Page 87 of Fractured
I said I could live with it now because I was scared and I was pissed off. I said I didn’t want to know the truth—but I’d been here before, hadn’t I? I’d thought I didn’t need to know anything, that all that mattered was to get to Rune and get out of Verenthia, go back home—but here I was, kidnapped by a talking lynx and held hostage by a fucking building.
Absurd.
And what if I made it? What if I actually somehow developed wings andflewright out of Verenthia together with Rune—did I really think this place would let me go, just like that? Did I really think that Lyall wouldn’t come after me if he really wanted?
It would be easy when the Aetherway practically led to my backyard.
“You’ve never been closer,” Vair told me as I fought with myself in my head. “The Seer of Shadows will give us a name. You’ve never been closer to the truth.”
Except it seemed to me like he was saying this more for his own benefit than mine.
Still, I couldn’t deny the logic. I could go over this whole thing in my mind for hours, and it still wouldn’t change the outcome.
“And where is the Seer of Shadows?” I asked, only because I needed to hear it being said out loud, even if with my own voice.
“The Midnight Court,” Vair said. “We’ll find her in the Midnight Court.”
The Midnight Court, most of which was under a permanently dark sky, full of fae who could do shadow magic just like Rune.
Hishome.
“And who says the seer will even agree to speak to us? The Chronicler didn’t exactly give me a vial full of liquid, did he?She?It?” I had no clue how to even refer to the creature.
“You have the mirror,” Vair said instead, and my stomach turned. My hand moved over the cloak on my left side, over the inside pocket where I’d put the mirror.
Still there. I could touch it—it was still there.
“You have the Chronicler’s blessing. Shewillspeak to us,” Vair said, and there was not a hint of doubt anywhere on him.
“And Rune?” I dared to ask.
Vair paused. “Do you think it is smart to change route now, Nilah?”
Goddamn him.I closed my eyes and held back the tears that suddenly pricked the backs of my eyes again.
“Lead the way, oh wise silver lynx.”
He did.
twenty-four
Vair insistedwe go through Mysthaven again to get to the Unseelie Court and cross into the Midnight Court from there. I had nothing to say because what the hell did I know about safer alternatives? He promised me that Mysthaven would be safe—again—and I had no reason not to believe him.
I also didn’t have the patience to even try to argue about it because I knew he would win. Vair knew what he was doing, not just because he said so, but because he’d proved it already.
It was daylight still when we left the dead woods that was so wrongfully calledthe Quiet. It wasn’tquiet. It was a trap—dead land stuck beneath a black cloud that let only a tiny amount of sunlight through.
But the more we walked in the dead woods, and the more leaves grew on the trees around us, the lighter the sky became, until I confirmed that it was indeed daylight.
“It’s like the land is rotten, and the rot has spread,” I said, more to myself than to Vair when we left the last of the trees with no leaves on them—dead, and clearly sowhen compared to the living trees of Mysthaven among them.
“It is,” he said.
“Really?”
“It was never like this before,” said the lynx, and I could have sworn for a second there that he sounded afraid. “The magic is rotten, and it is spreading.”
Well, damn.“So, why aren’t the sorcerers stopping it?” Virlorn seemed to be in their territory, wasn’t it? We’d found it through here, and we’d come out in Mysthaven now, too. I recognized the trees—but more than that, I recognized the shift in magical energy.Sorcerermagic, different from fae. So much different from the dead forest.
