Page 55 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

Raja was standing behind us, and I hadn’t even heard her approaching.

She was barefoot still, her hair a mess, which I’d never seen before, and she was slightly limping, I thought, when she came to sit on my other side.

Her shadow magic had already faded when it locked around us—to keep the water and the sound of the pouring away, I imagined.

I wouldn’t have heard her voice through it like I heard Vair’s, I was sure.

He used mine, and half of me was convinced that it simply popped into my head—Vair didn’t actually speak with it. But who knew?

“He was six. He was…skinny. Tiny. Big head on small shoulders.”

“Yes, I remember,” Raja said. “I remember the night well. I remember his face.”

“How could he have possibly killed a queen?” I looked out into the dark just like her, and it was weird to see the water pouring but not hear it or feel the spray. “It all keeps coming back to that— how ?”

“The fae are not like human beings,” Vair said. “They grow at a much faster rate, and they’re capable of proper judgment by the age of two.”

Rune had told me something like that once.

“A trick,” Raja said—she hadn’t heard Vair speaking at all. “They tricked her. She was a smart woman. A strong and just queen. They tricked her so that Rune could deliver the final blow…” Her voice trailed off and she closed her eyes. “That’s the only way I can make sense of it.”

“Maybe it was poison,” I whispered. “Maybe they poisoned her, slowed her down, and?—”

“No.” Vair’s voice echoed in my head. I turned to him. “They couldn’t have poisoned her. She never ate or drank in the Midnight Court no matter what. ”

“I imagine the pet says no—and I will say it, too. She was too powerful for poisons,” Raja whispered, shaking her head at herself. “Illusions, maybe. The Midnight King creates them flawlessly.”

“I could believe that,” I said. “I believed Rune really stabbed me that night even though I didn’t feel an ounce of pain. The image Hessa created was…perfect.”

“And that pig has had centuries to perfect his skills,” Raja said. “What I don’t understand is why the seer would insist that the truth could only be found through Rune.”

A flinch I almost didn’t notice—but I was looking at her because I was thinking about how she was speaking to me like I was…you know, a person. An equal. Not a mortal she looked down on.

Almost like she no longer even hated me that much.

My God, I felt like I was floating on air, like I might be in a dream and none of this was real, even though I felt the air going down my throat and felt the hardness of the rock I sat on.

But I noticed Raja flinch, and I thought about what the seer told her. About her wound.

“I was thinking just now how the Ice Queen did all this, put all of this into motion when she died,” I said and analyzed her dress, the way she sat, the way she held one leg up comfortably and leaned into her right.

Almost like she was avoiding putting weight on her left side.

“But then Helid died that morning in the jail cell, Raja. And he said my sister has set the curse in motion when he ordered me to find the mirror. Not the Ice Queen—the Seelie Queen.”

Which, of course, to me didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Yet.

“I honestly am impressed. I always thought that man weak, but he was more courageous than most,” Raja said .

“He was going to kill me. That’s what the plan was and what he told Hessa—but here’s the thing, though.

I don’t really think he planned to go through with it.

I…” I shook my head, at a loss for the right words to describe it, but I tried anyway.

“I knew he was keeping secrets, and I obviously didn’t trust him, but he didn’t look like he was going to actually kill me. ”

“Until he unleashed those monsters upon you,” Raja said.

“I can’t explain it properly, but he did try to save me. Made the horse I rode run as he and the soldiers kept the monsters back.” I shook my head. “Maybe I’m just delusional. I’m trying to cling to a bit of sense.”

“I guess we won’t know for sure until Rune returns.” My stomach fell all the way to my heels. “He will return,” Raja whispered. “He will.”

And I thought so, too. I screamed the same words inside my head over and over, but then there was this other monstrous thought that always seemed to scream louder.

“What if he doesn’t?”

The words tasted like bile on my tongue.

“He’s smart,” was Raja’s reply, which could have made me laugh.

“And he’s not only going against a fucking army, but against a man you yourself said has had centuries to perfect his magic skill.” I turned to Raja. “Be honest with me. What are the odds that if they fight, Rune wins?”

She flinched again and tried to sit up straighter, but she must have forgotten she was wounded somewhere on her side because she hissed and sat back down, hunched over.

