Page 79 of Fractured
I considered calling after him or just screaming to let out my frustration—even just turn around on my own and try to find someone who could tell me where the hell I was going. Maybe find Rune if I was lucky—he could be behind me right now.
In the end I knew that it was only my fear speaking. I knew that the sooner I got this over with, the sooner I’d be free. I’d come this far. I could go farther.
So, I picked up that fear, just like Vair said, and I followed him for what felt like another hour—or a day.
But it wasn’t until my eyes were half closed and my mouth dry and my limbs ached from exhaustion that we began to make out the shape in the distance.
Darkness, more darkness all around, and then there was somethingdeeper,darker than its surroundings. I was hopeful and I rushed my steps to catch up with Vair, who wasn’t tired in the least—only to find out that the shape wasn’t a building at all.
It was a tree.
Vair stopped on his own this time, and I couldn’t keep walking if I tried. My mouth was open, but I couldn’t make a single sound. The air was weightless, like it was empty. Like it didn’t exist at all—even though I could feel myselfbreathing. And that cloud of darkness was the thickest here as it shielded the biggest tree I had ever seen from whatever the sky looked like in the real world right now.
Because no way was this real.
“This is the Quiet,” said Vair, his voice—myvoice—only a whisper.
“It’s…it’sa tree.” A fucking tree bigger than a building, cracked open in the middle like it had been struck by lightning that had meant to split it in two but hadn’t fully succeeded. The crack that was five times wider than my shoulders stood like a wound on its black bark, and I couldn’t carry my fear at all right now—Iwasit.
“Keep your vial in your hand, Nilah. Try to remember to pour it.” Vair looked up at me for just a second, and I could have sworn that he hadpityin his eyes.
Then he started for the crack in the middle of the gigantic tree.
“Wait, what? What do you mean,try to remember?” I asked, and I shot ahead, terrified to be separated from him and be all alone in this place even for a moment.
“Exactly what I said,” the lynx said. “Keep moving.”
“But…but, Vair, are you sure we’re supposed to go in there? It’s…it’s…”it’s death hiding in the dark,I wanted to say, except I was standing right in front of a thick root that had come out of the ground as if it had hoped to trip anyone trying to come through, and I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t speak because itreally did feel like deathto be standing there in front of that monstrous tree. I’d absolutely believe that this one was alive and breathing, an animal, not merely a tree—a beast waiting for me to walk right into its mouth so it could devour me.
Yet Vair kept going straight into the darkness, and my legs carried me forward, over the root and a lot of other,smaller ones that came out of the dry ground—until I no longer saw anything at all.
“Vair.” My voice shook.
“Call for light,” said my own voice—and for the life of me I had no clue whether the lynx said those words or I did to my own self.
Call for light. Call for light.
I closed my eyes and I called for fucking light.
When I felt the magic inside me coming alive, I almost screamed like I was surprised. Like I was feeling it for the first time. But I thought it would be like in the Ice Palace, that there would be torches here that would light up—but no. My magic was burning in the palms of my hands, and there was light behind my closed lids. Light that was not gold, not quite silver—something in between. I’d called itstarlightbefore, and it was a fitting name.
When I opened my eyes, the light disconnecteditself from my hands and gathered into two spheres over my fingertips. Raw fae magic that glowed in contact with oxygen.
I was smiling and I was pretty sure my eyes were full of tears at the same time—until the lights moved higher over my head, and I saw what they revealed.
“Nothing.” There was nothing in here but darkness, and the walls must have been too far away because the light couldn’t reach them at all.
“The vial,” Vair said. “Keep moving, Nilah.”
With my hands still shaking, I searched the inside pocket of the cloak where I’d put the vial together with the queen’s mirror. I secured it tightly in my fist, and I continued ahead after Vair, talking to myself at all times, urging myself to be brave.
I’d come so, so far, and I could do this. I could cross one last bridge. I could get to the end of this madness.
When I moved, the two lights over my head followed—and I felt them. I felt them so clearly it was like they wereinsideme, not out there. Like they were still buzzing with energy under my skin.
But the darkness didn’t take any shape for a long time as we went, slowly, half a step at a time.
My fear was heavy, but I carried it. My nails had formed half-moons in my palm from how tightly I held the vial as the thoughts in my head raged. My mind was in chaos, but…
