Page 114 of Fractured
The cave was empty save for Vair, and I was lying on the cloak all by myself.
“No.” My voice echoed in the tall ceiling—coming from my own mouth. I was somehow standing now, though I couldn’t tell you when I got up. But I was spinning around, eyes searching every inch of the cave for a little bird made of light.
It had to be here because Rune was here. It justhadto.
Except it wasn’t.
Then I was running—barefoot.A dream, a dream, please let this be a dream…
Sharp pieces of stone drove into my feet, but I hardly felt the pain. I was running, and though I didn’t see much of where I was going, my body seemed to know the way. Vair seemed to know the way—all I had to do was follow his glowing fur and I’d make it. However long it took to get out of this tunnel, I’d make it.
And I did.
When we first came through yesterday, I couldn’t be bothered to even look around because Rune was there and the Seer of Shadows had showed me those images of when he was six years old and my mind had been too full, my soul too broken.
Now, I had no choice but to see every little detail as I searched for Rune.
It must have been nighttime because the moon shone in the distance and gave off a little light. Smaller balls made of blueish white light were spread about, too—no shape, just small balls, and so I didn’t even suspect that it was Rune who’d made them.
The wind, cold and biting, blew my hair to the side as I stood near the rock behind which was the entrance to that tunnel. I was on the jagged shore looking out at the sea stretching like a mirror of the dark sky. From here it reallydid look eternal, as if to match its name—but I knew that it was only the darkness cloaking the edges of it. The edges of the very realm that seemed intent on killing me slowly, in silence, one day at a time.
The air smelled of salt. I stood in the middle of a ring of towering pillars, thicker than tree trunks, the marble that made them pale compared to the near black color of the rocks. They held no ceiling or anything. They were abandoned—just like I was now. Whatever they were meant to be in the beginning, they were left incomplete—exactly like I was now.
The rocks beneath my bloody feet jutted out in uneven slabs. Most were small, some almost as big as me, reminding me of those black shards that had come out of the ground in the Hollow.
This wasn’t the Hollow, though. This was an abandoned piece of the shore with trees at its back and eternal darkness its companion.
Vair was beside me. Ahead, Raja stood alone, barefoot, too, her sword on the ground. She was looking out at the dark trees, their height half that of the pillars, their branches full of dark leaves that could have been hiding anything. Anyone.
But they weren’t hiding Rune.
A noise rang in my ears, taking away the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks just below the edge of the shore.
Rune wasn’t here.
I wanted to run.
I wanted to sit down and pass out until the world was right again.
I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs.
Yet I could do neither. I could only stand there like a fool on borrowed strength, looking out into the darkness, waiting for him to pop up out of thin air.
Raja turned.
Our eyes locked and my stomach tied in a thousand knots. There were shadows leaking out of her fingertips. There were tears in her eyes and blood on her bare feet.
“He went to his father.”
The words were like small blades cutting every inch of my skin at once.
Raja turned, came toward me, and the lights she’d been holding up around us had already disappeared. I still saw the shape of her, still saw her tears glistening, catching what little light was there to catch.
And when she made to simply move around the rock that hid the entrance of the tunnel, I somehow got my legs to work again, and stepped in front of her.
“Why?” I asked and I sounded like a stranger to my own ears.
“The truth,” she spit, and when she closed her eyes to draw in a deep breath, two tears slid down her cheeks. “He went to him to search for the truth and to demand his memory back.”
