The realisation that this wouldn’t be who we were for much longer struck me in the chest. We would become strangers to him.
“What did he say?” Father asked, pulling my focus back to him. The corners of his eyes creased, as if bracing for the answer.
Frowning, I shook my head.
His shoulders sagged, his breath leaving him in a weary sigh. “There was always this possibility.”
Joy’s posture had gone rigid.
“It won’t be today,” I told them, settling into the chair beside the bed. “We have one or two days more.”
And then we would need to say goodbye.
I braced for their outrage. I expected curses, refusals. Yet both of them were resigned. Their acceptance made my throat tighten, as if they hadn’t been that hopeful before. It made me want to refuse the court again, to find some forbidden way to let him keep even a sliver of us.
But the consequences of allowing him to remember, the punishments Joy and I would face for willingly letting a human keep knowledge of the mageborn, was discouragement enough.
Reagan had told me what happened to others who had parted from their families, people who had surrendered their memories so the tenuous peace after an old war could be achieved. None of it had been an idle choice.
Father pretended that all was well, smiling as he spoke with Joy, but anguish swam in his eyes.
The morning stretched into the afternoon. We stayed in the infirmary, just the three of us, sharing whatever meals were being prepared in the kitchens.
Father kept jesting that he would not miss the men who approached either one of us. Joy retorted that she would not miss the messes he made or him constantly forgetting to handle our taxes on time.
He asked about our abilities and how we were faring. I told them I had wielded yesterday.
He was proud, wistful. He spoke more than I had ever heard him speak about the past. Our father had never been a nostalgic man, yet today he sifted through every memory he could think of, recounting them as though…
As though he wanted to feel them again before they vanished.
It made me clench my hands into fists when I understood. So, Joy and I followed his lead. We listened as he remembered my nerves before starting at Pember & Quill. Joy’s first attempt at a noodle dish she deemed disgusting even after he insisted she make it again. First bike rides. First falls. All our firsts until his eyes glimmered and I felt both full and hollowed.
The next day, I decided he should have something to take with him. I had asked Niamh, the lead runesmith in the city, to meld our nullifying rings into a wristlet. She carved a protective sigil and two curvedJ’sin it.
Father put it on immediately. His throat bobbed as he looked at it. I couldn’t carve any true memory into it, since memories of us would be forbidden. So, I asked Reagan to weave in the scent of baking dough and old book pages. Perhaps some part of our father would recognise the comfort, even if the memories behind it were gone.
???
When the court day arrived, the hollow inside me was deep. I had braced for this moment and still found the reality far more difficult to withstand.
In a procedure room in the 79th court, an official healer asked Father to lie down on a bed. He did, his brown eyes bright as they met mine across the room. I forced myself to smile, swallowing the lump in my throat. Beside me, Joy’s shoulder rose and took way too long to fall again.
The healer stepped back from his elevated bed. “Is there anything you would like to say before we start?”
I glanced between her and Father, unsure if I even could speak.
Father beat me to it. “Be careful and stay together. Be each other’s family.” His gazed bounced between my sister and me. “I don’t care what they do. I will always remember my daughters.”
Heat stung behind my eyes. “We love you. “We’ll remember you.”
“I forgive you,” Joy whispered.
Father’s lips curled, and then he nodded at the healer.
She came to stand near his head and placed her fingers on his temples. He was unconscious within minutes.
I reached for Joy’s hands and clutched it tight. The unbidden tears just…streamed down my face.
