Page 95 of Fractured
For a good moment, Raja was speechless, which felt a lot like an accomplishment, though I knew it wasn’t. Itdefinitely felt like it to have those wide eyes on me, lips parted, body locked in place.
“We don’t have all day,” Vair said, and of course, she couldn’t hear him.
So, I repeated, “We don’t have all day, Raja. We need to leave now, figure out how to find the Seer of Shadows.” I went a little closer but refrained from touching her. “Will you send a message to Rune to tell him to wait for me? Can you tell him that I’m here, that I will meet him outside as soon as I’m done? Make sure he knows not to come in here, but to wait.”
Raja shook her head over and over, looked at Vair and at me at least a dozen times before she spoke.
“I can’t send messages from so close to the palace. Its protection spells wouldn’t allow me,” said Raja. “But Rune was still on his way.”
“Outside, then,” I said. “When you leave, you can?—”
She didn’t even let me finish. “Don’t be silly, mortal. Or…” Those eyes. The look in them—fuck, she was terrified, but she didn’t finish that sentence. I was secretly relieved. “You could never find your way to the Seer of Shadows alone.” She raised her chin. “I will be taking you.”
“You know where the seer is?”
“I lived in this palace for decades. Of course, I know where the seer is,” she said through gritted teeth, and looked down at Vair again.
She did seem really…spookedby him. Wary. Like she expected him to jump her at any second. I hadn’t told her what Vair really was, though, because he’d told me not to himself. I’d only described him as the Ice Queen’s pet. Vair would surely tell me why when we were alone, but for now, it didn’t much matter.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Didn’t you fake yourown death?” I asked, just to make sure she knew what she was saying, but Raja nodded.
“Stay behind me and do not make a sound.” Again, her eyes fell on Vair. “And make sure nobody seeshim, either.”
Then the magic in the air released with a hiss that could have very well been only my imagination, and Raja turned around and went back toward the shadows she came from.
twenty-six
She tookus away from the walls of the palace, which would have made me suspicious, but I continued to remind myself thatshe knewthis place. This is where she lived before she staged her own death. She knew what she was doing, even when she took us past the closest row of soldiers patrolling the widest street near the palace’s wall, and down a slope that was half hidden by ivy and thorns—until we reached what looked like nothing more than a collapsed shrine.
Raja stopped, scanned the area to make sure nobody was looking at us—and nobody was. We both had our hoods on, and there were people coming and going about their business, same way as they had in the Seelie Court—except I couldn’t help but notice that people used less magic here in general. In the Seelie towns, I’d seen kids playing and vendors selling moving fruit and clothes that pretended they were on a body, but here…nothing. Everything looked so very ordinary—which didn’t necessarily mean it was abadthing. Just an observation.
“Stay close,” Raja said, crouching low and pushing asideovergrown weeds with a hand like she knew exactly what she was looking for—and she did.
Beneath it, a narrow tunnel gaped open, so dark it could have been a piece of the night sky, and ice-cold air rushed out of it the moment Raja pulled the weeds to the side.
My magic reacted instantly, but before I could even think to call for light, Raja’s hand lit up and a fae light the size of a tennis ball slipped right into the dark tunnel.
“Servants used the old tunnels to smuggle stolen food and books out of the palace. They run beneath the wards and will take us closer to where we need to go.”
I looked at Vair when she jumped into the hole—there were apparently no stairs there, but the fall wasn’t far. Raja landed on her feet and the light she’d made still hovered close to the opening of the tunnel when she looked up.
“Coming?”
Vair hesitated, but the moment Raja stepped underneath the ground where we couldn’t see, he jumped.
Cursing under my breath, so did I. It really wasn’t as deep as I’d feared so I landed on my feet, too. The passage was tight, forcing Raja and me to walk sideways, and we had to duck low to avoid the roots that grew like veins through the ceiling.
Not too far in, there was a huge hole in front of us, like the floor had long caved in.
“We have to jump to the other side. It’s not far,” she said, and the light she’d made burned brighter, became bigger and moved ahead across the hole.
The other side was far. It wasveryfar.
Fuck, I was sweating worse than I had up there.
“Where exactly are we going again?” I asked in half a voice, more to distract myself.
“Underneath the palace, where the seer lives,” Raja said, and she took a step back as she prepared to jump.
