Page 37 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

twenty-three

The liquid poured out of the vial in big drops, which fell toward the ground, but stopped before they reached it. Turned. Moved up again and gathered into a ball as big as those lights that hovered in the air close by.

I didn’t breathe, didn’t blink as I watched it spinning around itself for a moment, then shoot straight ahead like a damn arrow, right into the ever-changing shadows that were mere feet away from me.

Screaming again was out of the question, but I did somehow make it to my feet. The contents of the vial had disappeared into those shadows, and now they were gaining color. A tiny bit of color—and an actual shape that didn’t change with every passing second.

A deep grey cloak made of what I could only describe as dried lava wrapped around its shoulders and fell to the ground, as if it was finally anchoring whatever creature this was to one place. It spread over its head, too—there was definitely a head over those shoulders. And a face.

A woman.

A man.

A child.

A face that changed right there in front of my eyes, just like the entire shape of it had until now.

Memories trickled into my mind as if coming out of a slightly loosened faucet.

They dripped into the center of my consciousness one after the other—the very thoughts I hadn’t been able to reach a moment ago, now clearer by the second as I watched the creature in horror, wearing the ground as a cloak, and changing faces with each new shallow breath I took.

“I am the Chronicler.”

The world could have broken in half.

The voice wasn’t male nor female, and it was coming from everywhere at once, all around me, and the ground, too.

“Speak your questions—two, and no more.”

Goose bumps covered every inch of my skin.

Every bit of me was shaking. I knew who I was and I knew why I was here, and God, I wanted to smack myself in the face for coming here like this, with only Vair to stand beside me—Vair who refused to move a single inch as he looked up at the changing faces of the Chronicler.

What the hell was I thinking?! I didn’t even have it in me to try to make a deal with God to help me get out of this alive—I was terrified. And certain that I was going to die.

Then the creature repeated, “Speak your questions—two, and no more,” and I about passed out standing.

Questions, questions—speak! my own thoughts shouted at me.

Turning around and running away right now didn’t even cross my mind because just imagine if this…

thing here tried to stop me. Imagine if it actually ran after me.

No, thank you. I would rather give it what it wanted and hope it went back to changing shapes and disappearing every few seconds—and then I could run.

I could run to the end of this world and never look back.

“Who am I?”

My own voice startled me. I thought I wouldn’t be able to even whisper, yet I spoke clearly, so loud the words echoed in what I was certain was never-ending darkness that this monstrous tree somehow contained within itself.

“What…what…” I closed my eyes, squeezed my fists, breathed in for a second.

Question—I just need one more question. And I had plenty of those, didn’t I?

“Why do I look like Queen Veyra of the Frozen Court?”

That was it.

That was all I needed to know, wasn’t it? Because even in the middle of all this chaos and all this fear, I really had come all this way to find out the truth. I had come here for answers, and if my fear wasn’t screaming in my ears right now, this would be what I’d want to know.

More importantly, if I actually ran without finding out what I came here to find out, I’d never forgive myself. And if I left here alive, I was not coming back again.

The thought calmed me down a little bit, just so that the sound of my heartbeat didn’t steal away my hearing. Just so that the screaming in my head slowed down long enough for me to listen.

The faces of the creature that was being held down by a cloak made out of the ground continued to change. Women and men of all ages, faces of children, blonde and brunette, blue-eyed and dark skinned—it changed so fast I had no idea why it didn’t make me dizzy .

But the shape of the eyes and the mouth always remained the same.

The Chronicler spoke.

“She was not slain, not quite, not whole. She broke herself to save her soul. One half to silence, one to roam, and to find a stranger home.”

The words wrote themselves in my mind one by one as the mouth of those changing faces spoke. In those moments, the fear fell back, and all my other thoughts disappeared. My ears were meant for the Chronicler’s words only.

“She tore herself with her own hand—not to live nor to end. It was a slow and careful split, a seed of frost, too wild to quit.” The words registered, even if they made no sense to me yet. “The mirror did as it was told. It found a hold—a space unseen to bear the soul that once was queen.”

My eyes closed as something moved over my lips, something coming from my nostrils. Blood—warm and metallic, and it was in my mouth, too.

Fuck, my body didn’t feel like my own.

