Page 6 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

five

“Helid was alive.”

The words barely left my lips. I couldn’t even call it a whisper—more like I mouthed them, but Rune heard.

“I saw him,” he said. “I saw his body.”

“All this time, Rune—he was alive. In the cell right next to mine, and I didn’t see it. Didn’t know.”

“It’s not your fault.” And I wanted to think that, I really did—but why did it feel like it was?

“It was him— his body made to appear like Lyall. He stabbed his uncle in the heart the moment I left the room, right when I woke him up!” My voice was getting louder, but I couldn’t control it, not now. “My God, Rune, I woke him up and then he…then he?—”

Soft lips on mine. Rune held me to himself tightly and gave me another moment to get myself together, to breathe, to understand that I wasn’t about to burn or freeze, somehow at the same time. That just because it felt like my insides were made of ice didn’t mean they actually were.

“It must have been Helid who poisoned him,” Rune whispered. “It makes sense now—it makes sense. He was the only one who could.”

Wide golden eyes were suddenly in front of me.

“So…” I swallowed hard. “So, that means Helid was never…he was never going to…”

“Bring you to Seelie Court,” Rune finished for me, and there went my heart breaking into a million pieces again. “He orchestrated the grog attack himself. Of course, he did— of course .” His eyes squeezed shut and he crushed me to his chest harder. “Fuck, Wildcat. If I hadn’t come…”

I’d be dead.

If Rune hadn’t followed Helid and the royal guards when they came to Earth to get me, I’d have been dead in that forest, eaten by a monkey monster with red eyes.

So much.

Entirely too much for my mind to handle. I was going to fucking collapse soon.

“Sleep,” Rune whispered, a hand over my cheek when I hid my face under his chin. “Sleep, wildling. We’ll talk more when you wake up.”

Did I even have a choice?

I did sleep, but not for long. Possibly an hour, if that.

When my eyes opened, Rune was still there, his head turned as he looked somewhere behind him.

My heart jumped. “We’ll be right there,” Rune said, and I propped up on one elbow to look at who he was talking to—Merenith. She was already retreating behind the rock.

“What? What is it?”

“Nothing. They’re calling us for tea,” Rune whispered. “And to talk.” His eyes were closed as he breathed deeply, stopped his hand over my chest to feel my heartbeat. “We’re okay.”

“I need a moment,” I whispered, my mind sharper already, though I didn’t really expect it. I thought that chaos was going to follow me forever, but the little sleep I’d gotten had apparently helped. I was thinking.

“You can have as long as you like,” Rune said.

I leaned in and kissed his lips. “No—I need a moment to tell you what happened when the Hollow swallowed you.”

Rune opened his eyes. At the same moment, shadows slipped from his fingertips and spread around us just like before, locking us in.

I started talking even before the darkness faded all the way.

I told him everything that had happened, the things I couldn’t tell him when he came to my room just the night before.

Lyall and the seer, and most importantly the Seelie Queen.

Not only the nonsense she spoke to me after the unbinding ceremony was done, but also at the cell room. What Helid said about her.

Rune stopped me there for a moment. “Can you back up for a moment there? Tell me exactly what he said.”

My heart beat like a drum in my ears. “ My sister has set the curse in motion, and it’s coming for all of us .” The memory was so clear I could have been living the same moment all over again. “ You must find the mirror— that’s what he said.” Those had been Helid’s exact words.

For a moment, Rune was perfectly silent as the wheels in his head turned. Meanwhile, I couldn’t shake the cold that was in my chest for the life of me. My bones were made of—or covered in—a layer of ice, and I had no clue what the hell to do about it.

“What curse?” I whispered without really meaning to as I played with Rune’s fingers over my cheek. It was easier to think out loud sometimes, especially about things as complicated and senseless as this.

“I don’t know,” Rune answered anyway.

“I’m not sure if Hessa heard. Do you think she knows something?”

He opened his eyes slowly. “There’s one way to find out.”

I nodded reluctantly. “Let’s go.” As much as I’d have rather stayed here, we needed to talk to Hessa. Hopefully she’d calmed down a bit, too.

“The vial,” Rune whispered, his hand moving down to my hips, and for a moment my heart all but stopped beating.

Fuck, I’d forgotten the fucking vial that the seer gave me that I’d hidden in my underwear while the fae sisters helped me get dressed for the feast!

I jumped off the uncomfortable mattress and pulled up the dress, my hands shaking as I searched my panties—and it was there.

