Page 60 of Fractured
I kid you not.
Apparently, he thought my senses were the problem, that they helped me to try tocontrolthe magic. Of course, I told him that I wasn’t trying to control shit, but he insisted that I was—I just didn’t realize it. And who was I to argue with a talking lynx?
Against my every instinct, I put the fucking blindfold on, and Vair was certain that it was going to work now. It had to, he said, except I didn’t feel any better. In fact, I felt worse. I couldn’t see anything, or touch anything that wasn’t those gloves, or hear anything but the music—and I was so damn thirsty!
So, I asked for water breaks again and again, until the sun began to descend toward the horizon slowly. I looked at it through the windows as I drank, and I almost begged the sun to stand still, not move, justwaitfor me there.
But time didn’t wait for anyone here, either, just like it didn’t back home.
Another day done,I thought. Another failure to weigh down my shoulders.
Then the doorbehind me opened.
eighteen
Berries.
At that point I was already pretty sure that nothing was going to surprise me—until I saw a bowl of berries right by the threshold when I went to see why the palace opened the damned door.
It wasn’t a way out, no. It wasn’t a clue—just fucking berries.
“What the hell are those?” I asked because they did not look like any kind of berry we had back home. They were colored like raspberries but shaped like blueberries with the skin of strawberries. The strangest thing I’d seen in a while, and there was a handful of them in a silver-colored bowl right there on the floor.
“Help,” Vair unhelpfully said. “Pick it up. Let’s continue.”
So, I did.
With the bowl in one gloved hand and the blindfold in the other, I went and took my seat on the floor—which, by the way, strangely never feltcoldto me, almost likesomeonewas keeping it heated.
“You sure these aren’t poisonous?” I said, just to try to piss Vair off, though I knew it wasn’t going to work. The lynx had nerves of steel. He only ever lost it when he tried to remember something and couldn’t.
“Eat,” said Vair, but I was already bringing a berry to my lips. I sniffed it first—it didn’t really smell like anything.
“If this kills me…” I muttered, then bit into it just a little bit.
Of course, I knew that the berry wasn’t going to kill me, butHoly Mother of God, what the actual fuck?!
It tasted like burnt sugar and cold metal, sosharpit cut every single thought in my head in half.
For a moment, I couldn’t even speak. What I thought was panic simmered down soon, though—and I was just…awake.Shocked. Disconnected from the entire room—the entire realm for that split second.
“Holy shit, holy shit, Vair, what is this?!” I breathed when I could, looking at the berry half between my fingers with a new light.
“The Ice Palace seems to agree with me. We need all of your senses out of the way, Nilah. Frostfire does not react to movement—it is deeply instinctual, but you continue to get in the way of yourself,” the lynx said.
“I don’t mean to,” I said because I’d already told him a thousand times that Idid not know howI was doing it, or how not to do it. He continuously assumed, even though he knew that I was notfrom here,damn it. “Vair, what about a magic spell? What about chanting and—and?—”
“No.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
“Frostfire does not react to words, either. Wind the key, put your blindfold on, Nilah, and eat a whole berry.”
I tried to argue again, tried to tell him how tired I was,how the sun had almost set all the way now, and how I couldn’t have another day go by stuck in this place—I just couldn’t.
But in the end, I caved.
The music filled my ears, and the stupid blindfold locked me in darkness, and then I put a whole berry in my mouth just like he said.
