Page 100 of Fractured
“Rune.”
I said the name out loud as if my eyes insisted I speak it, too. That little boy was Rune, and I could tell by his eyes alone. I could tell by the colors in them, the blues, and the silver lines that went around his pupils. The shape of his nose, the color of his lips—it was him, and he wastiny,shoulders narrow and so skinny the hollows of his cheeks were perfectly pronounced.
Then he dropped the knife from his hand covered in blood.
The same second, the image before me turned dark all at once.
My legs let go of me and my mind shut down.
twenty-eight
Something wet pressedagainst my cheek. Something soft nudged my chin.
“Nilah,” said my own voice.
And my eyes opened only halfway to find Vair’s face hovering over me. He nudged me with his muzzle and licked my cheek, too.
In my mind I screamed.
“Rune,” I choked because the memory of him was right there in front of my eyes. It was right there.
“Breathe, Nilah,” said Vair—but how could I breathe?
“It was Rune, Vair.”
“I saw it,” he whispered—but I wasn’t sure he understood.
“He did it.” The words tasted like bile against my tongue. “He reallykilledthe Ice Queen.”
My Rune. That little boy, underfed, dressed in rags, with those wide eyes and those parted lips, with his hand covered in blood.
Rune had killed the Ice Queen.
“I know,” said Vair. “Can you sit up?”
I’d fallen, which was no surprise. My body was not my own to command. At least it didn’t feel like it. I was too numb, but even so, I found myself sitting up. My eyes blinked and I could see—Raja sitting on her legs just a few feet away, right where she had been when the seer called me to her.
The seer who’d stepped back, who had her hands folded in front of her as she stood in front of that platform, a smile on her face that could mean a million different things if I cared to try to decipher it.
“You have seen,” she said, her voice crystal clear, filling my ears and forcing order in my mind.
For a moment, my thoughts stopped screaming. “Is it…is it true? Is there any way…” My voice shook. My jaws locked tightly as if my own body was trying to stop me from speaking. My cheeks were wet, too, though I hadn’t been aware I was crying at all.
“It is,” the seer said. “What you saw was what has happened, exactly as it has.”
“But, but…” I shook my head, covered my face with my hands. “It’s impossible. Rune would never—he was just a kid. He was…he wasa boy!”
“The boy who slew the Ice Queen,” the seer said, and suddenly I wanted to scream with all my might. I wanted to get up and shake her and demand that she show methe truth,what hadreallyhappened to the Ice Queen—because that wasn’t it. Rune would never.
Hadn’t she seen how small and fragile he’d been?
Hadn’t she seen the knife in his hand and all the blood?
My God, it hurt. It cut deeper than any guilt and any magic and any other truth.
“Why?” I said—but then I realized my jaws were toostiff to speak just now, and it was Vair who’d asked the question instead.
I put my hands down and I looked at the seer—why?Why would a six-year-old boy kill a queen?Howwould he have killed her, just like that?
