Page 36 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

twenty-two

Nilah Dune

When Rune and Vair said the Quiet, I imagined maybe a city, or a town, or even a temple that was just very silent—but that wasn’t at all what I was seeing around me now.

A forest with empty branches and dark roots and no light coming from anywhere—and it wasn’t Mysthaven. We were just coming from Mysthaven, in fact, but we weren’t there anymore. I knew because the magic shifted from one step to the next. It was very different here—and it wasn’t just quiet.

It was… dead.

I looked behind me for possibly the tenth time to make sure that we were alone, and we were.

Strangely, ever since that group of Ice fae passed us by with their carriages in the Frozen Court when we first left the Ice Palace, we hadn’t come across anyone else. Not a single living being—fae or sorcerer or animal. And we’d gone straight into Mysthaven when we left the Frozen Court, too.

I’d been scared shitless, not going to lie, but Vair had insisted.

“No sorcerer will stop you again,” he told me, but he refused to elaborate, as usual.

Since I didn’t really have any choice, I followed—straight into those forests that made my skin raise in goose bumps and brought back memories that made me sick to my stomach.

Sorcerers and scratches and cages and pain— so much pain. So much fear.

Yet we hadn’t once come across a house with a garden full of moving plants or with cages in its backyard. We hadn’t once come across a town or even a sorcerer, and we’d been walking for possibly over six hours.

I could have sworn this woods was dead for real, yet Vair’s step didn’t falter. He walked with his head up and never once looked back.

And then the trees stopped abruptly.

Ahead, there was only darkness. You couldn’t really tell if it was daylight or not beyond that black cloud that seemed to be hanging over this entire place. You couldn’t see the beginning or the end, either—just darkness and a deserted, dry piece of land ahead.

Vair didn’t even notice it when I stopped walking, didn’t turn his head to the side until I called his name.

“Are you absolutely sure this is where we need to be?”

My voice came out hushed. Vair finally looked at me. “Yes,” was his answer.

“There’s…” I shook my head as I looked around. “There’s nothing here, Vair.”

“But there will be,” the lynx said.

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” I fisted my hands tightly to keep them from shaking. “Maybe we should go back. Maybe we can find someone who can?—”

“Nilah.” My mouth clamped shut. I met his eyes again and held my breath, tried to pretend for one last second that I wasn’t freaked out to be here.

“I know you’re afraid,” said Vair, and I would have laughed any other day. “But I need you to pick up your fear and carry it until we get there. Can you do that?”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned around and continued to walk ahead.

I considered calling after him or just screaming to let out my frustration—even just turn around on my own and try to find someone who could tell me where the hell I was going. Maybe find Rune if I was lucky—he could be behind me right now.

In the end I knew that it was only my fear speaking. I knew that the sooner I got this over with, the sooner I’d be free. I’d come this far. I could go farther.

So, I picked up that fear, just like Vair said, and I followed him for what felt like another hour—or a day.

But it wasn’t until my eyes were half closed and my mouth dry and my limbs ached from exhaustion that we began to make out the shape in the distance.

Darkness, more darkness all around, and then there was something deeper, darker than its surroundings. I was hopeful and I rushed my steps to catch up with Vair, who wasn’t tired in the least—only to find out that the shape wasn’t a building at all.

It was a tree.

Vair stopped on his own this time, and I couldn’t keep walking if I tried.

My mouth was open, but I couldn’t make a single sound.

The air was weightless, like it was empty.

Like it didn’t exist at all—even though I could feel myself breathing.

And that cloud of darkness was the thickest here as it shielded the biggest tree I had ever seen from whatever the sky looked like in the real world right now.

Because no way was this real.

“This is the Quiet,” said Vair, his voice— my voice—only a whisper.

“It’s…it’s a tree .” A fucking tree bigger than a building, cracked open in the middle like it had been struck by lightning that had meant to split it in two but hadn’t fully succeeded.

The crack that was five times wider than my shoulders stood like a wound on its black bark, and I couldn’t carry my fear at all right now—I was it.

“Keep your vial in your hand, Nilah. Try to remember to pour it.” Vair looked up at me for just a second, and I could have sworn that he had pity in his eyes.

Then he started for the crack in the middle of the gigantic tree.

“Wait, what? What do you mean, try to remember ?” I asked, and I shot ahead, terrified to be separated from him and be all alone in this place even for a moment.

“Exactly what I said,” the lynx said. “Keep moving.”

“But…but, Vair, are you sure we’re supposed to go in there?

It’s…it’s…” it’s death hiding in the dark, I wanted to say, except I was standing right in front of a thick root that had come out of the ground as if it had hoped to trip anyone trying to come through, and I couldn’t say it.

I couldn’t speak because it really did feel like death to be standing there in front of that monstrous tree.

I’d absolutely believe that this one was alive and breathing, an animal, not merely a tree—a beast waiting for me to walk right into its mouth so it could devour me.

Yet Vair kept going straight into the darkness, and my legs carried me forward, over the root and a lot of other, smaller ones that came out of the dry ground—until I no longer saw anything at all.

“ Vair. ” My voice shook.

“Call for light,” said my own voice—and for the life of me I had no clue whether the lynx said those words or I did to my own self.

Call for light. Call for light.

I closed my eyes and I called for fucking light.

When I felt the magic inside me coming alive, I almost screamed like I was surprised.

Like I was feeling it for the first time.

But I thought it would be like in the Ice Palace, that there would be torches here that would light up—but no.

My magic was burning in the palms of my hands, and there was light behind my closed lids.

