Page 32 of Fractured
Now, I was tempted to laugh.
Instead, I looked at the doors across from me and I imagined magic. That same magic that a part of me was still convinced only existed in my imagination.
It was there, though, right under my skin. I felt it slithering down my veins, cold and sneaky, scary as fuck to me. The warmth had been different—I’d been used to it coming and going, making shit float on air whenever it pleased. I’d been used to it. The devil I knew,I guessed—butthisdevil was a whole other story.
I’d been so sure that cold would kill me when it came out of me, but I was still alive. And if it had covered that entire forest with that strange silvery white—which could’ve been some kind of snow or even drops of water—in the Mercove, it was going to blow up these doors, and take these fucking walls down, too.
If it didn’t kill methistime, that is.
The next time I stood up, I didn’t shake. I didn’t cry. Mycheeks were dry, my eyes still swollen, but that was okay. I always forgot that I had magic to wield the same way as the creatures who lived in this fucking realm, but I also always remembered. I wasn’t helpless. I was getting out of this room before whoever had brought me here came back.
Then I could run all the way back to wherever Rune was.
To be completely honest, I didn’t have a clue what the hell I was doing when I pressed my hands against the embossed metal of the doors. Roses and vines decorated every inch of them, but I didn’t have it in me to even appreciate the art in the state I was in. I just closed my eyes and lowered my head, and I called for thatcoldsensation the same way I used to call for the warmth. Iwilledit to come out of me, rush down my arms and to my hands, then tear these doors off their hinges. I’d done it before, possibly just hours ago. That cold had erupted out of me and it somehow hadn’t broken me apart to do it. But it had come out of me and it had rendered the entire forest silent. It was surely going to be strong enough to break these doors the same way it had broken the ground.
The memory was fresh in my mind. Silvery white and cracked earth and bodies still on the ground and a silver creature with my ankle between its teeth—it was all very fresh, and the cold was there, too. It beat inside me together with my heart, and I recognized it. Tried not to be afraid of it. Tried not let the panic take over, but control it, just like I did the heat those times. In the cavern and then again in Mysthaven with the werewolf men.
I can do this,I thought, and the cold rushed down my arms, just like before.
The problem was, when I willed it to comeoutof me, just burst right out of my palms, it didn’t. For some reason,it refused to gather and gain intensity like it had done before. Itrefused.
Rune had said it himself, though—I was a very stubborn person, so I didn’t give up the first time. I didn’t even give up the twentieth time. I switched doors, went from one side of the room to the other, and I felt the cold and I called for it with all my strength, but it just wouldn’t come. Not even close to what it had been in the forest, or even before in that cell room with the Seelie Queen. I remembered what it had felt like then, distinctively, and it wasn’t half as powerful now.
Another scream ripped out of me, this one short, frustrated. The fucking doors wouldn’t open and theone timeI wanted to rely on that magic to help me, it wouldn’t come. It was like I’d been spent, near empty, like a car with a near empty tank.
“Never mind,” I whispered to my own self, my eyes on those windows. I could get up there, break one, and climb out. Iwould,and it didn’t even matter that the ceiling here was as high as the one in the palace in the Seelie Court. Nothing was going to keep me locked in here for long.
So, taking in a deep breath, I forced my heartbeat to slow down, and I looked around for real this time and assessed every little thing that was in this room with me.
Furniture, three different sets of loveseats and couches and armchairs made of dark blues and purples, decorated with silver-colored metal. Tables everywhere, two made of wood, three painted silver, full of books and scrolls and pieces of paper—and chairs as well. No ladder that I could see, but if I could move all those tables somehow, put one on top of the other, I could reach the windows. I could actually get out of here.
I went for a long wooden table with a single empty vaseover it, and a thick layer of dust on the surface. It was smaller than the rest, and I figured it would be easier to drag closer to the wall. I’d need to make an actual plan, I knew that, but first I was going to gather everything close to the wall.
Until I grabbed the table by the edges and pulled—and it refused to fucking budge.
The panic was already there, simmering right underneath the surface of this fake calm I was forcing myself to be in. But the harder I tried to pull the tables and the other furniture, the more I realized they each weighed a ton. I couldn’t move any of them a single inch, and the panic only grew.
Three minutes later, I was ready to scream my guts out all over again.
Instead, I bit my tongue and tried the armchairs, the sofas, tried to grab the wooden torches from their hooks on the walls, but they didn’t move a single inch. It was like this entire place wasfrozen, and no amount of strength was going to make anything move.
Except the books.
There were books on the tables, and I grabbed one to open it, by then convinced I wouldn’t be able to even pick it up, but I did. The book moved, light as a feather, and the thick brown cover opened.
The problem was every single page inside it was empty. Completely empty—just like all the other books and scrolls at its sides.
Fuck, I was losing my mind here. I was suffocating on thin air, convinced I was dying even though I could feel myself breathing as I ran from one end of the room to the other, searching for a weapon or a hole in the fucking wall—or anything else other than empty books.
So panicked, so frustrated, so utterlymadat everything that I completely missed the creature lying underneath one of the silver-painted tables close to the middle of the room, with its chin over its paws and its tail wrapped around its hind legs as it watched me.
I completely missed it until I was slamming my fists against the wall across from it, trying to find a weak point—on the fuckingstonewall because I’d lost my damned mind—desperate for some light or to just hear a sound, a kick, a footstep—something!Anything at all that would get the noise in my head to shut up.
Yes, I missed an entire being lying there on the floor—until it spoke.
“You cannot force your way out of this room, I’m afraid. You are only wasting energy.”
Of course, my first instinct was to think that I’d made it up—not only because I’d truly believed I was alone in there all this time, but because the voice.