“What are the odds, Raja?” I demanded, even though she pressed her hand over the left side of her chest, close to her underarm, and closed her eyes as she breathed .

“Low,” she spit through gritted teeth.

Low.

If Rune tried to fight his father, he was not going to win.

I swallowed hard, pretended I wasn’t burning on the inside by the sudden cold that covered all my bones in a layer of frost.

“And do you think there will be a fight?”

Raja opened her eyes. Looked at me. Didn’t answer.

That was answer enough for me.

“She’s worse now than she was yesterday,” Vair said from my other side, while Raja turned to the waterfall again, composed, controlling her breathing, pretending she wasn’t hurting.

“I know,” I told Vair. Whatever wound the breaking of that mark had caused on her, it was there on the left side of her chest.

“It’s the remnants of the seal,” Vair continued. “Which is, in nature, a curse.”

“Yes.” Just like the seer said.

“Nilah.” A paw over my knee, and I turned to look at Vair. “Frostfire cleanses curses.”

Everything came to a halt. “What?”

“Frostfire,” Vair said. “When used properly, can undo a curse. Cleanse the magic that made it.”

I shook my head. “What…what are you saying?”

“I’m saying you’re weak still and I’m saying you have a long way ahead of you to learn how to properly use it—but this woman has a part of the curse she broke attached to her,” Vair said. “And I’m saying maybe you can cleanse her of it.”

Now, these words I understood just fine, and at the same time I wished I hadn’t.

“What is it? Are you talking? What is the pet saying? ”

I turned to Raja, and she’d made an effort to push the hair that had come out of her bun back. Had made an effort to sit in a way that would hide the fact she was hurt.

“You can try it, Nilah. It might work, or it might not—but you can try it,” Vair whispered, putting both paws over my knee now so that he was lying over my leg.

“What is it?” Raja said, and she suddenly looked afraid.

“Where is your wound?” I asked her—and I must have lost my fucking mind. “Show me.”

She moved back a bit instinctively, as if my words had physically assaulted her. “My wound doesn’t matter.”

“Show me, Raja,” I said.

The fae raised her chin. “No.”

Nothing in the world pissed me off like this woman. For the briefest moment, I imagined picking her up right now and throwing her off the edge of the realm. I really did imagine it.

Then I got myself together, breathed deeply and said, “Show me, please. ”

That certainly surprised her. “Why?”

“Because it’s the remains of a curse, and Vair says frostfire can cleanse it.”

Her eyes widened as she looked at the lynx, half his body over my thigh.

“He thinks it’s worth a try, even though I don’t really know what I’m doing with it.” All these words left my lips, and it was almost like I wasn’t me at all. Like the real me was stuck in limbo somewhere, watching from a distance.

For a good long moment, Raja only looked at Vair, and sometimes her eyes moved to my face for a second, too.

Then, just when I thought she was going to tell me to go to hell, she reached for her dress with her bare hands, gripped the piece of leather and cotton that was sewed together, and tore it apart.

She tore her dress before my eyes, and she ripped a bandage stained red off her skin, then held the dress to the sides with shaking fists to show me a deep cut right over her breast that went almost to her underarm.

“Do it.”

Just like that.

Every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.

“Are you sure? You know that I haven’t had the time or?—”

“Do it, Nilah,” she cut me off. “If he thinks it’s worth a try, then try .” Her voice broke, which I’d also never heard before.

Suddenly I was moving, turning toward her, dragging myself closer, reaching out my hands that had turned to a blur from how badly they were shaking.

I saw the wound and the dried blood around the edges, and I saw how the skin around it had darkened, almost like it was rotten from within.

I saw it and I kept reaching for it as if I wasn’t in charge of my own limbs at all.

“Vair, I don’t know what I’m doing.” Tears in my eyes, and when I blinked, they slipped down my cheeks.

“Remember what we did in the Ice Palace, Nilah. You opened that drawer. You can undo what remains of that curse. I see it. It’s weak. It’s barely hanging on,” Vair said, and he was standing near me now, looking at Raja’s chest, sniffing the air close to it. “I smell it. It won’t resist.”

The Ice Palace.

I’d been held hostage by a fucking building just days ago, and even if it felt like I’d been a different person then, I was still me .

All of this—the numbness and the pain and the fear and this strength I’d somehow acquired in Verenthia—all of this was me still. With or without the magic, I was still me.

