Page 38 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

“The…the reading ?” The words that could have been made out of bright neon lights went off in my head all of a sudden, and a sharp pain sliced right through my skull.

“Yes, the reading of the Chronicler. Its words—you remember.”

Gritting my teeth, I held my breath until the pain faded away, and fuck, it was intense. It only lasted a split second, but it hurt like hell.

But the words remained, just as bright.

“Yes, I remember. Of course, I remember.”

“Good. Now we know.”

“Wait, wait—hold on a minute.” I looked at him, distracted from my horror for a moment.

He’d really stood up on all fours like he was going to just take off somewhere.

“I don’t know shit, Vair. I don’t know anything about anything at all— I forgot my own name in there.

” I pointed at the tree in the distance but didn’t dare even look at it. “I forgot my family. I forgot Rune.”

The lynx turned his head to the side like he was confused. “You remember now, do you not?”

As simple as that. “That’s not the point!” I hissed, heart pounding in my chest because no way he didn’t understand where I was coming from. No way.

“Then what is?”

I blinked.

Vair didn’t bat an eye. He genuinely asked me that.

And I realized, he didn’t understand where I was coming from at all. He couldn’t even begin to fathom why I was so panicked—because he was from here. He was Verenthian, whatever kind of creature he might be. To him, this was normal.

Fuck.

I swallowed hard. Took in a deep breath. I remember now, I told myself, just to ease the fear. To push it back a bit .

“I remember the words of the Chronicler, Vair. But I do not understand them.” Nor had I tried—or had the time to.

“But you do.” He came closer, sat down in front of me. I was sitting, too, and like that we were almost identical eye to identical eye. Our colors were the same, and it still took me by surprise every time I realized it. “Let’s go over them together.”

I swallowed hard. “ 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, ” I recited. And I didn’t doubt for a second that I’d gotten all of it right, word for word.

Words that had been burned inside my skin, etched into my fucking bones, it felt like.

“It makes sense now—so much sense. I remember it, Nilah,” Vair whispered in my voice. “I was there .”

My heart about jumped right out of my chest. “What? How did she… how ?!” I didn’t even know the right question to ask.

“A spell,” Vair told me. “A sorcerer spell. Dark magic. She used the mirror to split her soul into two.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, because fuck no, no way in any hell. “No, no, this can’t be. What the hell kind of Voldemort shit is this!?” I screeched.

“I don’t know what that is,” Vair told me in all seriousness, and I would have laughed had I had the voice. I would have.

But I was busy screaming. “You can’t split your soul into two— what the hell are you saying? Are you telling me I’m a fucking Horcrux or something? Is that what you mean?!”

He could most definitely tell by that alone that I was panicking, freaking the fuck out, but did Vair care?

No, he did not .

“Of course, you can. Sorcerer magic allows it, and the queen did it. I remember the night—one before she passed. She spoke her name backward into the mirror, and the spell took. The glass broke. The soul split. It worked .”

There he went with those sparks in his eyes, as if he were saying a good thing. The most exciting thing he’d ever heard.

“No, no—it didn’t. It couldn’t have. I’m me, Vair. I’m me!” Tears in my eyes, though I wasn’t planning on crying anytime soon. No, I would just run—to hell with the secrets and the questions and the truth. To hell with it all. I was just going to run away.

Unfortunately for me, my legs refused to hold me. I could barely stay seated, and I was shaking so badly, and Vair said, “Continue.”

As if he were my master, I did. The words slipped from my tongue as if they’d waited a lifetime to come out of me: “ She t-t-ore 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 ,” I said, barely stopping to take a breath.

“ The mirror did as it was told. It found a hold—a space unseen to bear the soul that once was queen .”

Even the memory of blood in my mouth returned together with the words. I’d bled from my nostrils—and the evidence was there now, dried blood over my lips coming off when I scrubbed them with my fingertips.

A tear slipped out—but I wasn’t crying. I was shaking, and I was speaking.

“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, ” I choked, rubbing my lips until they hurt. “ Not fate. Not blood. Not royal claim—only enough space to hold the flame. That is you, noxavira . ”

My God, that word. First on the lips of a werewolf man, and then those of a seer. That word…that word…that word…

“Go on,” Vair said like he couldn’t even see me breaking apart right there in front of his eyes.

