Page 44 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

twenty-six

She took us away from the walls of the palace, which would have made me suspicious, but I continued to remind myself that she knew this place.

This is where she lived before she staged her own death.

She knew what she was doing, even when she took us past the closest row of soldiers patrolling the widest street near the palace’s wall, and down a slope that was half hidden by ivy and thorns—until we reached what looked like nothing more than a collapsed shrine.

Raja stopped, scanned the area to make sure nobody was looking at us—and nobody was.

We both had our hoods on, and there were people coming and going about their business, same way as they had in the Seelie Court—except I couldn’t help but notice that people used less magic here in general.

In the Seelie towns, I’d seen kids playing and vendors selling moving fruit and clothes that pretended they were on a body, but here…

nothing. Everything looked so very ordinary—which didn’t necessarily mean it was a bad thing. Just an observation.

“Stay close,” Raja said, crouching low and pushing aside overgrown weeds with a hand like she knew exactly what she was looking for—and she did.

Beneath it, a narrow tunnel gaped open, so dark it could have been a piece of the night sky, and ice-cold air rushed out of it the moment Raja pulled the weeds to the side.

My magic reacted instantly, but before I could even think to call for light, Raja’s hand lit up and a fae light the size of a tennis ball slipped right into the dark tunnel.

“Servants used the old tunnels to smuggle stolen food and books out of the palace. They run beneath the wards and will take us closer to where we need to go.”

I looked at Vair when she jumped into the hole—there were apparently no stairs there, but the fall wasn’t far. Raja landed on her feet and the light she’d made still hovered close to the opening of the tunnel when she looked up.

“Coming?”

Vair hesitated, but the moment Raja stepped underneath the ground where we couldn’t see, he jumped.

Cursing under my breath, so did I. It really wasn’t as deep as I’d feared so I landed on my feet, too. The passage was tight, forcing Raja and me to walk sideways, and we had to duck low to avoid the roots that grew like veins through the ceiling.

Not too far in, there was a huge hole in front of us, like the floor had long caved in.

“We have to jump to the other side. It’s not far,” she said, and the light she’d made burned brighter, became bigger and moved ahead across the hole.

The other side was far. It was very far.

Fuck, I was sweating worse than I had up there.

“Where exactly are we going again?” I asked in half a voice, more to distract myself .

“Underneath the palace, where the seer lives,” Raja said, and she took a step back as she prepared to jump.

“Why does the seer live underneath the palace?” That was odd, wasn’t it?

“Because that’s where the Great Library is.” And she jumped.

My God, I really didn’t want to do this, but Vair followed without a word, and so I didn’t really have a choice. I jumped, even though I was certain that I was going to slip and fall to the bottom of that hole in no time.

I didn’t, though. By some miracle, I made it, landed just on the edge of the half-broken ground, and Raja grabbed me by the cloak and pulled me with ease. Without ever even making eye contact.

“We will have some walking to do,” she said as she continued ahead, her light leading the way.

“We will first reach the pig’s wine vault, and we will most likely have to crawl through pipes to get to the other side.

” Pig, she said, and she was referring to the Midnight King.

She’d gone off on Rune when we had dinner that night for calling him a king, too. I remembered it clearly.

“If we get spotted, do not run. Do not speak. Make sure the pet remains invisible, and do exactly as I say.”

Raja stopped for a second, and she turned to look at me as the light hovered right over her head so I could see her clearly. See her dark eyes—and that she meant every word when she said, “Do we understand each other?”

Fuck, she was intense.

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Lead the way.”

Raja definitely knew what she was doing.

She knew which walls had hidden passages behind them, which doors should remain closed.

She never ran when we came across fae—for the first group of three women and a man who were cleaning dust off wine bottles in the vault, she simply pushed down her hood and looked at them without making a single sound.

They only watched as we went across the large room, and out the half open doors.

And for the second group of four men, she kept the hood on and her head low, and slipped in a darker corridor with her finger in front of her lips to tell me to stay quiet until they were gone.

We could have walked for fifteen minutes, maybe more.

