Page 35 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

“Look at me, out here in Mysthaven, chasing after you when I should be sitting on my throne by now,” he said, and by the stars, I was so angry that the shadows that slipped my fingers didn’t stop.

Instead with every word he spoke, they spread up to my knuckles and wrapped around my whole fists, too.

“Lyall,” I warned because I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold myself back.

“It’s your fault, isn’t it? You let her go,” he had the balls to tell me when he stopped in front of me again. “ You let her go.” He even pointed at my chest.

I lost it—something I’d already expected. But I didn’t think I’d be grabbing him by the cloak the way I did the next second, or that my shadows would spread over his shoulders like they were eager to have a bite of him if I’d only let them.

A fight—such a waste of time. I could be on my way to Blackwater, though Raja would have sent word if Nilah had made it back to her—but I could have been on my way.

To my surprise, Lyall didn’t attack me. He didn’t even push me back, only looked down at his chest covered by the shadows that had spread up to my forearms now—impossible to hold them back. I was too angry, too desperate .

Too afraid.

“You ordered me to kill her,” I spit.

“But you were powerful enough to disobey the Veil of Obedience,” he spit.

“Which you didn’t know,” I reminded him, a bitter smile on my lips. “You didn’t know that I could when you gave me that order.”

“True—but I knew you’d find a way.”

This was the moment in which I had to decide whether to break him from the inside with the shadows that wrapped around him like a cloak while he wasn’t trying to stop me—or to step back.

And I wanted to choose the first, I really did, but the way he looked. The fact that he was here. That he was daring to speak her name…

He might know where Nilah actually was.

So, I stopped myself, pulled back my shadows, met his eyes.

“C’mon, Rune. I didn’t really want you to kill her—I was just…I was pissed off, which I’m sure you’ll find understandable. You stabbed me in the back?—”

“ You do that, Lyall. When I stab you, it will be in the neck from the front.” I couldn’t help the words coming out of my mouth.

“You wanted me to kill her—and you thought you would kill me right after. Label me a traitor—it doesn’t matter.

But you wanted us both to die because you couldn’t handle that she chose me over you. ”

Which still astounded me to this day that a woman like Nilah could choose a man like me—but it didn’t matter now. She had—and I was selfish enough to take it.

His smile was bitter.

“Can you blame me? I’m way more handsome—and an actual prince with a throne,” he said .

“ Speak ,” I spit, no longer interested in continuing this nonsense. “If you know something about Nilah, tell me now.”

“I do, actually,” he said with a flinch. “And trust me when I tell you this isn’t easy for me, Rune.” His jaws cracked so hard for a moment that the entire forest heard them. “But I do care about her, believe it or not.”

A step forward but I didn’t dare go closer for fear I’d grab him again. “Lyall, if you know where?—”

“He has her.”

My mouth clamped shut. Even my heart skipped a long beat as we looked at one another, almost as if I knew.

I already fucking knew.

“Who?” I asked because I still hoped.

“The Midnight King,” Lyall told me. “Your father.”

The ground could have broken from underneath me just like it did in the Hollow, except I wasn’t standing on a giant’s back right now. I was standing on my own two feet.

That strange sensation of being pulled out of your body then shoved into your skin again violently overwhelmed me for a moment.

Lyall was still talking, but I couldn’t bring myself to focus.

All I could see in my mind was that face, that dark beard, those words he’d said to me when he marked me and banished me.

The Midnight King, whom Raja herself had warned me about.

“Are you even listening to me?” Lyall’s face was right in front of mine.

Everything suddenly came to a halt and the noise in my ears disappeared.

It was Lyall. He said that—Lyall. The man I knew I could never trust for anything.

“How do you know? ”

“My mother—I told you. She heard from the Midnight Court,” said Lyall. “The seer can’t see her at all now that we aren’t bound together, but my mother received word.”

Nilah in the Midnight Court.

How fucking absurd was that idea?

“I never told you this before, but she said he was obsessed with the Ice Queen,” Lyall told me. “Mother said everyone knew that your father was in love with her.”

My magic slithered underneath my skin like a living thing, but I didn’t lose control. I only watched Lyall, and he was more than eager to continue.

“She also told me that Nilah looks exactly like the Ice Queen—which I’m sure you already knew.

