Page 182 of The Incendiary

“But I could feel him!” I yelled over him. “I could feel him like he was the missing part of me! Because he was the only thing that was truly mine, and now he’s gone! After four hundred years of pain and death and loneliness, he died just trying to get back to me⁠—”

“That was his choice, Ary⁠—”

“Oh, fuck you!” Flames burst from my fingertips, begging to burn down this entire room. “It was the only choice he had because you took away our choice!”

He scowled down at me. “I see you’ve picked up his foul mouth.” I reared back. “You’re lucky I learned from him!”

“Am I?” Simeon countered. “And why is that, Aryella?”

“Because without him, I’d be dead!”

“Because of him, you did die!” Simeon roared. “Was he really any better than me? Stealing you away without you knowing why? Driving you to sacrifice yourself to the enemy because he was too much of a coward to tell you the truth about what he was?”

“He was flawed,” I agreed, “but his heart was good. He fed me, warmed me, gave me time and words and the care I needed to find the will to fight. He made mistakes with grave consequences, but unlike you, I know I was his priority. He loved me.” My voice cracked. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Gods, he loved me, Simeon, and I want my memories of him back.”

For those, I would fall to my knees and beg. I’d do anything to bring a piece of him back to me. But Simeon’s cold eyes told me all I needed to know.

“You refuse?” I whispered.

“I can’t,” he corrected me. For once, he looked remorseful. “There is some magic that can be undone. Things suppressed or hidden or bound might return under the right circumstances, with enough power. Death, even, may be reversed.” Simeon gestured to my torso, where Molochai gutted me and ripped out my heart. “But I did not suppress your memories like I suppressed your power. I used a spell to erase them. They cannot be retrieved. They are gone.”

My stomach lurched. Maybe Simeon really believed that, but I wasn’t sure I did. There were traces of the past within me. The emotions I felt and the things I thought I saw in Brinnea before dying. The nightmares. As if when I slept, my body was trying to make my mind remember what it had endured. Fragments of my past life. Only, I couldn’t retrieve anything tangible or lasting.

Clearly, Simeon would be of no help, so I turned on my heel and muttered, “Then I have nothing more to say to you.”

“Aryella, please⁠—”

“It’s ‘Your Highness’ to you, Uncle,” I corrected him, feeling nothing but cold resentment. “I’m your queen, too. You made damn sure of that.”

“Let’s go,” I told Shera, turning to go.

“My power is weakening, Aryella.”

Simeon’s voice made me halt before I could touch the door. I turned back. “What?”

He crossed his arms, his face solemn. “You need to learn all of it. Not just the power of the Selvaren—that, I can still help you learn to control—but also the power that runs in our bloodline, from your mother. My magic, especially the wards.”

“The wards⁠—”

“—are weakening, too.”

“If you’re losing power, and the power is from our bloodline, why aren’t I losing it, too?”

Simeon shook his head. “Each wielder’s magic is their own.”

“And why is yours weakening?” There was a reason, though I knew he wouldn’t tell me. I’d felt the steadily fading buzz of magic both here and at the fortress. “If you don’t tell me what I need to know, how do you expect me to⁠—”

“No, Aryella!” he snapped. “If you give a damn about a single life on this continent, you will do as I say.” A dismissing wave of his hand, and the doors flew open. “Training starts tomorrow.”

“I won’t just comply blindly with whatever you want!”

“Then everyone else you love will die, Aryella.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you want their blood on your hands?”

I shook my head in disbelief. “How much blood is on yours?”

His shoulders fell ever so slightly, but he recovered quickly. “Not as much as your precious Smyth had on his.”

The air whooshed from my lungs before I growled, “Keep his name out of your fucking mouth.”