Page 118 of Fractured
She moved back a bit instinctively, as if my words had physically assaulted her. “My wound doesn’t matter.”
“Show me, Raja,” I said.
The fae raised her chin. “No.”
Nothing in the world pissed me off like this woman. For the briefest moment, I imagined picking her up right now and throwing her off the edge of the realm. I really did imagine it.
Then I got myself together, breathed deeply and said, “Show me,please.”
That certainly surprised her. “Why?”
“Because it’s the remains of a curse, and Vair says frostfire can cleanse it.”
Her eyes widened as she looked at the lynx, half his body over my thigh.
“He thinks it’s worth a try, even though I don’t really know what I’m doing with it.” All these words left my lips, and it was almost like I wasn’t me at all. Like the real me was stuck in limbo somewhere, watching from a distance.
For a good long moment, Raja only looked at Vair, and sometimes her eyes moved to my face for a second, too.
Then, just when I thought she was going to tell me to go to hell, she reached for her dress with her bare hands,gripped the piece of leather and cotton that was sewed together, andtoreit apart.
She tore her dress before my eyes, and she ripped a bandage stained red off her skin, then held the dress to the sides with shaking fists to show me a deep cut right over her breast that went almost to her underarm.
“Do it.”
Just like that.
Every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.
“Are you sure? You know that I haven’t had the time or?—”
“Do it, Nilah,” she cut me off. “If he thinks it’s worth a try, thentry.” Her voice broke, which I’d also never heard before.
Suddenly I was moving, turning toward her, dragging myself closer, reaching out my hands that had turned to a blur from how badly they were shaking.
I saw the wound and the dried blood around the edges, and I saw how the skin around it had darkened, almost like it was rotten from within.
I saw it and I kept reaching for it as if I wasn’t in charge of my own limbs at all.
“Vair, I don’t know what I’m doing.” Tears in my eyes, and when I blinked, they slipped down my cheeks.
“Remember what we did in the Ice Palace, Nilah. You opened that drawer. You can undo what remains of that curse. I see it. It’s weak. It’s barely hanging on,” Vair said, and he was standing near me now, looking at Raja’s chest, sniffing the air close to it. “I smell it. It won’t resist.”
The Ice Palace.
I’d been held hostage by a fucking building just days ago, and even if it felt like I’d been a different person then, I was still me.
All of this—the numbness and the pain and the fear and this strength I’d somehow acquired in Verenthia—all of this wasmestill. With or without the magic, I was still me.
My shaking hand pressed over the wound on Raja’s chest. She gasped—my hand felt cold. Very cold.
“Close your eyes,” Vair whispered, and I did. “Find it. Call it. Release it. And remember—you’ve done it before.”
I had.
Finding the magic now wasn’t difficult. I could tell how it felt. The frostfire was ice—hard and uncomfortable, and the ice magic was merely cold—like water. Focusing on the ice wasn’t difficult when I’d already felt like I had frozen organs under my skin. My thoughts were all over the place, and I did feel the magic rushing down my arm, but it was slow. It was…hesitant.
Then the music began.
