I know there’s something there. Something big. But it’s terrifying. Do I want to understand the gaps in my memory, the gaps in this chain of events that knocked me out for days, and burned my pendant into my flesh?
“What do we do now?” I ask him. There are too many big questions in my mind, so a small question like that is all I can bear.
“We need to go back to Kirrasia. I have to tell Crimson’s parents…” Ten’s jaw tenses, and he looks away.
It’s his turn to pull away, and I instinctively reach for our connection, but there’s nothing. Not even a flicker of recognition.
Does he blame me? I didn’t save her—his oldest friend.
We fall into silence, the questions forming their own wall between us.
“Come.” We both start at Kalan’s voice, but we’re quick to follow.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he walks us away from the harbour area.
“Do you remember what you told me, what you saw?” he asks, the first real, direct question to me.
His face is drawn and as serious as usual. That memory is fuzzy, but I do remember the look on his face when he told me my parents were dead, that I’d been lied to my whole life, and that he betrayed me. And yet, I trusted that he’d get Ten out. “I know I needed Ten and Crimson safe. Out. And it had to be that night.”
“You spoke to me. Through the trees, somehow, telling me what you needed me to do as we ate with the Usher and Fenix.”
How did I do that?
Ten picks up my hand, a simple gesture that would have come with painful consequences just a few weeks ago.
Now, I cling to it. Squeezing it as if the touch we can share now is the only lifeline I can see, and I tether myself to it.
“I want to go home.”
“We will. We will get back to The Court, Ever, I promise?—”
“No. Not The Court. Myhome.” I look at Ten and see the hurt streaked across his face.
Everything is a jumble and mess, and I’ve not even addressed the pain of what Ten and I were forced to do to one another.
The only place I can think of where I could possibly battle those wounds is home. Safe. Although I’m beginning to question if I’ll ever be able to feel that again.
Fenix is dead.
Mybrotheris dead.
He gave me so little reason to consider him family, but he was my brother.
My brother is dead.
My parents are dead. They have been, for all this time.
But Lyle isn’t.
“Kyra is with Lyle. Calix, too,” Kalan offers. “We’ll set out for them.”
“Seriously?” I check, because this is a ray of hope, the first one I’ve felt since opening my eyes.
“We’ll take the long path, but we can stop there before heading to The Court.” He nods at me, as if he’s encouraging me to agree.
“I don’t have magic, Kalan. It’s gone. I don’t see—” My mind trips over a handful of visions, flickering together. Just like they did before the Transference, but I shake them off. “Whatever happened, it broke something inside of me. My power, it isn’t there.” I reach for the place at my throat where the pendant sat, the pad of my forefinger now tracing the raised and bumpy skin that bears the mark of its destruction.
He grunts a sort of response before walking off.
