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The closet panels seem to shimmer like glass, like mirrors. Pictures form. I see the armchair. I see him.
And I see myself.
“Here,” I say in the images, placing a piece of paper on the desk. I look serious. Reserved. It’s odd to see myself from this angle, see myself interacting with Sindri. “All done.”
“What? In less than five minutes you managed to capture my stunningly sexy naked body?” He smirks, letting his head fall back against the backrest, silky dark hair sliding on the velvet cover. He looks… beautiful.
“You are wearing pajama bottoms,” I say in the magical recording, fussing with the paper, straightening it on the desk. “And a robe. You’re hardly naked.”
“I can take them off.”
“Sindri…”
“Just Sin,” he says. “Like the sins of your fathers.”
“That sounds…”
“Accurate?”
“Kind of weird, I was about to say.”
He gets up, laughing breathlessly as he walks over to the desk.
“What is it? Oh my God, you’re high as a kite, aren’t you?” my recorded self says.
“What would you know about that?” he mutters as the recording fades to black.
I stare at the grain of the wood, still seeing him, still hearing his voice. Why is it showing me this? I remember that day. I remember how much he annoyed me, and how much I wanted him, and how I thought that he was a monster I had to take down.
But then another picture surfaces on the panel, and I see the bed. I see Sindri. He seems to be asleep but he’s moving, writhing on the mattress, the covers tangled in his legs. He’s moaning something, a word I can’t make out, and I find myself holding my breath as I watch him start to thrash. It goes on and on.
A nightmare. That’s all, I tell myself, but then his whispers become clearer.
“I won’t tell you her name,” he’s saying, his voice rising, “you won’t find her. You can kill me if you want, I won’t tell you!”
He arches up and my heart leaps in my throat when he falls off the bed and lies so still it’s as if he’s dead and gone. I realize I’m crying.
His back is covered in bleeding cuts and dark bruises and I realize that this was after the elder kidnapped him. It’s very recent. He was reliving the torture. They were asking him for a name.
My name?
“Bring them all together,” he whispers, slowly sitting up. He pushes himself to his feet. “Bring all the elements together, bring… Kraish, all become one, all in one, all…”
He grabs the chair from the desk and smashes it against the wall, then presses his hands to his ears.
I step back and sit heavily on the chair by the desk.
…all become one, all in one…
I slam my hand on the desk. What am I supposed to do?
…You’re high as a kite…
The drugs. He took drugs to suppress the elemental magic. Where are they? I open the drawers of the desk, rifle through them—papers, drawings, mysterious keys.
I go to my knees, look under the bed.
Then I open the closet, go through his clothes.
