Page 99 of Fractured
The whispering stopped. Time stood perfectly still, and we held our breaths with it.
The seer opened her eyes, and the shadowsmeltedaway, faded into nothing within the second.
The seer said, “Come.”
Forcing my legs to carry me forward in those moments might have been one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to do. I did not trust this woman, but more than that—I did not trust those shadows. They weren’t Rune’s, and it was easy to see that they could take the life out of me with ease and within seconds, but somehow, I made it. Somehow, I pushed all the fear aside and I stopped in front of the seer again, shaking, my mind too chaotic to make out any clear thought.
The seer turned the mirror toward me. I looked at the two broken pieces and drew in a sharp breath when darkness slipped from underneath them like fucking liquid and filled the missing part completely.
“Look,” the seer said.
Her voice filled my head, chased away the mess of thoughts, grabbed my heart and held it still.
The next moment, the world around me no longer existed.
Suspended in shadows,but I was far—too far for fear to reach me. I was floating, yet I was steady, and even though everything had disappeared with the darkness, the mirror remained there suspended on air in front of my face. The broken piece in the middle of it was still filled with shadows, and I didn’t get the chance to even wonder what the hell had happened before it changed.
Right before my eyes, it changed. The oval-shaped mirror was now whole. It was suddenly brand new—and it worked. It showed me my reflection as it should this time.
Except…according to it, I was speaking.
According to that reflection, I had eyes that were bloodshot, and I was looking down at the mirror as if it were in my hands, and there was a crown on my head, too, and my hair was wrapped up in a braid that my hair hadneverbeen wrapped up in before.
The Ice Queen.
It wasn’tmethat the reflection showed—but the Ice Queen.
It was like a knife right through the gut to see, not how much I was like her, but how different she was from me. My God, it was so easy to see we weren’t the same when she moved and blinked and whispered. Every line of her face and every feature was identical to mine—but the way she moved, the expressions she made, the look in her bright blue eyes—those were different.
The queen and I werenotthe same. I wasn’t her.
But I wasn’t entirelymeeither.
Then the queen disappeared from the mirror—and that’s when things got really strange for me. I was well aware that I was looking at an oval piece no bigger than the palm of my hand, but at the same time, it felt like I was sucked in and I could see the reflection it was showing me like I was standinginsideit.
The darkness around me played along. It disappeared, faded away and allowed whatever space I was in to take the shape of the image that the mirror was showing me.
For the second time, I saw the queen.
It only lasted a minute, the whole thing—it was gone in a blink.
But in the blink I saw her kneeled on the floor behind a fully set table.
In that blink I recognized her blonde hair, the thick braid that touched the small of her back, the silver crown on her head that was slowly,so slowly,falling.
In that blink I saw the man standing not two feet away with his hands on his head and his eyes wide, his mouth open, a thick dark beard touching his chest just slightly.
And in that blink I heard him screaming, heard the way it cut the music that was coming from somewhere I couldn’t see, heardmorescreams coming from people who were there, even if the mirror didn’t show them to me.
I heard it when the crown of the Ice Queen fell against the floor, that distinct sound it made as it rolled.
Her pale blue dress gained a dark stain right on her back as she fell, too, just like her crown. She fell face first against the floor, and I finally saw who had been standing in front of her.
I finally saw the silver knife and the blood it was coated with, the blood that had stained the boy’s hand, too, all ofhis small fist. The boy with the thin limbs and a head full of black hair, still holding that knife in his hand as he watched the woman he’d killed sprawled on the floor, a pool of her blood gathering close to her side, that small stain on her back now as big as a football.
Screams. Shouts. Curses.
The boy raised his head to look at the bearded man with his lips parted.
