Page 36 of Fractured
This time I did laugh. It was bitter and it scratched my throat on the way out, but how could I not?
“Wow! Really, bravo!” And I clapped my hands. “Whoever put you up to this, or whoever is orchestrating this illusion,bra-fucking-vo!”
I shouted so loudly my voice echoed in the tall ceiling a million times, so powerful that it scared me a little.
But who was I kidding—everythingscared me right now. My own self the most.
Frostfire.I’d heard that word before. The magic of the Ice fae, the samefrostfirethat that sorcerer chained to the altar in Mysthaven said he feltin me.
“Sleep, Nilah Dune. Rest. Your mind needs it.”
This from the lynx. The silvery white lynx who looked very different from the lynxes back home, and who spoke inmy voice, and who’d somehow dragged me all the way to the Frozen Court by the ankle.
The lynx.
And the sad part? I knew he was right. Whether this was real or an illusion, I knew that I wasn’t going to figure anything out if I kept screaming and laughing hysterically while tears streamed down my face.
That’s why I found myself walking up to one of those blue velvet couches covered in dust, as if possessed by another being.
That’s how I lay down on the round pillow that had turned grey, closed my eyes and pretended that I wasn’t shaking, wasn’t crying, wasn’tdyingon the inside while I breathed.
That’s how I fell asleep with the lynx still sitting there by the table.
Even though he said nothing, I felt those icy blue eyes on me all the same, and they followed me deep into the nightmares that haunted me for however long I slept.
When I woke up,they were right in front of me.
I was tryingto keep it together. Really trying, even iftryinglooked like me sitting at the edge of a dusty sofa with my hands in front of my face, chanting to myself,not real, not real, not real,with my eyes squeezed shut tightly.
I was still trying to find a way to accept that I was trapped in this room made of stone with a silvery whitelynx who used my voice to speak like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do.
This time, though, I’d actually slept. Not sure for how long—there were no clocks here that I could see, just an hourglass with white sand inside it that had long since fallen to the bottom—but it had worked. My head was indeed clearer and when I ordered my thoughts to calm down, they did. When I told myself to take in a deep breath, to stop whispering, tolookand see if the creature was still there, I did.
I put my hands down and I opened my eyes and I saw the lynx sitting there on his hind legs, licking his paw in silence.
Vair. His name was Vair, and he had dragged me all the way to the Frozen Court, if I could even trust myself enough to believe what he said.
Fuck, I wished he’d speak. I wished he’d tell me everything he knew. I wished he’d stopped talking in riddles and get to the fucking point?—
“Did you rest?”
He put his paw down and raised his head, licking his lips as he watched me with those wide blue eyes.
His voice was still mine.
“Yes.”
“Are you ready to know more?”
God, yes.“I am.” My heart jumped and I put my legs down, dragged myself closer to the edge of the sofa. “I am ready to know everything.”
“I do not know everything, I’m afraid,” the lynx said, stretching his neck to the side exactly like a cat would do. I was wrong, he was smaller than Maera had been. It was just his fur that was fluffy and made him look bigger than he actually was—which begged the question, how could hehavedraggedme here all the way from the Mercove by the ankle? Because there was no sign of his teeth anywhere on my skin—not even a little redness. So how?!
But as incredulous as it sounds, that question was not important right now.
“Then tell me what you know,” I said instead, and now that my mind was clearer, I saw better. Not because there was more light—there wasn’t. Whether it was day or night out there, I had no clue because the colored glass of the windows at the edges of the ceiling hadn’t changed a bit.
Or maybe they were LED lights of some sort? I’d have believed it if electricity existed in Verenthia.
