Page 46 of Fractured
Laughter burst out of me, short and powerful. But suddenly being here didn’t seem so…final.This place no longer looked or felt like inevitable death. It felt like…a stranger. Someone I could get to know.
Whether I meant the palace or the queen, I had no clue.
“I actually need to use the bathroom so badly.” Otherwise, my bladder was going to fucking explode.
“As you wish,” Vair said, and when he turned his head to the left, toward the wall at the side of the queen’s bed, what I’d thought was a silver frame of a mirror moved. Pushed back. Opened.
It looked like the palace really was going to give me everything I needed, after all.
The bathroom was justas fancy as the one in the bedroom in the Seelie Court. It had a toilet and a tub and a basin and hot water—and a showerhead that was square and wide enough that I felt like I was standing underneath a waterfall.
Not really sure if the shampoos in the glass bottles were old or if this palace had somehow brought them up for me today or something, but I used them and they smelled heavenly. Like flowers and snow, but with a twist. The towels were white, the hems sown with silver, and they smelled clean. I wrapped myself in them when I walkedback into the bedroom, wondering how long it would take my clothes to dry if I washed them by hand.
“There are clothes here,” Vair said when he took one look at me, like he’d read my mind and knew what I was thinking. And just as he said that, another door framed with silver closer to the bed clicked open. A built-in closet just like the one in the Seelie Court, except the colors here were so different.Colder.Icy whites and silvers, deep blues and lilacs, minty greens and bloody reds.
To think that an actual queen had worn these clothes made me want to stay away from them, but I wasn’t going to sit here wrapped in towels.
“Do you think the palace would mind?” I whispered to Vair. “Do you think the queen would have minded?”
Vair was silent for a heartbeat. “Does it matter?”
It did not.
So, I ended up picking a pair of charcoal-black loose pants, and a silver-white shirt to wear, just this once. They fit like they were made formeinstead.
I tried not to think about it at all, and it was easy, thank God. Easy to distract myself with my surroundings, to inspect the mirrors and the furniture, the empty vases, the snowflake chandelier.
Then there was the desk.
It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, with thick, beautifully engraved legs, and a landscape carved out of metal in the middle, complete with a glass tabletop so that I could see every detail, every line and every mountain, every river depicted in this work of art. It was the only thing in this room that was covered in dust somehow, and it looked too fragile to even touch it. I was afraid I’d ruin it.
Then there was Vair.
He’d lain down at the edge of the top stair, chin resting on his paws as he looked ahead at the windows, at the sky beyond. I tried to open them, but they wouldn’t budge. I thought some air might do me well, but the palace must have suspected I’d convince myself to jump out eventually. We were high,toohigh, and I couldn’t see the rest of the palace I was in without sticking my head out the window, but maybe there was a way.
Maybe I could even break this glass, I thought—but only if I found no other way out.
“This is where I was born,” Vair said. He must have felt my eyes on him, inspectinghim,too, while I stood by the desk. Because he was still the most curious, unusual thing I had ever set eyes on in my life, despite all I’d seen. “This is where she brought me to life.”
“You sometimes sound like I do when I’m in pain,” I said, almost absentmindedly.
“I am,” the lynx said.
Now I felt sorry for a talking animal.
Taking in a deep breath, I went to sit with him on the stair. Though I’d eaten and I’d showered, and had even slept in that room, I was tired, I realized. The sky was dark, and I had no clue what time it was, but fuck, I was exhausted.
“You were close to the queen, I take it.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “I was.”
“Do I really look like her?”
“Yes.”
A knife could cut right through my gut just now. I’d asked him because I’d expected anI don’t know, but Vair raised his head and turned to me.
“You look exactly like her, and also very different.”
