Page 5 of Fractured
My limbs suddenly froze when Hessa stopped in the middle of the room and turned around slowly, her golden light following her eyes, moving closer to the cell doors…
“Hessa,whatare we doing here?”
My voice sounded strange again, like it wasn’t my own at all.
Because suddenly I realized that this could indeed be a trap. Suddenly it occurred me to that Hessa could have been playing us, and she could be working for Lyall to get me down here in these cells again—why the hell wouldn’t she? I’d seen how she spoke to the prince earlier. Like he was the light of her life, the sun in her sky.
Then she cried out.
It was a small cry, one I was sure escaped her involuntarily as she shot for the jail cell right next to the one I’d been in. I saw nothing but darkness at first, and then the light disappeared, returned to her hands as she attacked the lock on the door, no longer bothering to search for a key.
It wasn’t difficult. She pulled the barred door open and moved inside the cell, and I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried. I grabbed a torch with a dancing flame in my shaking hands, and I saw the moon outside the barred window of the jail cell when I was at the threshold. I saw the bed frame and the hay.
I saw the man lying on the ground in the corner, eyes half open, a golden beard covering half his face.
That the torch didn’t fall from my hand was a miracle. Hessa was already by his side, trying to pull him to sit up straighter, and he did look more awake as he tried to move.As he tried to hold onto her while Hessa cried. Hessa kissed him—forehead and eyes and lips.
Then he looked at me and I felt like my soul left my body for real this time. Because it was Helid, and he looked more dead than alive.
two
I blinkedbut the view in front of me didn’t change.
There was a man lying on the floor, dressed in old, torn clothes, a golden beard touching his chest, his eyes half open as he tried to hold onto Hessa.
Hessa, who was crying silent tears and pulling him to sit and kissing him between these small whimpers that broke my heart.
The face of that man didn’t change. He was still Helid, the uncle of the Seelie Prince I’d come here to save, the same man who’d sat in my father’s kitchen what felt like years ago and convinced me to come to the fae realm.
The same man that Lyall said was in the Unseelie Court, that he had gone there right after I saw the prince’s dead body with a knife buried in his chest, lying on his bedroom floor. The very same place where Helid’s shirt was torn and stained red.
Illusion.
Lyall hadn’t created an illusion of his body with a knife through the heart out of nothing. It had been Helid’s bodyon the floor that night, and he—or his mother—had made it look like Lyall.
Anger and pain crashed in my chest, igniting the ice—that’s what it felt like.It ignitedinside melike flames, until Hessa’s wide, tearful eyes met mine—“Help me!”
Fucking hell, I’d been standing there like an idiot and I hadn’t even realized it.
The pain and the anger stepped aside, and I suddenly found myself with my hands around Helid’s arms, pulling him at the same time as Hessa did, the torch discarded on the floor.
It worked.
“N-Nilah,” I thought he whispered, but Hessa told me to pull him all the way up to his feet, so I did. With all my strength I pulled, and then Helid was just barely standing, his arms wrapped around our shoulders so we could support his weight.
God, he was so, so weak…
Hessa put her hand over his chest, right where his shirt was torn and the blood had long dried. A blinding white light flashed and took away my vision, and suddenly I was thrown back into that meadow, looking up at the boy with the pointy ears as he asked me if I wanted him to heal me. So fucking hard to imagine that that same boy had grown into the man Lyall had become. So fucking hard not to want to burn this whole fucking place to the ground because it wasn’t fair.
He’d been kind…hadn’t he?
Or justverygood at manipulating everyone around him since he was a fucking baby?
A sharp intake of breath, and Helid’s eyes opened wide.
“He hasn’t eaten. He’s lost a lot of blood—his woundopens every night for an hour. We have to carry him, Nilah,” Hessa said, her voice a shaking mess.
“We will, we will,” I said and pulled him toward the door. “You’ll be all right, Helid. You’ll be?—”
