Page 45 of Fractured
I was going to survive this, cheat whatever fucking fate had brought me here, just like the Ice Queen had done.
I pushed the door open all the way when Vair slipped outside, and part of me expected it to slam closed on my face, but it didn’t. With a weak screeching sound, the right door opened all the way and revealed to me another room with stone walls—but that was all I could really see. It was dark, too dark, and even the lynx stopped two feet beyond the threshold.
“Light,” I whispered. “I need light.”
Ten torches came alive with that starlight-colored fire the same second I stopped speaking, and I had more than enough light to see everything in the…
“Hallway?”
That’s what it looked like. A wide hallway with torches on the walls made of pale stone, same as the floor. It went straight ahead only, and there was another set of doors on the other side, also made of silver-colored metal and embossed on every inch.
The lynx walked ahead, his footsteps soundless.
“Vair, wait,” I whispered, terrified to be alone. It was so silent out here, so…dead.“Where are you going? Do you know where this hallway leads?”
No answer. He only continued to walk ahead.
There was no way in hell that I was staying out there by myself, and those doors at the other end could very well lead me outside, so I moved, too. I rushed after the lynx, trying to control my breathing, the fast beating of my heart.
“Vair, hold on a minute!”
He slipped through the slightly open doors without turning his head. I looked back for just one second to makesure there was nobody following me, and I pushed the door open all the way to see the other side.
To see Vair sitting there right off the threshold, looking at the room in front of him.
A room—not the outside.
“I remember it,” the lynx finally said. “We’re in the queen’s bedroom.”
Ice-cold shivers broke down my arms and back. My heart skipped a beat, and all my thoughts came to halt for a good moment. I didn’t hear movement behind me at all until the door closed on its own. The lock didn’t turn, though.
“Fuck,” I breathed, hoping to release some of the pressure that had built on my shoulders. Hoping to get the fear to calm down a bit, stop making my hands shake so much.
Then Vair stood up and went deeper into the room, leaving me to follow.
It was just a bit smaller than the one I left behind on the other side of the hallway. There was a bed on the far left, almost the same size as the one where I’d slept in the Queen’s Palace in the Seelie Court, covered in a silver duvet. Torches on the walls, burning with those same flames. A large desk made of glass and metal was just a few feet off the entrance, and then behind it two wide stairs led to the rest of the room, two sets of furniture, and large windows showing the dark sky outside.
As if hypnotized by the sight of the moon and the stars, I followed Vair around the table and down the stairs, beyond the recliners and to the wall that I thought was just ordinary pale stone, but it wasn’t. Itshimmered,the stone, and the smooth blocks had silver veins in them here and there. It made it look like they were covered in frost, but no. It was just stone.
There were vines made ofglassaround the windows covered in dust, and these small glass balls on the walls that I could only imagine used to be filled with raw fae magic for light. Every place in Verenthia had them, but this room also had a chandelier in the ceiling—notattached to it, though. A chandelier as big as my entire body made of pieces of glass in the shape of snowflakes, and it was just suspended on air a few inches below the ceiling.
Drapes made of light silver silk were on the sides of the windows, and the walls had roses engraved on them, and they were covered in small mirrors in all shapes, bookshelves, vases that only held dust.
I reached out my hand for the vines made of glass near the windows, but I didn’t dare touch them. Instead, I looked outside at the world that I thought might have stopped existing while I’d been trapped in that room—but it was there. An entire city—akingdomfull of buildings covered in snow, silent, the streets empty, the starlight-colored lights hovering in the air every few feet.
An entirecourtof people, just like the Seelie Court.
It must have been late in the night because nobody was moving that I could see, which wasn’t much because of the tears that had gathered in my eyes.
I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, but I felt so much of it. I wasn’t sure what the point of being trapped in this place was, but my God, it was so fucking beautiful to be looking at the dark sky from here, at the kingdom covered in snow.
“This is where she slept.”
My own voice startled me, slipped into my ears and forced the chaos in my mind to settle, if only for a moment. Vair was sitting atop the stairs that went through the middle of the room, right near that magnificentdesk, and maybe it was just me, but he looked…calm. Much more relaxed than he had been.
“The Ice Queen’s bedroom.” How fuckinginsanewas it that I was standing here right now?
Vair gave me a curt nod. “What do you want to do first?”
