Page 116 of Fractured
“A long time.” He dragged himself a little closer, looking up at me with his eyes wide. Waiting—though I wasn’t sure what for.
“And how long was she queen before her death?” I wondered.
“Eighty winters,” Vair said. “Why do you ask?”
“Eighty years a queen, and she died at the hand of a six-year-old boy.”
Silence in the cave, except for the sound of the pouring water my ears had grown so used to that I no longer could tell it was there. I didn’t wonder why I heard Vair’s voice so clearly, either—what did it matter?
Then the air cooled down suddenly, and the water stopped spraying me, and the sound of it dulled down almost all the way, too, like someone had turned down the volume.
“It never did make much sense.”
Raja was standing behind us, and I hadn’t even heard her approaching. She was barefoot still, her hair a mess, which I’d never seen before, and she was slightly limping, I thought, when she came to sit on my other side. Her shadow magic had already faded when it locked around us—to keep the water and the sound of the pouring away, I imagined. I wouldn’t have heard her voice through it like I heard Vair’s, I was sure.
He usedmine,and half of me was convinced that it simply popped into my head—Vair didn’t actually speak with it. But who knew?
“He was six. He was…skinny. Tiny. Big head on small shoulders.”
“Yes, I remember,” Raja said. “I remember the night well. I remember his face.”
“How could he have possibly killed a queen?” I looked out into the dark just like her, and it was weird to see the water pouring but not hear it or feel the spray. “It all keeps coming back to that—how?”
“The fae are not like human beings,” Vair said. “They grow at a much faster rate, and they’re capable of proper judgment by the age of two.”
Rune had told me something like that once.
“A trick,” Raja said—she hadn’t heard Vair speaking at all. “They tricked her. She was a smart woman. A strong and just queen. They tricked her so that Rune could deliver the final blow…” Her voice trailed off and she closed her eyes. “That’s the only way I can make sense of it.”
“Maybe it was poison,” I whispered. “Maybe they poisoned her, slowed her down, and?—”
“No.” Vair’s voice echoed in my head. I turned to him. “They couldn’t have poisoned her. She never ate or drank in the Midnight Court no matter what.”
“I imagine the pet says no—and I will say it, too. She was too powerful for poisons,” Raja whispered, shaking her head at herself. “Illusions, maybe. The Midnight King creates them flawlessly.”
“I could believe that,” I said. “I believed Rune really stabbed me that night even though I didn’t feel an ounce of pain. The image Hessa created was…perfect.”
“And that pig has had centuries to perfect his skills,” Raja said. “What I don’t understand is why the seer would insist that the truth could only be found through Rune.”
A flinch I almost didn’t notice—but I was looking at her because I was thinking about how she was speaking to me like I was…you know, a person. An equal. Not amortalshe looked down on.
Almost like she no longer even hated me that much.
My God, I felt like I was floating on air, like I might be in a dream and none of this was real, even though I felt the air going down my throat and felt the hardness of the rock I sat on.
But I noticed Raja flinch, and I thought about what the seer told her. About her wound.
“I was thinking just now how the Ice Queen did all this, put all ofthisinto motion when she died,” I said and analyzed her dress, the way she sat, the way she held one leg up comfortably and leaned into her right. Almost like she was avoiding putting weight on her left side. “But then Helid died that morning in the jail cell, Raja. And he saidmy sister has set the curse in motionwhen he ordered me to find the mirror. Not the Ice Queen—the Seelie Queen.”
Which, of course, to me didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Yet.
“I honestly am impressed. I always thought that man weak, but he was more courageous than most,” Raja said.
“He was going to kill me. That’s what the plan was and what he told Hessa—but here’s the thing, though. I don’t really think he planned to go through with it. I…” I shook my head, at a loss for the right words to describe it, but I tried anyway. “I knew he was keeping secrets, and I obviously didn’t trust him, but he didn’t look like he was going to actually kill me.”
“Until he unleashed those monsters upon you,” Raja said.
“I can’t explain it properly, but he did try to save me. Made the horse I rode run as he and the soldiers kept the monsters back.” I shook my head. “Maybe I’m just delusional. I’m trying to cling to a bit of sense.”