There was no need to crawl through pipes, mostly walk through tunnels and dark rooms. Eventually, they led us to one full of shelves packed with glass objects of all kinds, and Raja basically attacked a wall beyond the third with her shadows.

It wouldn’t give, and she thought it had been reinforced from the other side while she was away, but she still forced it to slide to the side all the same within a couple of minutes.

Beyond the wall was a corridor unlike anything I’d seen so far.

The walls were made of black glass, and the air smelled of old paper, candle wax, and something sweeter I couldn’t really name.

The floor was made out of glass, too, and I could even hear the footsteps of Vair, which I never could before, when his claws fell against it.

The corridor didn’t go far, though, and light was coming through from the other side. Orange light. Fire.

Raja slowly pushed her hood down and continued ahead, her every step measured, her hands in front of her, shadows leaking from her fingertips. She was ready to attack, which meant she had no idea what to expect at the end of this corridor. I didn’t, either .

That’s why, when we finally stepped out into the library, I forgot how to breathe.

It wasn’t a single room—it was a vast cathedral carved out of pale grey stone.

Towers of books spiraled upward into the darkness of the incredibly high ceiling—which really made no sense considering we hadn’t descended a single set of stairs—floating midair like tethered stars.

Some tomes were half the size of my body and some were chained shut.

Some were open and empty, some with the edges of the pages on fire, though they didn’t seem to be burning, and there were hay baskets full of scrolls every few feet.

Tables everywhere you looked full of books.

We’re here.

We’d actually made it, and if Raja was to be believed, we were underneath the Midnight Palace, in the Great Library.

Vair stayed close, ears flat and tail low, and Raja still moved slowly and with more care here. She took us down a narrow path of black marble tiles, surrounded by shelves and tables—but that wasn’t all.

At the end, in what I imagined was the middle of the library, was a place cut from a dream.

The ceiling reached even higher, though here it wasn’t dark, but full of swirling lights in all colors.

What I first thought were birds flying close to it were actually pages.

Pieces of paper, big and small, empty and full, were just floating about together with fae lights close to the ceiling like they were relaxing.

Moving ladders and narrow staircases went across the walls full of books—so damn full.

“Don’t look at them too long,” Raja told us when I couldn’t get myself to lower my head— there were pages flying in this room! “If you try to read them while they float, they will read you back—and you do not want that.”

Well, fuck. I was pretty sure I did want that, actually. Too bad I was in no position to try my luck right now, but if I ever got the chance…

Raja continued ahead, and Vair was more curious than afraid, no longer even glancing at Raja at all, let alone growling at her.

And when we passed the floating pages, we came in front of a set of doors carved out of the same almost completely black wood as that of most of the shelves.

It was a fantasy of mine come alive, that library, and I totally got Belle—if someone handed me over this whole thing, I couldn’t care less if they were man or beast. I would absolutely, one hundred percent take it and live in here for the rest of my life.

“This is it,” said Raja, and every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.

“Should we knock?” I wondered because the doors were most definitely closed—and about two and a half times my size.

I could hardly see the upper corners of them from down here.

“Maybe she’s asleep. It’s still early.” Then I thought better of it.

“ Is it still early?” How much time had even passed since we’d run into Raja?

Because everything had blurred together for me.

Raja looked back at me for a moment, and she, too, was confused.

“Let’s just…let’s just knock.” Right now, the large library behind us was still empty, but how much time did we really have? I’d rather get this over with faster so we could be out of here, and I could find Rune.

He was here— here in the Midnight Court, or on his way, and I wouldn’t have to wait much longer to be with him. I wouldn’t have to wait, possibly at all.

I stepped forward, my fist raised. Fuck, I was so ready to get this over with. So ready.

And then the door opened before my fist had even touched it.

My heart stopped beating. My muscles locked tightly. Everything in the library—the whole damn palace—stopped together with me, except for the door that continued to swing open slowly, with a screeching sound that could have been trying to imitate a baby crying.

Run, run, run, my instincts said even before I saw inside. Even before I felt the magic coming at me in waves.

Even before my eyes locked with the Seer of Shadows—but it was already too late.