Page 115 of Fractured
“We have to stop him,” I said, but somehow my words were empty. Like I already knew what Raja was going to say.
“He wanted to go alone,” she said through gritted teeth. “He delivered a message before entering the palace walls—he wants you to wait in the cave for him to return.” She raised her chin. “He wants us to trust him.”
Trust him.
My eyes closed but no tears slipped out of them. Theywere dry as a bone because I was too numb to cry. A memory was replaying in my mind—that of Rune’s face, his eyes wide open, his lips moving as he brought a golden knife toward my chest. “Trust me.”
That’s what he’d said to me at that table when Lyall ordered him to stab me through the chest. He wanted me to trust him, and I had.
By the time I opened my eyes again, Raja was gone. I’d felt her moving past me and into the tunnel, but I was still surprised to find that I was alone with Vair. And her sword lying there on the rocks.
I wasn’t sure why I was moving to it, why I picked it up. I thought it would be heavy—it was a long blade, the handle made out of black leather, but it was feather light, no heavier than a kitchen knife. My perception was warped in those moments, and I was aware of it. I could have sworn that the wind was whispering in my ear, too, and that the anger in my blood was screaming at me to run.
My entire body was pissed off that I’d had all that anger in me, all that fear, and it had simply…stopped.
Because of those two words.Trust me.
Somehow, by some miracle, I turned around with the sword in hand, and I went back down the tunnel and into the cave.
Surreal.I sat at the very edge of the rocks, no longer concerned if the floor would cave under my weight. I looked out into the darkness as the water sprayed me from ahead. The ceiling of the cave extended a dozen feet farther than the floor here, but on the sides, the seabed went on and on, so much farther into the darkness, and there wererocks and small pools made out of the pouring water underneath—and who knew how far below the rocks it went?
Who knew what more existed in this never-ending abyss?
All these thoughts from my own self trying to keep me distracted. Trying to keep me from thinking about the one thing that mattered to me even in an infinite number of universes.
Rune had gone to his father while I’d been asleep because ofme.Because I hadn’t been convincing enough when I told him I didn’t care about the truth—because I did.I fucking cared,and how was I to exist in my skin now, knowing that? KnowingIwas the reason, once more, that he might be going to his own fucking death?
That’s why these thoughts came. That’s why I was so caught up in the details. My own self trying to keep me from running back to the Midnight Palace because Rune had told me to trust him.
And I did.
But did I trust his father?
“He knows what he is doing,” said Vair—and I heard him, even though the sound of the water was very loud.
He sat with me at the very edge of the lip of the cave, looking out at the water and the darkness and the stars like he had nothing better to do. He hadn’t left my side for a second.
Raja was lying on her own cloak near the entrance, back turned to me, not moving a single inch, just like I found her when I came back and put her sword near her bag. She was still in the exact same position for…how long had it been since Rune ran away?
I had no idea.
“You cannot run from the truth. It will haunt you until you find it.”
Vair again.
I looked at him, at his glowing fur, at his wide blue eyes. A lynx who sometimes looked more like a fox, and who used my voice to speak, even my eyes to see.
“He did the right thing, and you know it,” he continued.
I couldn’t bring myself to speak yet.
“The Ice Queen would have sat here and waited for his return.”
The Ice Queen. The one who started it all.
Or…did she?
“How long were you her pet, Vair?” Once more, I sounded…strange. The lynx sounded more like me than I did.
