We moved back as he walked inside the pool house. I shook my head, confused. “If you knew, why’d you ask?”
He looked around, whistling. “You got some rich friends here. Nice.” He glanced over to me. “Best way to tell how the spell is progressing. Trying hard to remember isn’t always a good indicator. It’s the easy questions when you least expect it that track progression. That’s how it gets you. One minute, you can’tremember the random things, and the next, it’s the basic things. Then it’s everything. It comes and goes. All depends on how strong the victim is. You’re pretty strong, nephew.”
Ivan hung his head, running a hand through his hair and closing the door. “I’m forgetting the love of my life, not sure I’m so strong.”
My heart cracked; he looked so pained. However, I was also sad for me. I loved this man, and the thought of him forgetting me made me sick. The first time we parted devasted me, although I had the anger of thinking he was over me to help. However, now we were both fighting to stay together, and it was feeling like a losing battle. In this moment, it was horrible for us both, but in the end, I was going to get hurt the most. He would simply forget me and move on with his life. His mind was capable in everything else but me. I would be left alone with the memories of us. The back of my eyes stung with that knowledge, and I rapidly blinked back tears that threatened to overtake me.
Ivan avoided my eyes as he followed his uncle to the couch, and I could feel through our bond an anxious energy. Pierce’s words had affected Ivan. I knew the spell would progress. That was its purpose. However, there was a small part of me that believed we’d still beat this thing no matter how many dead ends we faced. I thought because Ivan hadn’t said anything more about lost memories that maybe our mating had made him stronger. I knew now that I was wrong. He was hiding the progression. To protect me. But I needed the truth. I had to walk through this with him.
I walked to the kitchen area. “Can we offer you something to eat or drink?”
Pierce raised a hand and sat down. “No, thank you.”
Ivan sat beside him. “How do you know so much about the spell?”
“I’m older than I look. I know a lot about a lot of things across both realms. I’ve seen many things. Including someone who was a victim of that spell. A witch placed a spell on parents to forget their child.” He shook his head, his eyes wandering off as he gave the retelling. “They tried everything to fight it. Nothing could break the spell. So, they kept close family support around them, made recordings to refer back to.”
“Were they able to connect to their child that way?”
Pierce grimaced, and my heart dropped, already knowing that answer. “They couldn’t retain a connection because their mind blocked anything. It was resistant. It’s like not liking peas, but you see a video of yourself liking peas. That video wouldn’t make you start to like peas. It’s more confusing if anything.”
I pressed my hands over my eyes, feeling a rising headache that I knew no medicine could cure. “So, you’re saying he’ll one day dislike me?”
“Not dislike you, just not able to ever build feelings about you. At least not long term.”
I pulled out a chair from the table, my legs weakening. When I looked up, Ivan was staring at me. He gave me a weak smile, and I tried to return it, but the effort was exhausting. We were both trying to be strong for each other, but our bonds couldn’t lie.
“So, what happened in the end?” Ivan asked in a quiet voice. “Did they find the witch?”
Pierce rested his forearms on his thighs, nodding his head slowly. “The spell is erratic in how it works. You won’t see him fade all of the way. One day, it’ll appear like some memory loss, but the connection is still there. The next day, they won’t have any idea of who you are. And the next, they may remember. And it will go back and forth like that for a while, until one day the memories never return. In the couple’s case, it took around six months. And almost ten years later, they finally found the witch. They killed her and their memories came flooding back. Thingsweren’t easy. They’d missed many developing years of their child, and you can imagine the hardship to that child, feeling so unloved. But they made it through.”
“Can we break the curse if we can’t kill who did this?”
Pierce sat upright. “I don’t know. It’s easier to kill the witch, mage, faerie who caused it. Sometimes spell breaking isn’t all about power. Sometimes it’s about connection. Meaning a breaker could just be someone blood-related to the person who caused the spell. Do you know who did this to you?”
I gave a dry laugh. This all felt so overwhelming. “It’s fair to say we have a lot of enemies who, apparently, have connections in both realms. We don’t even know what kind of being did this or if it was someone with no connection to us who was hired by the person who really is after us.”
“You need to narrow down who did this.”
“No shit.”
Pierce folded his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling in thought. “Start with our family, Ivan.”
Ivan shook his head, rolling his eyes. “Who in our family?”
“Anyone on your mother’s side, now that she’s passed.”
“What would they share?”
He ran his fingers over his hair, a frustrated look on his face, and it reminded me of Ivan. “I left due to a combination of things. The family and how dragons were treated. We were practically slaves before you were born and then after that we were second class citizens. I may have done some heavy protesting that led to my need to flee the realm for good.”
I cocked a brow. That sounded suspicious. “Define heavy protesting.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Disrupting royal events.”
“Understandable.”
“Organizing marches.”
