Page 67 of Fractured Shadows

Razcorr jerks like he’s been struck, and his expression crumbles as he stares at us. “Truly…I, yes, I remember now.” I watch emotions flit across his face and eyes—pain, heartache, agony, and grief—before they turn to stone, and he clears his throat. “I see. I have been stone for a long time. So why wake me now? I had resigned myself to die like that to join my friend and my queen. I withdrew when there was nothing to protect. It is our way, to turn to stone and be lost in oblivion.”

“I’m sorry,” I offer truthfully as I lean forward. “I wish I could have left you to your grief and peace, but we need your help.”

“You have said that,” he murmurs. “Why?”

“We are trying to reunite the king and queen to bring them peace and end this curse once and for all.”

“While you have been gone, much has changed,” Krug offers. “Our lands have fallen into great darkness, and the magic inside rots until we are just beasts. Cora the Fearless is trying to stop that and unite the kingdoms once more, to bring peace back to our lands. She is trying to save us and magic. Can’t you feel the wrongness here?”

Razcorr nods and glances back at me. “You believe you can do this?”

“I do. She chose me. Your queen,” I tell him.

He eyes me. “Lady Emelyn always said a woman could do many things a man could not, and that none of us understood magic like she did. She knew best. She was a good woman. A true leader. Kind, honest, and refreshing. She loved the king like no other, and her father hated that.” He frowns as if more memories are coming back. “Oh, but she loved him and he her, so much they thought they could conquer anything. She is dead now, though, Cora the Fearless, and long gone.”

“And so were you,” Bracken reasons. “Yet here you are.”

“Here we all are,” Nero adds.

“Because of Cora.” Zee nods.

“I felt her. She called to me. She showed me her safe place in the cave.” He jerks at my words, and his eyes widen. “She showed me some of the past and some of the future. The magic kept part of her alive for as long as it could, until she could help someone bring it back. She’s gone now, and I don’t know what to do. All I know is I have this book and none of us can read it…but you.”

He frowns as Krug hands him the book, and then his eyes clear as he strokes the cover. “It is the story of our lands, the story of the king and queen and their deaths. An old friend of theirs wrote this, the keeper of our history, before he was lost into the shadow’s reach.” His gaze comes back to me. “You need me to read this?”

“Please, and then you can return to stone. We will leave you in peace, I promise,” I assure him, and he watches me.

“It has been a very long time since anyone needed me.” He seems to sit up straighter. “I will help you, Cora the Fearless.”

He opens the cover, but his eyes close and his fingers dance over the words on the page. I share a confused look with the others, but just as I’m about to question his tactics, smoke seems to flow from him. My eyes widen as I watch it swirl and form a ball before him, then it suddenly clears, and his mouth moves, telling the story without words.

It appears before us in the smoke, like a memory.

I see the palace and the human king presenting his human daughter, Emelyn. King Kulmak is instantly taken by her beauty, and the image speeds through their courtship and their marriage. The love in the king’s eyes makes me grip my chest. The same sentiment is reflected back in the queen’s gaze, and for a while, they are happy. I see the land as it was before, with vast, green forests and hills, bright rolling seas filled with ships, and marshes occupied with families and laughing children.

They are all monsters, but they are happy, and magic is everywhere—in the sky, the ground, and in the people.

It’s beautiful, but suddenly, a dark cloud rolls in, and the king and queen argue in fear. Razcorr’s mouth moves faster, even as his face seems to stiffen in fury and sadness. We are forced to watch as the human king learns that his plan will not work.

That his daughter betrayed him by falling in love with the king.

Scenes of bloodshed and death split the story before it focuses on a still frame of the queen. She is clearly dead, her body on a stone slab before a gilded throne.

“The Gilded Castle,” I whisper as the image zooms out to show the lands beyond the Shadow Lands. “She was killed in the Gilded Castle.”

The image changes to King Kulmak, on his knees, roaring. He holds smoke in his arms, where his love once was, as he drags himself to his throne and cries. When his head lifts, there is nothing but hatred and evil in his eyes.

After that, we see scenes of the war as the land bleeds and magic suffers.

And then the king…the king dies in battle, heartbroken and ready to join his lost love.

Only he never does.

His body is entombed, as is tradition, in the crypts below the castle with a stone effigy of him above it. There is a matching sarcophagus for the queen, which lies empty, next to his, waiting. Razcorr is there, with a hand on each of the crypts, as he cries and then flies to the podium and turns to stone.

The smoke evaporates, and I look to Razcorr as his face loosens and his dark eyes focus on me. “She was killed in the human world and buried there. He was buried here. They have been reaching for each other for years. All that death, all that bloodshed…” I murmur.

“It was war,” Razcorr whispers. “And for a while, we were winning, but hate can never trump love, and our people did not have that anymore. The humans did, and greed,” he offers sadly, looking at the book and then back to me. “I will help you, Cora. I will help you reunite my king and his love, my queen. I will do my duty like I should have done all those years ago, and then I will lay to rest with them.”

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