Page 113 of Fractured
Shivers raised the flesh on my forearms, and I lowered my hand again. “Except I’m no fae.”
“But you’re not mortal, either.” A kiss on the tip of my nose, which unfortunately didn’t ease my sudden anxiety as it should have.
The questions that remained were to blame. The fucking reasonwhy—which, by the way, why did it even matter so much at this point? I didn’t understand my own self.
Another deep sigh, but that didn’t work, either. I touched the side of his neck, the ink that marked his skin, trailed the patterns with the tips of my fingers. How cruel for a father to do something like this to his own son.
“What is your purpose, Rune?” I whispered. “What was it that you’ve always wanted to do? What you always aimed for?”
And he said, “You.”
My heart fell on her face like she sometimes did when Rune spoke. “No—I mean like in general.Beforeme.” But I’d be the biggest liar in all the worlds if I didn’t say that that was the perfect answer.
“There was nothing before you. I woke up. I survived. I went to sleep,” Rune said, kissing my lips gently every few words. “Now, I want to wake up and live and go to sleep—with you. You’re my purpose.”
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. “Smooth, Mister Moody,” I said with barely any voice before I kissed him.
Not just because I believed every word he said, but because it had somehow become the same for me. I knew it in the Illusion Game when that mist over the river showed me what I wanted most in life—him,smiling and carefree, unworried.Living.
I wanted to wake up and live and go to sleep withhim,too.
“I need you to believe me when I say that I will do everything in my power to make this right, to make all this suffering up to you, to get out of this situation we’re in once and for all,” he whispered, and my heart hurt so much.
It hurt like hell because I knew he meant it, and I knew hecouldn’tmake anything right because of the past. Because of whathehimself had done.
The image of him as a little boy with that knife in his hand and his skin covered in blood while the dead queen lay in front of his feet haunted me. It made bile rise in my throat, and these tears that came to my eyes now were different. Heavier. Bitter.
“Will you do something for me?” I whispered because I no longer wanted to talk about it. I no longer wanted to have to carry the pain. Not until a new day came. We could talk about plans and routes and best ways to hide then.
“Anything,” Rune said. “Name it and it’s done.”
I kissed his lips one more time. “Can you read for me if you still have the book you bought me?”
Rune was surprised. He leaned back to look at me as if to make sure that I meant what I said, and when he saw that I did, he smiled. A full smile, showing me all his teeth, and his eyes brightened up all the way, too.
“It will be my pleasure,” he said.
His shadow pocket came to life right over us, and he reached out a hand inside it, pulled out the book he’d bought me in the maze market, in a time that wasn’t too long ago, but that to me felt like years because so much had happened since.Tales of the Wild and the Bravewas old and well used, and I was actually excited to hear the stories, to distract myself from the real world. Rune lay on his back and pulled me so that my head was over his chest. The bird found an edge to sit on closer to us so that I could see the letters, too, and Rune began to read.
I wasn’t sure how long I lasted, how quickly I fell asleep, but I remembered at least the first two stories. His voice and the scent of him and the feel of his heart beating under the palm of my hand made for the perfect heaven for me, and I didn’t think about death or blood or souls at all, even as I drifted into sleep.
When I woke up,everything had already changed again.
thirty-three
Sleep leftme all at once and my eyes opened to the darkness of the cave. A little light shimmered somewhere to my side, and I could have sworn a thought had nudged me awake just now—except my mind was completely blank.
Then… “Nilah, wake up.”
It hadn’t been a thought at all—just my voice coming from Vair’s mouth, and it was his fur that was glowing a little, too. The only source of light in the cave, which was…wrong.
My heart paused. I looked at him standing there near my feet, head lowered, tail against the floor.
“He’s gone.”
The view tilted a few times before it fell into place again when I sat up. I both understood the meaning of those words and didn’t. I looked around the darkness, the stone of the cave mixed in with the dark diamonds that sometimes pulsated with a little light of their own.
Empty.
