Page 56 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

thirty-four

Part of me thought it was the stupidest idea I’d ever had. Rune had proved to me over and over that he knew what he was doing. This was his home. These were his people. And I was way in over my head here—I knew that.

But at the same time, the image of him as a little boy remained in front of my eyes.

That bearded man who’d been screaming in that memory—that was his father, no doubt.

He’d been right there, and he hadn’t stopped him.

He’d watched and he’d screamed, then had marked and banished his six-year-old son—and fae or no fae, if somebody expected me to believe that he wasn’t going to try to do the same thing again now, they were fucking stupid.

The Midnight King was ruthless, a proper monster. And if Rune was there with him, I feared it might already be too late, regardless if he’d asked me to trust him.

The anger, the betrayal I felt helped. Raja led the way and Vair walked soundlessly beside me, and I felt all that I could feel, went through it headfirst—because I wanted to have a clear head when we actually got there.

I didn’t want to be angry at Rune for this when I saw him, not until we were sure that we were both okay.

I didn’t want to feel betrayed that he’d left me asleep and had run away.

No, I wanted a clear view of things.

This time, I really wanted this whole thing to be over. I was beyond tired, now. I was at my limits.

So, even if I knew that there wasn’t much I could do against a fae king, I reminded myself that I would rather end with Rune than continue on my own.

Strangely, it was that thought that brought me calm.

It was daylight in a part of the Midnight Court, and I could just see where the sky was blue with light, and where it slowly transitioned into darkness that continued indefinitely. There were a lot more Midnight fae in the narrow streets, and some noticed us walking through, but nobody stopped us.

Soon, Raja had us back to that same ruin, and through the same narrow tunnels that led underneath the very palace that would be crawling with soldiers. Not only soldiers, but the Midnight King as well.

Again—I remained calm.

Raja turned to look at me every few feet as if to make sure I was still behind her. When we finally made it inside, she took us through another set of doors beyond the wall she’d had to break the first time to get us through to the library.

Racks full of unfolded clothes surrounded us, and Raja raised her hand at the door on the other side of the room. Shadows sprung from her fingertips and went to it, sealed every corner, and disappeared into the keyhole.

Then she took off her cloak, put it over a basket and turned to me .

Just now when she moved, I realized how slow she had been before. I realized how much more frozen her limbs had been and how much more graceful her every movement was now. I’d been too distracted, my mind too crowded to notice before, I figured.

“Take it off and keep your hair down. Try to hide your ears at all times,” she told me, and then she started searching the baskets.

I did as I was told and took off the cloak, but I took the mirror with me, just in case.

I hid it in the waistband of my pants underneath my shirt because the pockets were too shallow to hold it.

By the time I was ready to go, Raja had stripped down to her underwear, her dress like black ink sprawled on the floor. I looked away, of course, but I did see the scars on her back. Three of them. The same scar tissue as what remained on her chest—like maybe she’d had to deal with curses before.

Or maybe the seal she broke off Rune left behind more than that wound.

When she turned and threw me an apron, I almost didn’t catch it because I was shocked to find her wearing grey.

A grey dress that fell below her knees, with buttons all the way to her neck and sleeves rolled just below her elbows.

Fuck, she looked like a different person, and when she pulled her hair down, too, I could have been looking at a brand-new Raja.

The apron was a bit lighter in color, and I tightened the ties around the mirror as an extra measure of security.

It was a bit too big for me, but it hid my shirt and pants well enough.

Raja was happy with it. She said nothing, only nodded before darkness spread into a ball in front of her, and she simply took her unsheathed sword and left it there.

Just like Rune did with his own weapons .

“Handy trick,” she muttered, fisting her hand as the ball of darkness became smaller and smaller, then disappeared completely. “Stay behind me at all times.”

I did. Part of me wanted to ask her, are you sure about this, Raja? Are you sure want to come with me? You can stay behind and wait…

The truth was that I was too afraid to be here on my own, terrified that I wouldn’t find Rune, that I’d be left wandering the palace forever, until it was too late.

So, I bit my tongue and I said nothing, convincing myself that Raja was a big girl.

She knew what she was doing—just like me and just like Rune.

We could all take responsibility for our own actions.

Outside was a wide hallway, and it was now empty.

I kept my head down and made sure my hair was on the sides of my head at all times to shield my ears.

Vair walked beside me with his head up, unconcerned— invisible.

I’d have loved to be him right now. Instead, all I saw was the marble floor and the shoes and clothes of the fae passing me through the corridors, wherever it was that Raja was taking us through.

