Page 90 of Fractured
He spoke as if they’deverbeen for me—they hadn’t. But the dread that had spread all over me intensified as Ifollowed.
What other terrifying thing would I have to come across before this madness was over?
Chapter
Finally,a break.
We walked for a few hours, if I had to guess, and there was nothing to even mark the border of Mysthaven with Blackwater. I wouldn’t have been able to even tell the difference if it wasn’t for the shift in the air. The shift of magic.
I wasn’t sure whether I had felt this change so clearly the last time I crossed over to Blackwater, but now I did. I seemed to have become…sensitive.So much more so to magic ever since Vair had kidnapped me.
What a string of stranger event after stranger event my life was—but I digress. Nobody had stopped us in Blackwater, and we’d only had to walk an hour or so to get to the border with the Midnight Court. Vair knew the way. He never spoke and his step never faltered. He didn’t get tired, never even asked for a break—only I did that every now and again when my muscles screamed in protest—and he never once led me astray.
It made me so much more curious to know what the hell he really was.
Then there was the Midnight Court.
The border of the kingdom didn’t rise like a wall—it sank, carved deep into the land for possibly fifty feet. No water down there—it wasn’t a river from what I could see. Just…a hole. Like an open fucking grave.
The stone archway that went over it was overgrownwith black ivy that moved as if it were breathing. Pillars lined the path made of dark stone, and the gates on the other side were possibly the same size as those of the Seelie Court. There were no guards here,morvekaior just fae—but there were two big groups waiting just off the edge of the open grave, both standing around two large carriages.
Vair said, “We’ll walk in with them. Nobody will search us.”
My heart pounded, but I didn’t slow down. We were close now—so close to the second group of possibly over fifteen people standing around the carriage. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because they don’t search in the Midnight Court. Keep your hood drawn and do not speak, Nilah. Only listen to me.”
Now I was downright terrified. “They’re gonna notice you, Vair! They will certainly?—”
He stopped. Looked up at me, eyes wide and alarmed. “Hush!”
My mouth clamped shut. My heart was going to break right out of my ribcage any second now—yet Vair continued ahead toward the group in silence, his step steady. He was tellingmeto shut up when he was a talking fucking lynx with fur that glowed in the dark andeverybodycould see him. He was bound to catch a guard’s attention. Fucking hell, he was bound to raise brows and make people ask questions!
Except…he didn’t.
The people ahead turned to look at me, only a few. I kept my hood drawn and my hands fisted, and I knew they couldn’t see my face properly, so I looked back.
They weren’t all fae, it seemed. Some were—with dark hair and pointy ears and those deep dark eyes, but therewere others there, too. People who looked…well, as ordinary as one could look in a realm like Verenthia. No pointy ears and no fangs and no large noses or clawed fingers—but there were two succubi there with them. Wrapped up in clothing, hiding even their hair as they looked about—which almost shocked me.
I’d seen succubi before, and they werenotshy or trying to hide in the least. Instead, they’d flaunted their incredible looks and had openly tried to seduce you every second—but that was at the Enclave, and before, in the Neutral Lands.
Here, in the Midnight Court, things were different, it seemed. I could still feel their energy and it made me uncomfortable as hell, but they weren’t trying to use it. They weren’t even glancing my way.
More importantly, nobody was looking down at Vair.
“They cannot see me when I don’t want to be seen nor can they hear your voice when I use it.”
I looked down, tongue between my teeth to keep from replying.
“Stop here, and the closer they get to the gates, the closer we get to them,” he told me, and I was fuckingdyingwith a thousand questions about to burst right out of me. Vair must have known this, and luckily, he continued.
“The Midnight fae have magic in place. Their shadows will search us for bad intentions, for weapons and spells and curses that could cause harm. The soldiers will not,” he said, and I breathed a little easier.They would not search us.Nobody would even know I was here. “Just keep walking and keep your eyes on the ground. You will be just fine…”
Funny because I only ever believed Rune when he told me that, and this time I believed the lynx, too. My fucking kidnapper.
Stranger thingshadhappened, though.
And just like he promised, when the time came to walk ahead onto the archway, nobody stopped us. It was dark and the carriages were stopped for another couple of minutes each, like they were givingthe shadowstime to search them,like Vair said. No guard touched them or even came near the group, and no alarm sounded in the night.