My God, the vial was somehow still there, stuck to my side, its imprint on my skin, and it had made its place there so well that I hadn’t even noticed it wasn’t a part of my body at all.

I sat down at the edge of the mattress again with a deep sigh. Rune came to sit with me, kissed my shoulder, massaged the back of my neck.

“Hold on to it, and don’t tell anyone about it yet,” he whispered in my ear. “When the sun rises, we’ll leave here together. We’ll find the Quiet soon.”

“The Quiet ?”

“Yes. Virlorn —the Quiet. The land of the forgotten. That’s the only place the seer could have meant,” Rune said. “We can access it on our way to Blackwater.”

My heart jumped. “It’s real?” There was an actual place here where the world forgets itself?

“It is,” Rune said. “But we’ll keep that to ourselves, too. At least until we know what these people plan to do.”

On that, we agreed.

I hid the vial in my bra this time and kissed him again just to get my thoughts in order once more.

So many things I wanted to ask—like where exactly was the Quiet, land of the forgotten, and why the hell would a seer want me to pour this vial there?

—but first we needed to talk to the others. My curiosity would have to wait.

So, we went back to the cave and to the others hand in hand, and though I was completely terrified, I didn’t feel as defeated as I did in the beginning.

I was alive and Rune hadn’t stabbed me and Lyall was a fucking prick I was going to punch in the face one day— you just wait —but he hadn’t won. At least not yet.

Merenith, Hessa, two men and a woman were sitting on these smooth rocks near a fire that wasn’t letting out smoke. That’s because it wasn’t real fire—just fae magic shaped into golden flames.

The fae sat in a circle and they had cups in their hands and the four dogs were lying down near their feet. They raised their heads when they heard us approaching, and the others spread out in the cave watched, but they didn’t approach.

God, I felt so exposed to know that Rune’s magic wasn’t hiding us from them right now. So exposed to know that they could all see me, that they all knew exactly who I was—and that we all had a mountain over our heads.

“What did she say to you at the table?” I whispered to Rune as we went. He was on edge as well if the way his muscles were locked tightly was any indicator.

“She said, up for a three-three-two? ”

I looked up at him. “What?” What the hell was a three-three-two?

“A game we used to play when we first started to create illusions. We paired to see who could fool who and who could create more authentic images. When Lyall told me to stab you, I knew what she meant,” Rune said under his breath, and by then we were already close to the group, and they were all watching us, so I didn’t get the chance to ask him to explain.

“I hope you’ve rested,” Hessa said, her eyes on Rune.

She didn’t look okay by any means, but she wasn’t on the verge of madness, either.

Her eyes were no longer bloodshot, just slightly swollen, like she’d cried again.

She wore the same clothes, and her knuckles were white as she held onto the cup in her hands, and fuck, I felt like shit all over again to remember.

The way she’d kissed Helid. The way she’d called him my love .

And I knew exactly what she felt because I’d felt it, too—in those awful moments in the cell when I thought Rune had died. The longest minutes of my fucking life.

One of those smooth rocks that almost looked like a bench was empty, and Rune took us around the fake fire to Hessa’s other side to sit on it. The others didn’t move, didn’t speak yet, only watched.

The pressure in the air grew. The dogs were all watching us, sniffing the air near us, more interested in Rune than me.

Then the man sitting on Merenith’s right side reached for this jug on the floor that was made of thick violet glass and looked like it contained magic inside while the golden light danced on its surface.

It was just liquid, though—green liquid that came out of it when he poured it into identical cups for us.

“This is Ergen, and that is Acul,” Meredith said, pointing at the men—and Acul was one of the Ice fae. The color of his hair and eyes showed it.

And, fuck, the way he was looking at me made me sweat a second in.

“And this is Anafa,” Merenith said, waving a hand at the woman sitting between Acul and Hessa. “We’re glad that you all survived the queen and her pup with your lives.”

She meant it, I thought—but then again, what the hell did I even know about fae when they’d mastered fooling me so thoroughly so many times now?

“Your ears do not have points on them.”

The voice was ice-cold—or maybe it was just me when I realized that the Ice fae had spoken. He was still looking at me. Analyzing my face, my ears.

“How can it be? You look like you’re one of us, but…you’re not.” It was easy to see his confusion, the way he shook his head over and over. “ What are you?”

Ah, my favoritest question in all the worlds.