Light that was not gold, not quite silver—something in between.

I’d called it starlight before, and it was a fitting name.

When I opened my eyes, the light disconnected itself from my hands and gathered into two spheres over my fingertips. Raw fae magic that glowed in contact with oxygen.

I was smiling and I was pretty sure my eyes were full of tears at the same time—until the lights moved higher over my head, and I saw what they revealed.

“Nothing.” There was nothing in here but darkness, and the walls must have been too far away because the light couldn’t reach them at all.

“The vial,” Vair said. “Keep moving, Nilah.”

With my hands still shaking, I searched the inside pocket of the cloak where I’d put the vial together with the queen’s mirror. I secured it tightly in my fist, and I continued ahead after Vair, talking to myself at all times, urging myself to be brave .

I’d come so, so far, and I could do this. I could cross one last bridge. I could get to the end of this madness.

When I moved, the two lights over my head followed—and I felt them. I felt them so clearly it was like they were inside me, not out there. Like they were still buzzing with energy under my skin.

But the darkness didn’t take any shape for a long time as we went, slowly, half a step at a time.

My fear was heavy, but I carried it. My nails had formed half-moons in my palm from how tightly I held the vial as the thoughts in my head raged. My mind was in chaos, but…

Eventually, it calmed down.

Eventually, I didn’t think about as many things at once as I usually did.

In fact, I couldn’t remember what I’d been thinking about when my head had threatened to split open on my way here from…somewhere.

I was sure I’d come from somewhere.

And I was sure I’d come here for some thing.

But most importantly, I had known where here was.

Until now.

I couldn’t really explain it, not to my own self.

It was like suddenly a veil had been dropped inside my mind, and I couldn’t…

see. I couldn’t see my own thoughts or hear my own voice—and I knew they were there.

I knew that what I’d been carrying on my shoulders for so long was heavy, but now it was gone.

Not the weight of it, just the nature of it. The name.

Just like the name of the creature who walked beside me.

It was white and I knew that I knew that—I knew that I didn’t know. My mouth was wide open, and words were begging to come out, yet I couldn’t remember how to say them.

I couldn’t remember why I was here.

Then something ahead of us moved.

My body froze, my feet suddenly glued to the ground. Something was moving, and the two small lights that continued to hover in the air a bit farther ahead showed me what it was.

Another thing that I had no clue how to explain.

A shape, as tall as me, as wide as me, maybe.

Covered completely with something that moved—maybe shadows, maybe black fog.

I knew these names, all these different things, yet I couldn’t for the life of me figure how or where I’d seen them. They were just there.

Just like the figure that kept disappearing and appearing again in the dark.

Suddenly my mind was chaotic again. I was trying to speak, trying so hard to find words, but I didn’t know which ones to use. I didn’t know whom to ask. I didn’t know what to ask.

And my legs no longer held me.

When I hit the ground on my knees, I expected pain to shoot throughout my body, and I didn’t even know why.

I expected pain, but instead all I got was noise.

This relentless noise had gone off in my head and I couldn’t tell what the hell it was or where it was coming from or what it was saying.

I was shaking from head to toe—that much I was aware of—and the figure ahead that still blinked in and out of existence, sometimes wider, sometimes taller, didn’t stop.

It moved in rhythm with the noise in my head, coming and going in waves until I thought I might be screaming even if my voice couldn’t quite reach my ears.

But I wasn’t screaming. Instead, I was trying to break my own skull open so that the noise could get out of me, so that the pressure could release from me.

That’s why I reached for my hair, to pull it right off my scalp until I understood.

Until I remembered. Until I knew what my name was—because right now I didn’t.

Yet when I made to grab my hair, something fell in front of me—something that had been in my hand. Something small and made of glass, with white liquid inside.

Vial.

It was called a vial, and I knew I’d seen it before. I just didn’t know where. I didn’t know why.

I didn’t know anything.

But my eyes remained on that small thing as the shape ahead continued to come and go, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, sometimes closer, and sometimes too far to make out clearly.

And the white animal that was with me moved, too.

To the sides and ahead, in circles, and then forward and back, blue eyes glazed over as it tried to see better but couldn’t. Eyes that were almost— almost familiar.

And the vial remained there.

Pulling at my hair wasn’t working—my head refused to crack open, and the noise wasn’t going anywhere. It wouldn’t stop, and it was teasing me. It was reminding me of all that I didn’t remember, all that was right there but I couldn’t reach, and I still couldn’t scream.

Then the animal sat down to my side, near or far—I couldn’t even be sure. It wasn’t looking at me at all, like I thought. It was looking at the ground. At that vial that had been in my hands.

Why had the vial been in my hands ?

My hands that shook now as I forced them to let go of my hair and reach for it. Maybe it knew what my name was. Maybe it knew what I couldn’t remember .

It didn’t.

Small and cold and full of white liquid, the vial had no answer for me. The figure continued to blink in and out of existence ahead, somehow staying underneath those two lights that were still hovering in the air, as if it knew. As if it had a mind to think with—a clear mind, not like mine.

But the vial.

It had a lid—I popped it open with my thumb.

I considered drinking it because that’s what one did with liquids, didn’t they?

The glass touched my lips— cold. My eyes closed and I could have sworn the chaos in my mind came to a halt. Held its breath. Waited. And in the sudden silence, I heard a whisper, almost whole: pour this where the world forgets itself.

A memory. An actual memory that was not complete by any means, but I understood the words. Finally , I understood something !

A small scream broke out of my lips. With my heart in my throat, I raised the vial and turned it over.

The next second, everything changed.