Page 61 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

I wasn’t falling exactly. More like the shadows were sucking me under, pulling me with a strength that was impossible to resist if I tried.

And I did try.

Magic at my fingertips, cold and hard and vicious, and it slipped out of me, searching for something to cling to or something to break— anything at all that would make these shadows let go.

Except whatever these were made of, they were not stopping.

An entire forest had stopped. The Midnight King himself, crown-less and arrogant enough to think he’d already won, had been frozen by this magic that lived underneath my skin. Rune had killed him—he was dead, dead, dead. He would never again hurt Rune.

He should have never hurt me, either.

Except these shadows were stitched to my name. As I struggled against them, I realized that circle he’d drawn on the floor was never meant for Rune.

It was meant for me.

And every tendril of darkness that froze and broke under my frostfire was replaced by a new one, stronger, thicker, forever tied to me.

I screamed as I was being banished from the Midnight Palace. I screamed because once more, the universe was intent on keeping me from Rune.

Then the shadows stopped.

Until that moment, I hadn’t realized just how fast I was moving, wrapped up in shadows, traveling like a fucking bullet through God only knew where. And when they stopped, my stomach nearly came right out of my mouth, together with all my insides.

I felt it for a split second only—the shift in the air, the hiss of magic, the warmth. I recognized it because I’d felt it before, the heat, the sensation that I was walking through water that was not entirely liquid.

Then the shadows spit me out.

I hit something hard with the side of my head, and my mind shut down.

Birds chirping.

Must have been a memory because it had been a long time since I’d heard a song so beautiful. A very long time, it felt like to me—since the day I stepped into the fae realm. Birdsongs were different there in the few woods I’d passed where birds actually flew free.

But on Earth, their song was sweeter. Infinitely more beautiful—or maybe it was just me. Maybe I was just used to the way the melody raised my spirits, especially in summer when I was sitting in the backyard with my eyes closed, just listening.

Then came the scream .

My eyes opened. The pain in my head intensified and shot down the rest of my body lightning fast. The birdsong no longer reached me, and the marble floor underneath my hands wasn’t as…cold.

That’s because it wasn’t marble. It was soft soil covered in grass.

Sunlight over me—warm and bright.

“Rune,” I thought I whispered. “Vair…”

My hands pressed against the grass, and by some miracle my arms had enough strength to hold me, to push me up until I was sitting.

I was sitting on the ground with a bright blue sky over me, and a scorching hot sun falling in my eyes. Another scream sounded in the distance, and there were footsteps and there were shouts, and every inch of my body was shaking, and…

“Nilah?!”

My heart fell. My lungs emptied. My shaking hand rose to my face to shield my eyes from the sun, and I blinked and blinked a million times before the shapes around me gained color and began to make sense.

Fiona. My dad. Betty.

I was sitting in the front yard of the same house I grew up in, in that same neighborhood, surrounded by trees and houses and a dozen people watching from a distance.

My family and my best friend were watching me, too, from the driveway, their eyes wide, shocked, unable to move yet.

“No.”

I shook my head.

I stood up—somehow, I actually stood all the way up and I looked around and I saw the neighborhood, all of it exactly as I’d left it .

No Midnight Palace. No dead king. No Rune and no Vair.

No shadows.

No, no, no…

Magic spiked inside me, and this time it gathered in my skull, attacked my own thoughts, my own memories. A scream ripped out of me and my arms wrapped around my head because it was going to explode any second now. My skull was going to break to pieces.

Ground underneath my knees. Hands on my arms, on my face. Voices I once knew so well, that I’d prayed to hear again for so, so long, telling me that I was okay.

But I wasn’t because Rune was in Verenthia, together with Vair and Raja, and the truth we fought so hard to uncover.

And I was back home.

—THE END OF BOOK 3

Thank you for reading FRACTURED !

I hope you enjoyed book 3 in the Royal Sins series.