Yet the Chronicler continued.

“You were not chosen, but empty enough—a vessel shaped by pain and rough. The mirror did not seek a queen. It searched for a hollow in between,” it said, and when I opened my eyes again, I could hardly see those changing faces.

It was like a world had climbed onto my back and was trying to push me down.

It was like my strength was leaving me, sucked out of me by some invisible force, rendering me weaker with each sharp breath…

“Not fate. Not blood. Not royal claim—only enough space to hold the flame,” it continued in that strange voice, while the view in front of me tilted so violently. “That is you, noxavira.” Even my heart stopped beating. “You wear her face because she bled and gave you half of what was to be dead.”

Hard ground against my knees— have I fallen again ?

I blinked a million times, yet the view didn’t clear. It became darker instead.

“P-please,” I thought I said, and fuck, I couldn’t even feel my body anymore. I was numb all over—so fucking numb. “Why? Why did… please…”

I fell.

Hard ground against my cheek. Cold, so it soothed me, and there was no more space left in me for fear.

No more space left in me for anything—except the Chronicler’s words.

“She did not flee a coward’s end nor cheat the threads the stars would send—no. She saw…” The Chronicler’s voice trailed off—or maybe it was just my imagination.

Definitely my imagination because I heard my own voice speaking even though my jaws were locked so tightly.

Blood slipped between my lips. My eyes refused to obey, to open. My voice said, “She saw what? What did the queen see?”

Vair.

It must have been Vair.

“That is not for me to say.” The Chronicler’s voice was distant, as if I was already a world away, too weak to cling to consciousness. “The Seer of Shadows knows that day—knows the one who took her life, the only one who can name the why.”

Darkness pulled at me, harder than before. I could have sworn that Vair said something else—my own voice filled my ears. It was so heavy it pushed me down faster while the darkness pulled.

I was gone.

At first, I felt the cold, the roughness of the ground against my chest and my face.

I was being dragged.

Then I fell into the darkness again, for what could have been seconds or minutes at a time.

There was only nothingness—and those words that had somehow written themselves in my mind in bright lights.

They were there even when I wasn’t thinking about them at all—like I’d been memorizing them my whole life.

Like I’ve lived by them forever. They stayed with me even when everything else faded away.

Eventually, I blinked my eyes and could see for longer than a few seconds at a time.

Eventually, the darkness let go of me fully and didn’t try to drag me down again.

I sat up, completely disoriented, and took in my surroundings, the tree that I could have sworn I’d been inside of now far in the distance, the others of the dead forest that had led us here just behind my back.

Vair sat to the side, looking at the giant tree, the breeze gently pushing his fur to the sides like it was playing with it. He stood so still, wouldn’t even blink those bright blue eyes.

And the dark cloud over us seemed to have only gotten thicker.

“Vair. ”

His name left my lips in a whisper, and finally the lynx turned to look at me.

“Is it…did that really happen?” I touched my head, expecting to find I had no more hair left on me because I remembered how I’d pulled at it in the tree.

God, I remembered the pain, and I remembered that I didn’t remember. Fucking hell, I’d lost my own name. I’d lost the memories of my family—of Rune.

I’d lost everything in there.

“It did. Now it’s done. I had to drag you away—the Chronicler didn’t want us in its territory anymore.” This he said calmly. Quietly. Like it was the most natural thing in the world to talk about.

“I forgot,” I whispered, eyes closed as I breathed in for a minute, touched my face as if to make sure it was there, touched my chest to feel my heartbeat. Because I could very well have died in there and I didn’t remember.

Because this was possible here in Verenthia. It was possible to simply lose who you were, all of your life, everything and everyone you ever cared about.

It was possible in this realm, and I had never before in my life wanted to run from anywhere as much I wanted to run from here in that moment. This place, this entire continent was a fucking nightmare. I didn’t want to be here anymore, not ever again.

If only my legs could hold my weight.

“Yes. That is the nature of Virlorn. It takes your memories, but it usually gives them back,” Vair said, and my eyes nearly popped out of my skull.

“ Usually? Are you serious?!”

He blinked slowly at me, like he really couldn’t understand my panic. “The reading,” he said, ignoring me completely. “You remember the reading.”