Page 89 of Fractured
“Fuck.” Pretty sureIsaid this.
The mist rolled low and heavy across the valley below, and I could’ve sworn it was green in some places. The sun was still up so we could see it pretty clearly.
What I’d expected to be an actual border was nothing but blackened earth, jagged fence posts twisted with what looked like dead vines, and beyond them, the broken remains of what must’ve once been a gigantic wall—the same kind that was around the Seelie Court. I’d seen that one with my own eyes, too. It was supposed to be the court’s first defense from the outside world, that wall, butthisone? It was shattered down the middle like it had lost a war with its own rage.
Through the crumbled stone, we could only seeflickers of what lay beyond—dark towers choked in ivy, spires half-collapsed, and there were fae going about in the distance, I thought. They were too far away to make out clearly, but I’d seen Unseelie fae before—on the way to the Seelie Court with Rune, and in Lorei’s orgy in the Enclave. Gorgeous faces, auburn hair, fiery eyes.
That’s how I knew that the creatures who seemed to be guarding the border weren’t fae.
I wouldn’t call themsoldiersexactly. They stood too still, and they were so different from the soldiers of the Seelie Court. There were only six of them here—figures wrapped in armor made of some kind of dark metal. Their skins looked gray and glassy, almost like they were made of plastic, and they looked ahead without blinking at all. Without moving.
Come to think of it, I couldn’t even tell if they were alive or juststatues.Remains.
Then one of them turned its head, and those dead eyes looked our way.
My heart all but burst right out of my chest. I stopped breathing altogether.
Vair let out a low, warning growl beside me, something I’d never heard before. He didn’t move, either.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I whispered, and the dead eyes of that…soldierwere still turned toward us. “Because I amnotgoing in there, Vair.” Whatever the hell had happened to this place—I was not about to be face to face with those creatures.
“We go through Blackwater,” Vair said, and I didn’t need to be told twice. I moved backward, eyes on the creatures still—and was it just me or were theybigger,maybe twice the size of a fae man?
I didn’t take my eyes off them until Vair and I were deeper into the woods again, and the trees blocked them from our view.
“Fucking hell, Vair!” I said, my hands on my knees as I breathed deeply, still not fully convinced that we weren’t being chased.
“Morvekai,” Vair whispered. “They’ve made morvekai.”
“What the hell’s amorvekai?” Pretty sure I hadn’t heard that name before.
“They are bound to death,” Vair said. “Their name translated from Veren meansgrave-bound.”
Every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps. “Holy shit, that sounds…bad.” And very fitting for those creatures. “What kind of people are they?”
But Vair was moving left and right, head down, tail swooshing nervously when he said, “They are notpeople. They aremade,not born.” Another growl—which was a big deal because Vair didn’t really growl. He was always very composed. “They were crafted in the old wars by sorcerers and fae working side by side, mixing magics that should not ever come together. Necromancy at its lowest level. Use of dead and rotten flesh to create anew—such madness. Suchhorror!”
I didn’t know whether to be terrified becausehewas terrified or because of what he said.
“No heart, no mind, no memory—they only know commands. They only know to kill.” Vair stopped. Looked up at me. “The fae royals across all four courts have prohibited the use of these spells. They are illegal. I don’t understand why the Unseelie Court would make them, put them in plain sight.Why?”
“Maybe to protect them or something? I don’t know—all Rune told me was that they were going through newkings and queens every few years, that their population was declining, and that they were more divided than ever.”
“They don’t protect—they control. The morvekai kill for their master,” Vair said, and his head turned toward the trees, in the direction of the Unseelie Court. I hadneverseen him more upset than this.
“If they’re guarding the border…it’s because no one’s meant tocome out.”
Shivers broke down my back, ice-cold. And the inside of my skin cooled down instantly, too—magic. Ice magic or frostfire—though I knew the difference when they were intense, I couldn’t tell when I onlyfeltit there, felt the energy’s presence. I was sure they were made of the same thing, the same source—they only developed in different forms when they gained intensity—but what the hell did I even know when necromancy apparently existed in this place?
“Have there been wars? Because that wall…you saw the wall.” Broken in the middle. Crumbled to the ground.
“Internal, as far as I’ve heard,” Vair said, shaking his head again. “Something’s going on here, Nilah. Something…isn’t right.”
“Yeah, no kidding, Sherlock.” And he knew exactly what that meant because I’d explained it to him when we were stuck in the Ice Palace still.
God, it felt like such a long time ago…
“Let’s keep going. We will have to walk for a little longer, but we can still get to the Midnight Court before sunrise. Be as fast as you can be.” Again, he looked at me, this time his blue eyes dark, almost completely black. “The fae courts are no longer safe.”
