Page 3 of Fractured
Myheartbeat.
My heart that was in my chest, beating fast, frantically,notstabbed by a golden blade. Not wounded.
Sound and sight and feeling came back to me at once. The cold that had spread underneath my skin was still there, and my heart that I could have sworn was frozen overwas indeed beating, and the blood was still there, still pouring out of me—yet I didn’t feel the pain. I didn’t feel the blade.
That’s because it hadn’t really stabbed my chest.
I moved.
It was the strangest thing I would probably ever go through in my life because I stood up and I pushed the chair back, and at the same time…Ifell. At the same time, my body collapsed to the side of the chair and hit the floor near its legs—all while I stepped back two feet and watched.
Watched Rune falling to his knees, looking down at his hand covered in blood. Looking down at my body, the one that was on the floor, shaking, bleeding. Dying.
My God, what the hell is happening?!
Then he moved, too, Rune, pushed his own chair away—and before he turned to the other side of the table, to Lyall who was still laughing, his eyes passed over me.
Themethat was standing. The me with her heart intact.
He saw me. He looked at me for only a split second, while others all stared at the body,mybody that was bleeding on the floor, the golden dagger still buried in my chest.
Everyone was looking atthatNilah; no one else was looking at me.
Possibilities were limited. The first and most sensible thought that crossed my mind was that I’d died and my soul had left my body, but no. Rune wouldn’t have looked at my soul the way he looked at me just now. He wouldn’t haveseenmy soul at all!
Now he was facing Lyall, dark shadows spreading from his fingertips, his magic so powerful I felt the intensity of it against my skin, and…
That’s when it hit me. It was anillusion.
This—themeon the floor, dying—was all an illusion.
Run,said a voice in my ear, a voice that wasn’t mine. A voice that I’d heard just moments ago before Lyall even came to our table.
Hessa, his ex-girlfriend, had whispered it to me with a smile on her face, and now it finally made sense.Run,she’d said, because she knew all of this would happen. She’d told me exactly what to do in this very moment when I had no idea what to even think.
And maybe I was in way over my head. Maybe I was making all of this stuff up, but I still ran because what else was there to do? My legs somehow held me, and I ran past the people who were gathering, coming closer to see better, to seemydead body on the floor that wasn’t my body at all—all the while Lyall laughed.
All the while the ice underneath my skin spread and spread and it promised to explode, and tear this entire fucking palace to pieces, starting with me.
Please, please, please, no…I begged my own self, my own body, my heart that was frozen over, yet it still beat, and strongly. I begged my own self not to explode in whatever the hell kind of magic was inside me that shouldn’t have been there at all, because if I did, they would know. If I did, all of these people would know that Rune didn’t actually stab me in the chest. However he’d managed to pull this off, it would have all been for nothing if Lyall saw me running, and…
Hessa.
Her face filled my vision. I recognized her only moments ago—she was the woman from the Gallery of Time, the one who’d come for me with a knife, and then had left it in my hand and ran. She’d been wearing a ballgown then, a red mask on her face, but now I saw her clearly.
And she saw me, too.
Where people looked past me like I didn’t exist at all as I went around them to get to the doors, Hessa, who was just outside in the hallway, both hands on the edge of the door frame, was looking right at me.
Her whisper echoed in my ear. I tried to get to her as fast as my shaking legs allowed, and I made it.
My God, I somehow made it all the way to the doors, to the guards who had come closer, their hands on the handles of their golden swords, none of them even looking my way, like they couldn’t see me there at all.
Only Hessa.
Her hand reached out toward me. I sprinted the last few steps and took it in mine, and she pulled me out into the hallway with all her strength. The pressure released from my body, like the floor of that hall had been made of quicksand, about to pull me under. The air changed instantly, too, became lighter, colder. My ears worked better as if by the push of a button, and I heard the noises clearer.
I heard the music continuing to play. I heard the absence of screams.