“ You wear her face because she bled and gave you half of what was to be dead.”

Half a soul.

Half a queen’s soul inside me because I was merely a vessel. Not a human being, no—a vessel .

“The magic worked. Half of her waited for the right time,” said Vair. “Half of her waited for you.”

I shook my head, tempted to laugh. “Not me specifically, though. I wasn’t chosen or fated or any of that shit, I was just…”

“Empty,” Vair finished for me. “A human body touched by magic.”

Shivers broke down my spine. “The life-bond Lyall created.”

The lynx nodded. “The perfect place to hide—in plain sight.”

Over and over again I shook my head and argued with myself in my mind because I didn’t have enough voice to speak. Over and over again I tried to reason that it wasn’t true. That none of it made any sense, that souls could not be split, then hidden in another body.

“Magic cannot exist in a human body—and I had magic,” I finally said, or I thought I said, and not just once. “That’s what you all said—magic cannot be transferred into a human body, a mortal—that’s not how any of it works.”

The look in Vair’s eyes. God, I didn’t want to hear what a part of me knew he would say next.

“But you weren’t,” he whispered. “You were no longer mortal when the life-bond transferred Seelie magic into you. You were already…”

I swallowed hard. “A vessel.” A fucking vessel. Just like he himself said once in the Ice Palace.

“I am not sure of the correct order of things, Nilah, but if I had to guess, I would say that when the Seelie Prince’s magic touched you, it signaled the spell of the Ice Queen.

When the prince created the life-bond with you, the spell activated, and it settled into you.

Once you were no longer mortal, the life-bond completed itself, maybe in time, maybe right away—I am not sure.

But it worked because you were no longer mortal. You are not mortal.”

These words spun around in my head over and over again, not in shiny lights, but each letter weighed as much as a mountain. It crushed my ribcage completely. Somehow, I’d managed to pull my legs up, knees against my chest, and my eyes could have been open or closed—I couldn’t really tell.

All I saw were the images in my head.

All I saw was the curse that was my curiosity— the truth, the truth, I want the truth!

Well, now I didn’t fucking want the truth. I didn’t want this truth. I wanted everything but this truth. I never wanted to hear a single word of this ever again in my life.

Then…

“Continue.”

I looked up, stopped shaking, stopped crying— was I even crying ? I couldn’t tell.

Vair had seriously said that, and I couldn’t even find it in me to tell him to go fuck himself.

He must have seen it in my eyes, though, must have seen the words plain as day, because he didn’t ask me again. Instead, he continued himself—with the last words that the Chronicler had said before I’d passed out.

“She did not flee a coward’s end nor cheat the threads the stars would send. She saw…” Vair closed his eyes for a moment, and I remembered this part, too, perfectly. I remembered the question he’d asked the Chronicler—it had been him, not me. By then I’d been on the ground, barely awake.

And Vair said, “It is not for me to say. The Seer of Shadows knows that day—knows the one who took her life, the only one who can name the why.”

I breathed—and only then realized that I hadn’t been until then.

“She did not do this to save herself,” said Vair. “The queen did not do this to cheat the prophecy. I knew she wouldn’t have. I knew.”

“Then why did she do it? What did she see?”

I looked at him, waited with my heart in my throat… “I don’t know,” the lynx said. “The Chronicler could not reveal that to us. Only the Seer of Shadows can.”

“The Seer of Shadows?”

“Yes. That is the name of the seer of the Midnight King.”

Every word he said was like a knife straight through my gut. “Rune’s father.”

“Rune Kalygorn—the killer,” said Vair, and this time I moved. I sat up, lowered my legs, looked him in the eye.

“Rune did not kill the queen.”

I could have slapped the shit out of Vair, and he’d have probably looked less surprised. “He did. The Midnight King said?—”

“Yes, the Midnight King— that guy who went to the queen and took over the Frozen Court— that guy who had everything to gain from her death. That guy blamed a six-year-old boy, Vair.” My voice had changed. My blood was suddenly boiling—I wasn’t weak at all .

It was all mental, which I already knew, but damn. Sometimes my own body took me by surprise.

“But the prophecy,” was what he whispered.