Page 9 of Fractured (Royal Sins #3)

six

The dog stayed with me—the she who’d come to me first. The other three followed Rune’s every step, trying to push each other back so they could get closer to his feet as they went toward the back of the cave with Merenith and the others.

But she stayed with me, sat there near my feet and put her chin over my knee, and let me scratch her head and touch her soft fur to my heart’s desire. It calmed me down better than I ever thought possible even when Rune disappeared in the darkness deep inside the cave to where I couldn’t see.

The golden flames didn’t fade away at all.

They remained just as bright, dancing as if their purpose was to seduce me, to make me comfortable sitting there on a piece of rock.

How absurd was it that it actually worked, even when nothing at all was for certain, and I wasn’t even close to answering the most important questions of my life?

Who am I?

What am I?

Then Hessa came back from wherever she’d stormed off to, and she looked calm when she sat on the rock across from me. She didn’t even meet my eyes for a moment, just sat there with her elbows on her knees and looked at the flames like she was hoping all her answers would be hidden in those colors.

“Are you okay?” I asked even though I knew she wasn’t.

“Not even close,” Hessa said without hesitation and finally looked up at me. “Are you ?”

The question surprised me but not as much as the answer. “Yes.” For the moment, I was okay.

The dog leaning on my legs came closer, rested half her weight on my lap, and she was heavy, but she was also so warm. So soft.

“What he said to you…”

My stomach twisted instantly. She meant Helid because she’d been there, too. She’d heard.

“We will figure it out,” I said in half a voice. “Rune and I will figure this whole thing out.”

She smiled bitterly. “Except that won’t be enough, will it? Just figuring it out will not do shit to stop Lyall.”

“No, but it will be a step in the right direction. It will give us direction.” Otherwise, how in the world were we to even try to stop this madness the Seelie Prince had apparently started?

To rule all four courts—what madness. All that power in the hands of one person—a person like Lyall?

Fuck, just to think about it made me nauseous.

“We’re too weak. Too few. We’ll never stop him,” Hessa said, then closed her eyes as if the words had slipped from her involuntarily.

“We’re not weak,” I said. “Rune isn’t weak. You are not weak.” I’d seen her fighting with my own eyes.

“Yet I let her kill him.” Her hands were pulled up in fists so tight her knuckles had turned white.

“You fought the Seelie Queen . I’m no expert in how any of this works, Hessa, but I do have eyes and I’ve seen the difference in power.” In Lyall. In the Seelie Queen.

In Rune, even if all I had to compare his magic against was Raja’s.

“Of course, there’s a difference—they’re royals for a reason! Their thrones would never accept them if they weren’t… worthy .” She flinched, like that word tasted bad on her tongue. “They would never give them more power—but that doesn’t change the fact that Helid died!”

Her voice echoed in the high ceiling of the cave, and even the dog raised her head and perked up her ears.

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” I said because trying to make her see a point right now would be stupid. She was obviously grieving. Nothing I could say was going to make a difference. She wasn’t really looking for an opinion—she was looking for an ear, I thought.

“It’s like I’m cursed or something,” she said, lowering her head so I couldn’t even see her face anymore.

“First, I fall in love with that monster who discards me as soon as he gets bored of me. And then I fall in love with his uncle, only to have him die in my fucking arms.” Her laughter pierced right through my heart.

“Yes, cursed feels like the right diagnosis here.”

“I knew a werewolf that her own pack looked at as a curse once.” She whipped up her head instantly. Surprise flashed in her wide eyes. “Instead, she was going to be their salvation.”

I’d prayed countless times that Maera had made it, and a part of me was so sure that she had. She was back home and had reclaimed her throne. She’d made it, but I still found myself praying whenever I thought of her.

“I’m nobody salvation,” Hessa spit.

“You were mine, actually. Thank you for that. You saved my life.” She waved me off like it meant nothing to her, but it meant everything to me.

“I’ve lost, too, so I know that nothing I say to you now is going to make a difference.