So, it makes sense that when your father found out about that, he sent for her.

” He came even closer, and he seemed concerned .

Afraid. “She’s powerful, Rune. You saw it, didn’t you?

You felt it. That was frostfire at the purest level.

It knocked us all out at once for a long time, and it came from her . ”

“How would he have heard?” I asked Lyall instead.

He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

No, I figured. It really didn’t. “How sure is your mother about this?”

“As sure as she is about everything else that happens in the other courts. The kings and queens have their spies. Word travels,” he said. “Are you going to go after her?”

What an absurd question.

“You didn’t,” I said, just to see his reaction.

Because while the idea of my father capturing Nilah and taking her to the Midnight Court made sense, I did not trust this man, not for a second.

“I’m going to be king in a matter of days,” he said, raising his chin. “And when I am, I can call for a visit to the Midnight Court—but that is all I, personally, can do at this point. Nilah is not mine in any way. She made that abundantly clear at the feast. I can’t make claims nor demands.”

The word soothed my soul. It was good that he knew—Nilah was never his and she never would be. She was mine until the universe collapsed, and all of us with it.

“That makes you sound awfully weak,” I said—this just to spite him. I never said I couldn’t be childish, not toward a man who almost cost the life of the woman who was the reason for my existence.

But when he opened his mouth to speak, I didn’t let him. “What can you do, though?”

He hated me.

He hated me with all his being, and for all the time we’d spent together, for all the time I’d respected him as a friend, as a good man, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“What I’m doing right now,” he said through gritted teeth. “I followed you across Mysthaven to tell you.”

There were so many things I could say, ways to humiliate him, bruise his ego, but I didn’t. I’d said enough.

“Appreciate it, Your Highness.” And I moved around him toward the horse.

He turned to look at me, stunned for a moment, only watched me untie the horse’s reins from the tree. We’d need to find food and water for him, too, soon. We could do that in Blackwater, hopefully.

“ And ?” Lyall said when I pulled the horse deeper into the forest. “Are you going to go after her?!”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ll think about it.”

The look on his face. “He’ll probably kill her.”

The audacity of this guy, though I wasn’t sure why I was still surprised.

“I said I’ll think about it.” Not only because I didn’t trust that he was telling the truth, no.

I’d genuinely believed him to be good my whole life because he was a master manipulator, and you couldn’t tell what he was really thinking or feeling by looking at him.

It was a mistake I wasn’t planning to make again—but that wasn’t the only reason why I refused to say more.

I didn’t expect him to just be able to lie to my face—I expected him to betray me, too, at the first chance he got.

Laughter.

I turned my back to him and urged the horse to walk faster, but I didn’t mount it yet. This was Lyall—all this could have been a play for him, and I could be surrounded by soldiers. Or he could decide to strike when my back was turned, and I wanted to be ready and on my feet.

“Don’t blame me when you find out she died, then! Don’t blame me!” he called, but I didn’t even let myself turn.

“Don’t come after me again, Lyall. You and I are done, but if I see you again…” I was not going to stop myself from attacking him the moment he provoked me. That same second.

More laughter, but Lyall stayed back.

I walked and walked until I no longer felt his energy, the woods dark, silent save for my footsteps and the horse’s.

With my eyes closed, I reached for my magic and I thought of Raja’s face, of the connection that we’d created a long time ago, something that could only exist between two Midnight fae—yet somehow I’d created it with Nilah, too, before.

I’d been able to speak to her from the ground floor of the Queen’s Palace that day when she was accused of murdering Lyall, and I realized I couldn’t get to her in time.

Raja was there. She was always there, and she would hear the message I sent for her.

Because Lyall might very well be full of shit, and he could be lying though his teeth about everything—that wouldn’t surprise me at all—but at the same time, it made sense that my father would have Nilah.

Raja had warned me of it, too, and the Midnight King had the power and resources to make her disappear the way she had.

It made more sense than her being in Blackwater, anyway, and so my destination had changed. Raja would know, and nobody else needed to, though Lyall could probably make a guess. Nothing was going to stand in my way.

After almost two decades, I was finally going back home to the Midnight Court—only now I was no longer a little boy, and I was no longer afraid. No longer forced away by the traitor’s mark.

Instead, if it came to it, I was ready to burn the whole fucking kingdom to the ground.