My shaking hand pressed over the wound on Raja’s chest. She gasped—my hand felt cold. Very cold.

“Close your eyes,” Vair whispered, and I did. “Find it. Call it. Release it. And remember—you’ve done it before.”

I had.

Finding the magic now wasn’t difficult. I could tell how it felt.

The frostfire was ice—hard and uncomfortable, and the ice magic was merely cold—like water.

Focusing on the ice wasn’t difficult when I’d already felt like I had frozen organs under my skin.

My thoughts were all over the place, and I did feel the magic rushing down my arm, but it was slow. It was…hesitant.

Then the music began.

Of course, there was no music in the cave, but that haunting melody that used to come out of a music box filled my head all the same.

It drowned every single thought in my head, as if my own mind was preparing itself for what I had no clue how to prepare for.

I figured that out when I started to feel like I had soft silk wrapped around my hands and fingers.

So real I could have sworn to you that I was wearing those gloves—and most importantly, the sharp taste of burnt sugar and metal exploded on my tongue.

Suddenly, I was back in the Ice Palace, sitting on the floor, all my senses distracted from the world, focused only on what went on inside my body.

Whether Vair guided me through all of it or not, I wasn’t sure, but the frostfire came willingly this time. It was uncomfortable as it rushed through my veins, tiny ice shards piercing every inch of me as they gathered in the palm of my hand, then radiated off my skin.

It didn’t last long, though.

A gasp, and my hand was no longer touching anything.

A small cry, and my eyes were wide open, the music gone, the gloves not on my hand, the taste of those berries once again sent to the past where it belonged.

And Raja was still there, had dragged herself away from me. She was breathing heavily, looking down at her chest and the small white flames that were dancing on her skin, right on the edges of the wound.

They weren’t burning her, though. On the contrary—I could have sworn that a thin layer of frost had formed over the wound, and it was now melting.

As it melted, Raja’s pale skin knit itself together.

It happened right before my unblinking eyes, and I still struggled to believe it.

The white flames went out, and the dark that had stained the skin around the wound had disappeared, and the wound had closed completely.

Not a speck of dried blood remained, only slightly raised and slightly pink scar tissue.

Raja looked up at me with her eyes wide open and her jaw nearly touching the floor.

“It worked,” Vair said as he sniffed the air with his head raised. “The curse is undone.”

Well, fuck me sideways.

I was looking at my own hands to see if something had changed about them, but nothing had. My skin looked exactly the same as always—no flames and no frost and no light.

“You’re her,” Raja whispered, and I looked up at her again. “You’re…you’re really her.”

My stomach twisted and turned .

The memories flooded my mind all at once again.

“I’m not.” I wasn’t the Ice Queen, was I?

How could I be her when I was me ?

Nilah Dune from Earth, who’d been bullied her whole life, who’d gone a whole life without her mother, stuck in survival mode even when she thought she was living. The same girl who crossed to another realm—to help the boy who’d saved her life, yes, but also to escape from her own fucking demons.

Instead, I’d crashed headfirst into much bigger ones.

I guess life is funny like that.

Still—I might’ve had frostfire and I might’ve been considered a vessel by these people, but I was not the Ice Queen.

And I stood up.

“I’m not her, Raja. Maybe she made me what I am today, but I am not her. I’m me. ” And that would forever remain a truth I could come back to no matter what tomorrow looked like.

“Nilah…” Vair said, and my name was a warning.

“I’m going after him,” I said—to him and to Raja.

“He told you to tell me to trust him, and I do—but I don’t trust any other fae I’ve ever met.

Not even you .” Raja swallowed hard. “So, I’m going after him because I simply can’t sit here and wait.

” Vair’s wide eyes locked on mine, and I reminded him one more time, “I am not her.”

They didn’t try to stop me, though I expected it, at least from the lynx. Instead, by the time I put my boots on and tied the cloak around my shoulders, Raja had already put on hers.

Her sword was in her hand. Her lips were pressed into a thin line. “Let’s go.”

She turned around and her black cloak swooshed in the air before she disappeared into the tunnel. Vair looked up at me, and I could have sworn the words were at the tip of his tongue. I didn’t stop him from speaking—that I actually could do that never even occurred to me.

But when I followed Raja, he stayed right behind me and didn’t say a single word.