You need to go through it headfirst to get to the other side all by yourself. ”

Losing my mom might have been different and I’d been only a kid then, but loss was loss. I saw the same pain reflected in her eyes. I guess it takes one to know one.

“Have you ?” Hessa asked, and the words died on my tongue a few times before I was able to answer.

“I’m…getting there.” Because I didn’t want to tell her no.

I didn’t want to tell anyone that I still didn’t know how to live without feeling like a part of me was missing most of the time because it was.

I didn’t know how to accept that I’d lost her forever, even after all this time.

But perhaps, when I got older and wiser…

“He’s evil,” she said after a moment, the dancing flames reflecting in her wide eyes as she looked at me.

“He has to be stopped. When he told me what he planned for the two of you? He told me to brag. He thought it was a genius plan. He thought they would write books about it—he thrived on the idea.”

I flinched, my stomach twisting and turning awfully. “Well, then maybe I’m the curse,” I said, and I tried to joke about it to lighten the mood, but I failed. “Maybe I was never supposed to make it all the way to him, to heal him. Maybe all of this is on me.”

The dog lay her head on my lap again.

Hessa said, “Maybe. ”

And just like that, all the calm that had come over me before was gone, and chaos reigned in my mind once more.

I didn’t blame Hessa, though. Not only because she was grieving, but it was very possible that if I hadn’t come to heal Lyall when I did, all of this could have been avoided. All of this could have already ended without it needing to even begin.

Helid would be alive. The queen would do whatever the hell the queens of fae courts did. And I’d be home with my family—or even in NYC working some shitty job while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

God, the idea had terrified me once so much. Now, compared to this realm, it felt like a walk in the park. Put me anywhere where there isn’t actual magic and curses going around, and I would be just fine.

Eventually Rune, Merenith and the others came back. He didn’t even sit down or give me the chance to say that I wanted to lie down before he offered me his hand. “Let me show you something before we go to sleep.”

Merenith didn’t look worried. She smiled at me when I took his hand and she sat down with Hessa.

The others took the dogs to the other side, too, and everything was just…

quiet. The sound of the footsteps echoed in my ears together with the beating of my heart, but that was it.

There was no other sound in the cave at all.

Rune took me deeper and deeper, toward a big rock at what I thought was the end of the cave, but it wasn’t.

It just led into this narrow corridor that ended with another cave almost the same size as the main one, only this one much darker.

Rune raised his hand and blueish white light took the shape of my bird over his palm.

He flew ahead slowly, revealing the way ahead between the sharp edges of the rocks that seemed to be darker in color here, too.

“We’re safe here, I think. For now,” he said as we went. “I’ve checked the magic—it is its own source. It keeps the mountain under any magical radar, so unless someone knows the location of this cave, they can’t find us.”

I was happy to hear that, I really was. Except following that bit of calm I experienced by the fire, the little talk with Hessa had left a very bad taste in my mouth, so I said nothing. Carried the guilt in silence.

“We’re basically locked on all sides,” said Rune, guiding me ahead, and the bird that burned brighter than I’d ever seen it before—or maybe it was just the cave—flew faster to reveal a wall full of sharp rocks sticking out of it not fifteen feet away.

It reminded me so much of the floor of the Hollow with all those black shards that for a moment I felt all the pain I’d felt then. The panic, too.

“But there is one small opening up there, Wildcat, that I think you’re going to love. Come on.” Rune pulled me to move faster, and thankfully it was too dark for him to see my face, the tears pooling in my eyes.

By the time we made it to the wall, I’d blinked most away, and then Rune helped me climb.

It was easy with all those protruding rocks and all those sharp edges to hold onto, and the climb wasn’t too high.

Before I knew it, Rune had pulled himself up on a surface I could barely see, though the bird flew in circles over our heads.

He pulled me up by the hand with such ease you’d think I weighed nothing at all.

With his arm around my waist, he held me to his chest and my heels peeked off the edge just slightly while he grinned and looked back—at the cave below us, which was much farther away than I’d first thought .

Rune planted a kiss on the tip of my nose and said, “Are you ready?”