, or was that just his imagination? Hard to tell, considering all the magic that was basically dumped on him by his father.

But maybe I could come back here sometime, I figured now—just to pick myself some of those roses. Just to carry their scent with me, maybe bring it back home when I left. It didn’t sound too bad.

For now, I kept going with Vair to the very end of the gardens, and just like I’d seen from the windows of the throne room, we finally arrived near the crystal shards that could only be the Ice Palace’s outer walls.

From the windows, they had looked like teeth coming out of the jaws of a gigantic animal, but from closer up, they rose from the ground like a crown of crystals spearing up in uneven, towering shards that glittered faintly even though neither the moon nor the stars were visible through the dark clouds.

A few torches were mounted on their sides, which was what made me think they were not made of ice—just crystal.

The same as the dais that had sprouted a throne in front of my eyes.

The shards seemed to encircle the palace exactly like a crown, each shard different—some smooth as glass, others splintered and raw, with those silver veins pulsating just slightly here and there, like the moonstone in the queen’s bedroom.

Some were chipped, broken, some with big pieces missing, and it made me wonder again if it was on purpose, though I doubted it.

I saw no gates ahead, but Vair kept going, and my step didn’t falter.

He wasn’t headed for a gate at all, though—but a narrow tunnel-like cut etched between two large shards.

Someone had carved a path right through the crystal— yes, it was definitely some kind of a crystal, not ice—and the gates were on the other side.

Vair didn’t speak. He slipped inside the tunnel with his head up, and he didn’t hesitate for a second. The question was at the tip of my tongue—what if there was someone out there?

But this time Vair didn’t wait for me to open the door at all. He simply pushed it with his muzzle, just slightly, and it moved. It swung open with a weak cry—no handle, no lock, no nothing on it at all, which was weird as hell.

And when I stepped through to the other side, I realized why.

The crystal of the shards hadn’t looked anything out of the ordinary from the inside, aside from the broken and chipped parts, but out there was a different story.

The surface of it looked burned , and the missing pieces were much bigger.

Every single shard looked like it was barely standing from this side, and what I thought was ashes covering the surface was actually rot.

Dark grey rot that was coming from the inside of the crystals, from the many holes on their surface.

The smell, too. I’d gotten so used to the smell of flowers as we went through the gardens that the scent of rust and dirt assaulted my nostrils and made bile rise in my throat.

With a hand to my mouth, I stepped farther away, looked up at the shards— what the hell?! They were ruined, barely standing for real. They’d looked so whole and almost completely intact from in there, but…

“What the hell is this, Vair?” Because he was looking at the rot, too, ears perked up and twitching every second, even though we couldn’t really hear anything, and there was no movement around us.

The lynx finally turned to look at me. “Magic. The magic is fading.”

Ice-cold shivers ran down my spine. He’d said the same thing before when we were in the palace.

“ This is because the queen is dead?” I shook my head at myself. “My God, Vair. Is this what happens in every court when the king or queen dies?”

Silence for a beat.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

He sounded worried. He sounded terrified. And the feeling of dread that came over me instantly didn’t leave me for a long time.

Then there was the actual Frozen Court.

I don’t know what Vair was thinking when he led me between the first two buildings we came across, when we could clearly hear the footsteps and the sound of chatter on the other side. Surely a lynx made with that fur would draw the attention of anyone, and then they’d see me, but…

They didn’t.

There were fae here, men and women of all ages, but none of them looked at Vair even once as we passed. None of them looked at me.

Buildings of all sizes and towers were around the wide cobbled streets.

Snow clung to rooftops and edges, piling in every corner.

I kept my hood low and my steps light, but as soon as we went deeper into the buildings, the torches and the lanterns and the fae lights trapped in glass became dimmer and fewer and farther in between.

The fae, too. Most lights in the buildings were off. The people were sleeping.

Soon enough, there was only silence.

It wasn’t peaceful, though. Not the silence of a sleeping town I imagined. Not at all like back home.

There was something wrong about this. I couldn’t tell you why , but just like those shards that walled in the Ice Palace, something here stank. It was too dark and…filthy, somehow. Even the air was thinner out here.

We didn’t say a single word, and I was too caught up in my surroundings to even be afraid. There was nobody around to be afraid of—only the wind followed us, brushing against my cheek every now and again like it meant to caress me.

That’s how we made it all the way beyond the buildings, to the dark trees in the distance between which there was almost no light at all—except for Vair’s fur. I could have sworn that it was glowing from within, and in the dark, he stood out clearly.

I knew he knew where we were going. We’d been walking so long now that it felt like we would never get to our destination, yet my step never once faltered. I never considered even asking him to make sure this was the right way.

I trusted the lynx who’d kidnapped me like I’d rarely trusted others in my life before.

Just as the sky began to lighten up when I caught glimpses of it through the canopy, we suddenly heard a sound that seemed to have come out of nowhere—of footsteps and of wheels turning.

We stopped, Vair and I, and strained our ears, our eyes locked.

The sound grew louder, together with my heartbeat that was already galloping in my chest.

Somebody was right behind us.