Page 94 of Fractured
“Yes, youknow?—”
“Does itspeak?” This from Raja.
“What?”
“Does…does it speak to you?”
Holy fuck.“Took you long enough,Sherlock,” said Vair. “I told you before—nobody can hear me speaking or moving except you.”
The time I did laugh. It was short and I brought both hands in front of my mouth to stop it, terrified someone had heard—but really, how could I not laugh?
“Shecan’t hearyou?!”
“No, she can’t.” And he brought a paw to his mouth andlickedit.
“First of all, that’s not how you use the wordSherlock,” I told him. “And second…” I looked up at Raja, who was paler than the moon in the sky as she looked at me with parted lips. “I’m going to give you the short version here, Raja: yes, Vair speaks but apparently only I can hear him.” I just didn’t mention that he usedmyvoice to do so. It seemed redundant—and I also didn’t want to freak her out even more. “He found me in the Mercove and has been helpingme try to piece together, erm…” I waved at my face. Fuck, how the hell was I supposed to explainthispartto her?
“You,” Raja said. “Maybe the reason why you look like the Ice Queen?”
Damn. “Rune told you.” Which shouldn’t have surprised me.
“He did,” she said with a nod. “And he also sent me here to wait for him—because ofyou.”
“I—wait, what?” I moved closer. “Rune knows I’m here?”
And Raja came closer, too, those wide eyes dark and full of suspicion and fear when she said, “Yes. He thinks the Midnight King has you.”
I paused. “No, no, that’s wrong. I didn’t…why would he think that?”
“He didn’t say,” Raja said. “But you werenotbrought here by the Midnight King, were you.” It wasn’t a question. She looked down at Vair, who’d come extra close to my legs as he tried to discreetly sniff her.
“She’s full of Midnight magic. Very powerful. Possibly connected to the royal bloodline,” he told me, but I wasn’t interested in that.
“I’ve never even seen the Midnight King—no, I came here by myself. I had to sneak into the court, and I was trying to sneakin there,too, just now.” I pointed my finger at the palace’s wall.
Raja looked back, then at Vair, then at me.
And he said, “She smells of fish. Not entirely unpleasant. She has sorcery over her, too—protection charm, perhaps. And blood. She’s bleeding from somewhere, slowly, and it isn’t a big wound, but it still hasn’t closed properly.”
A wound.
“Start from the beginning, mortal. I am all ears.” With her hands folded in front of her, Raja raised her chin and managed to look down at me flawlessly, just like always.
I shook my head, thought of the fact that this woman here had given Rune his magic back, had broken half the mark his father had put on him.She’ddone that, and I would be forever grateful no matter what she felt about me.
“We’re not safe—” I started, looking around to point out the fact that anybody could spot us out here in the open, when Raja raised her right hand to the side, and darkness slipped out of her fingertips like ink.
It moved, wrapped around the three of us in the blink of an eye, before it faded away into nothing like it had never even existed in the first place—but the magic remained. I felt it falling like invisible rain on my shoulders. Whether it was an illusion or not, I had no idea, but it was a lot of magic.
“We are,” Raja said.
I looked at Vair, and he nodded. “We are—for now.”
Taking in a deep breath, I told her the shortest possible version of the story faster than I’d probably ever spoken before.
By the end of it, my jaws literally hurt, and I needed to breathe deeply a few times until my lungs were satisfied.
Raja didn’t need me to try to convince her, or to swear to her that what I was saying was the truth—which, not going to lie, kind of surprised me. This was Raja, after all. But I told her about Vair and the Ice Palace, and I showed her the mirror and told her about the Chronicler, and the woman was speechless.