Doors opened and closed. We passed through archways and through wide and long rooms. I tried to see as much as I could around me, just to make sure that I wasn’t caught by surprise if someone was coming for us.

Nobody did, though.

The Midnight Palace was completely different from what I expected.

I’d seen two other court palaces so far. The Queen’s Palace in the Seelie Court was gold and light and luxury. The Ice Palace in the Frozen Court, what little of it I saw, was silver and regal and silent.

But this place? It was completely different .

It was darkness.

The stone floor underneath my feet was polished, so dark it caught faint reflections of us as we moved.

I only caught glimpses as I had to keep my head down, but I still saw.

Along the walls, silver-framed mirrors hung at uneven angles, but none were low enough to actually show anybody’s reflection, instead simply throwing the light back and forth from each other.

The blueish white light of the fae magic that hovered over them—like some sort of a unique lighting system underneath a ceiling that was… nothing.

I risked a glance up twice and the ceiling just wasn’t there. There were no corners—only darkness. Walls covered in shadows, and these didn’t move like the walls in the seer’s chamber. These walls were calm.

Banners draped from above, black with a half moon in the middle sewn with silver threads. I’d seen that same thing on the guard’s armors, too. The crest was everywhere—sometimes even engraved on the black doors.

We passed caged candles hanging on the walls, vases full of thorns—no flowers—and silver harps in the corners, at least one on each floor we passed. The air smelled sharp somehow. As sharp as Rune’s shadows.

They were everywhere—like they were guarding this whole place, every turn and every corner, every door and every window.

Someone spoke to Raja, I thought, and she answered, but my mind was lost to the view outside a large window at the end of a hallway on the third floor.

The wall of the palace slithered around like a snake in the distance, and beyond it I could just see the Midnight Court, darker than the sky, wide streets dotted with white lights.

Because of the darkness, I couldn’t see the end of it nor the outer wall of the kingdom at all.

It felt like this side went on forever, too, just like the sea at its back.

Then the sound of metal against metal pulled me out of my thoughts.

I stepped back instinctively before my brain even registered the view in front of me. Raja had her sword in her hand, and she cut the throat of a fae guard wearing black armor with such ease, he hadn’t yet made to draw his own sword out of its sheath.

Fuck.

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. Everything happened so fast.

“Stand back!” Raja shouted, and I knew she was talking to me. I watched in horror as all five of the guards who’d been standing by the walls of this large set of black polished doors charged at her with their weapons raised.

Raja moved—quick, brutal, merciless. She killed in a way that made me feel like it was a show, a rehearsed dance, definitely not real.

Her sword stopped another, and her elbow shattered the jaw of a soldier behind her, and the two who’d been coming toward her left ended up on the floor when she ducked low and spun around, too fast for my eyes to catch the movements properly.

Then came the shadows slipping out of the last two guards—and shouts coming from others who were running toward us from the other end of the hallway.

“Nilah!” Vair cried while my mind was still chaotic—the thought what the fuck?

! echoing in my head—because I hadn’t seen anything, and Raja hadn’t warned me, and now there was a fight.

Now, there were over ten soldiers with swords in their hands running at us from the other side, the sound of their armor plates drilling into my brain.

I knew there would most likely be a fight when I decided to come to this place, but actually seeing those soldiers, and the other fae who were stepping to the sides to make way for them as they looked at me in horror, shocked me all the same.

I only had a second to get my shit together, and I did simply because I wasn’t here for me. I was here for Rune.

My body moved. Ice underneath my skin, and the palms of my hands were lit up from within, and I raised them. Rune said I could even take out Lyall all by myself if it came to it, and right now I was choosing to believe that. I could take these guards out, and that was exactly what I planned to do.

Except a second before I unleashed every ounce of energy that was willing to come out of me—completely without thought, purely instinctively, I might add—Raja screamed.

I turned only halfway to find she’d grabbed the last standing soldier by the armor, and she threw him right into those polished doors. She simply flung the body forward as she screamed, and the soldier crashed into the wood with a loud crack.

Both doors swung open at once, and every person standing in that hallway stopped.

Cold air swept out of whatever room was beyond, and raw shadows had created a threshold on the stone floor.

Ahead, barely ten feet away, a man with a dark beard stood alone in the middle of a large room, slowly lowering his arm to his side as those shadows on the floor faded.

The soldiers behind us no longer ran. Nobody made a single sound for one of the longest moments of my life .

Then Vair growled and Raja stood up straight, her bloody sword in her hand still. She was looking at the bearded man—but he was looking at me.

And when my eyes met his, I realized I was standing before the Midnight King.