Page 69 of Fractured
“Rune,” I whispered, and my legs felt so weak so suddenly that I had to sit down right there on the stairs.
Vair came closer, sat down right next to me, looked me right in the eyes, and he was so close that I saw my reflection in them. I saw my own eyes in his.
“Rune will wait, Nilah. It’s safer for you if you make this journey alone.”
I reached out a shaking hand for his face as I shook my head.
Vair didn’t move away. Instead, he said, “It’s saferfor him.”
My fingertips touched his nose.Real.Vair was still real. “Why do you have the same eyes as me, Vair?”
And he said, “I see through them.”
“They’re identical to mine. To…hers.” I always thought I had my mother’s eyes, and her hair, but I didn’t. My hair was much lighter, and her eyes had been blue—just blue. Until I came to this fucking place, I never really noticed that mine weren’t. Not just blue, more like a mixture of a hundred different shades of teal.
“Because I don’t have senses of my own, Nilah. My queen gave me hers to use.”
“But I didn’t give youmyeyes ormyvoice—so which is it that you’re using? Mine or hers?” All this I said in a whisper that wanted to refuse to leave my lips. Facing the truth and all therightquestions was hard. Fucking hell, I never really knew just how hard it was, but I had to. Because this had already become too much, and I needed answers for real. Ineededthem.
For a moment, Vair was silent. He didn’t move when Itouched the fur on the side of his face, his muzzle longer than that of a real lynx. Sometimes he looked like a cross between it and a fox. Kind of like that silver fox I’d seen in the Illusion Game. So beautiful it was difficult to believe he was real even now, but he was. Not just because he was right there and I could touch him, but because Ifelthim.
I was realizing now that I’d stopped panicking for a moment—I felt Vair. I felt his heart. His energy. And he felt almost exactly like the little bird that Rune made for me with his light.
A friend, even if he’d dragged me all the way here against my will.
“Does it make a difference?” the lynx finally said.
And I thought about that, too, as I touched his whiskers next. “Not unless we want to know if she’s really alive somewhere, somehow. Ifyou’rehere still and she gave you her senses to use and you still have them…”
“She’s not.” Vair closed his eyes when I scratched under his chin. “She’s not alive.”
“I thought you weren’t sure.”
“I am now. The Ice Queen is gone—I feel it,” he whispered. “She’s not alive, Nilah.”
“Then how are you?”
His answer was a purr-like sound as he leaned farther down. He wanted me to keep scratching him, I thought, so I did.
The door was right there. And we were sitting on the stairs still, the decision hovering in the air.
The thought of not seeing Rune again tore me apart. Every instinct in my body demanded that I run out right this second and go searching for him, scream out his name until he heard me.
But…
“Something bigger is at play here,” Vair said when he leaned back to look at me.
“What do you mean, something bigger?”
“Something beyond what we currently know.” And he was dead serious. “You have the vial the seer gave you. I will take you to Virlorn to search for the truth, but you must go alone.”
I knew that name. “The Quiet.” The land of the forgotten, where Rune was supposed to take me.“I don’t want to go alone, Vair.”
“It’s safer that way. Nobody knows where you are. Nobody will know where you’re going until you want them to. Nobody canusethat knowledge against anybody, either,” he said. “That is what I think the queen would have done.”
“I amnotthe queen,” I said through gritted teeth, but fuck if every word he said didn’t ring true.
Suddenly, all I could think about was how Rune almost lost his life because Lyall got jealous and he wanted to get rid of him. Because of me.
