Page 84 of Fractured
As simple as that. “That’s not the point!” I hissed, heart pounding in my chest because no way he didn’t understand where I was coming from.No way.
“Then what is?”
I blinked.
Vair didn’t bat an eye. He genuinely asked me that.
And I realized, hedidn’tunderstand where I was coming from at all. He couldn’t even begin to fathom why I was so panicked—because he was from here. He was Verenthian, whatever kind of creature he might be. To him, this was normal.
Fuck.
I swallowed hard. Took in a deep breath.I remember now,I told myself, just to ease the fear. To push it back a bit.
“I remember the words of the Chronicler, Vair. But I do not understand them.” Nor had I tried—or had the time to.
“But you do.” He came closer, sat down in front of me. I was sitting, too, and like that we were almostidenticaleye toidenticaleye. Our colors were the same, and it still took me by surprise every time I realized it. “Let’s go over them together.”
I swallowed hard. “She was not slain, not quite, not whole. She broke herself to save her soul. One half to silence, one to roam, and to find a stranger home,” I recited. And I didn’t doubt for a second that I’d gotten all of it right, word for word.
Words that had been burned inside my skin, etched into my fucking bones, it felt like.
“It makes sense now—so much sense. I remember it, Nilah,” Vair whispered in my voice. “I wasthere.”
My heart about jumped right out of my chest. “What? How did she…how?!” I didn’t even know the right question to ask.
“A spell,” Vair told me. “A sorcerer spell. Dark magic. She used the mirror to split her soul into two.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, becausefuck no, no way in any hell.“No, no, this can’t be. What the hell kind of Voldemort shit is this!?” I screeched.
“I don’t know what that is,” Vair told me in all seriousness, and I would have laughed had I had the voice. I would have.
But I was busy screaming. “You can’tsplit your soul into two—what the hell are you saying? Are you telling me I’m a fucking Horcrux or something? Is that what you mean?!”
He could most definitely tell by that alone that I was panicking, freaking the fuck out, but did Vair care?
No, he did not.
“Of course, you can. Sorcerer magic allows it, and the queen did it. I remember the night—one before she passed. She spoke her name backward into the mirror, and the spell took. The glass broke. The soul split. Itworked.”
There he went with those sparks in his eyes, as if he were saying agoodthing. The most exciting thing he’d ever heard.
“No, no—it didn’t. Itcouldn’thave. I’m me, Vair. I’mme!”Tears in my eyes, though I wasn’t planning on crying anytime soon. No, I would just run—to hell with the secrets and the questions and the truth. To hell with it all. I was just going to run away.
Unfortunately for me, my legs refused to hold me. I could barely stay seated, and I was shaking so badly, and Vair said, “Continue.”
As if he were my master, I did. The words slipped from my tongue as if they’d waited a lifetime to come out of me: “She t-t-ore herself with her own hand—not to live nor to end. It was a slow and careful split, a seed of frost too wild to quit,” I said, barely stopping to take a breath. “The mirror did as it was told. It found a hold—a space unseen to bear the soul that once was queen.”
Even the memory of blood in my mouth returned together with the words. I’d bled from my nostrils—and the evidence was there now, dried blood over my lips coming off when I scrubbed them with my fingertips.
A tear slipped out—but I wasn’t crying. I was shaking, and I was speaking.
“You were not chosen, but empty enough—a vessel shaped by pain and rough. The mirror did not seek a queen. It searched for a hollow in between,” I choked, rubbing my lips until they hurt. “Not fate. Not blood. Not royal claim—only enough space to hold the flame. That is you, noxavira.”
My God, that word. First on the lips of a werewolf man, and then those of a seer.That word…that word…that word…
“Go on,” Vair said like he couldn’t even see me breaking apart right there in front of his eyes.
“You wear her face because she bled and gave you half of what was to be dead.”
