Page 107 of Fractured
“The warmth, too,” Raja whispered. “It is far too warm for this time of year, especially at midnight. I wasn’t stronger as I should have been. I tested myself.”
“The kingdom is falling apart,” Rune repeated, but he said it like he’d just come to the realization, and it shocked him.
“Why? Can we ask someone? Maybe the seer?” I wondered because she seemed to know a whole lot.
But Raja shook her head. “She told us everything she was going to tell us. We are on our own.”
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Then we leave.” All three of them turned to look at me. “There is no need for any of us to be here anymore—we will leave the Midnight Court.” And whatever the hell was happening to it, we could just deal with it when we were far,faraway.
“Lyall lied,” Raja said instead and turned to Rune. “We all know why.”
“To take me to my father. To have me killed,” Rune said, and those ice-cold chills took over my back again in a second.
“Fucking prick,” I spit, so angry so suddenly my heart skipped a beat.
“He would have succeeded if I hadn’t found you,” Raja said. “It seemed I was always going to, if the seer is to be believed.”
The idea that someone could actually foresee the future like this made no sense to me still. Not at all, even though I remembered the prophecy perfectly. I remembered every single word—and I knew for a fact that it had come to pass.
“What I don’t get is why,” I said, reaching out to touch Vair’s fur absentmindedly—it was so soft and fluffy. “Why would Lyall want tokillyou by bringing you all the way here? It makes no sense, does it? If all he wanted was your death, why bother to track you down and not attack you, but tell you that I was here?” It didn’t add up—and it wasn’t just my instincts screaming it this time.
“We can’t hope to understand the whims of princes, can we,” Raja said.
“We should if we want to understand what’s going on here. It’s Lyall—he wouldn’t have tracked him down all the way to Mysthaven with only a lie.”
“He wouldn’t,” Rune said. “He does have a good reason for it.”
Lyall definitely did. I knew him well enough now not to doubt that for a second.
But then Raja said, “Regardless of his intentions—I think our focus should be on the fact that the Ice Queenseparated her soul into two, and nowyou, mortal, are a part of her.”
“I’m not.” The words slipped from my lips the next second. “I’m not…”
Except…Iwas, wasn’t I? A vessel—that’s what I was.
“Why?” Raja continued. “Can you not ask her pet if he can speak—why would she do such an atrocious thing?” She shook her head, eyes wide and dark, on Vair now. “That isdarkmagic. Our souls are our most precious belongings—and to rip one in half?! The reasonwhyis what I want to know—that’s the only thing that matters.”
“If only I remembered,” Vair said.
“He can’t remember the reason, only that she did it,” I said and continued to pet his back—which I wasn’t sure he even noticed.
“The Ice Queen was no fool,” Raja whispered. “No other royal has ever been adored by her people the way she was, before the prophecy. If she did something like this, she had averygood reason. You don’t recover from something like this. You never again become whole. That she would condemn herself to such a fate…”
“It’s in my memories,” Rune said. “I can almost guarantee it. I’m almost certain that that’s the reason why the Midnight King erased my memory of that night.”
My heart jumped. “He knows.”
Raja’s jaw about touched the floor. “And the pig didn’t want anybody else to find out,” she whispered, looking ahead somewhere between Rune and me but not seeing anything—and then she laughed.
It was short and bitter, and it pierced my ears, so loud it cut off the sound of the water pouring beyond the edge of the cave for a moment.
“It affects him!” she suddenly screeched. “It hurtshim, whatever it is he wanted you to forget—ithurtshim!”
I looked at Rune—was it just me or did Raja lose it? Because she waslaughing,and she really didn’t look like a person who even knew how.
Even Rune looked a bit uncomfortable while he looked at her and said, “I know what you’re trying to get at.”
Raja stopped abruptly—and I knew, too.
