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“That’s true too,” Malin agreed, a nervous swipe of her tongue over her lips gave up her disquiet.
“Malin, you truly can hear my thoughts?”
“Just . . . your memories, I think. Memories that go back turns. I know exactly what you thought when you saw Junie for the first time.”
“Really?” Junie looked to her husband, then back to Malin. “We will have a discussion later, Mal.”
“By the gods. Because I hold the ring, I would guess. It’s as if the power has connected us. Made me your victim if I were your enemy. What a vicious thought.” Niklas’s expression took on the bright gleam he always wore when he could not wait to study and explore a new mesmer. He softened his voice. “All the more reason to believe this ring has been waiting for you, my wicked shadow queen.”
Niklas gave her a small nod, and with great care, eased the ring over Malin’s middle finger.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN
THE MEMORY THIEF
Something dangerous,somethingincredibleunlocked within me.
Whether it was beneficial or vicious, I didn’t know. The cool glass of the queen’s ring heated around my finger, sizing at once to the shape of me. Shadows mingled with flashes of light. All of it swirled around me with the violence of a sudden sea storm.
My hair whipped around my face. I closed my eyes. The burst of furious mesmer was terrifying, intoxicating. I had no clue how to use it or calm the storm.
In the fury of spinning mesmer, the runes flashed like trapped flames. What was I to do? How did I command the ring? How did I connect to it? What wouldInow be able to do?
With every thought, every question, the fury of shadows and gilded skeins of light tightened around me like a funnel of power. I held the sides of my face, screaming, terrified it would swallow me whole. Until, after a few moments, flashes of faces, of voices, of people swirled before my eyes. Some I recognized, some I didn’t.
Images passed through my mind so quickly, I was only able to catch flashes of moments. Of memories from so many of the folk I knew.
Glimpses of Ivar wearing the ring; I saw his face contort from warping the power that was never meant for him and it had me doubling over in pain, as if I were the one in agony.
The ache eased, and I blinked through tears as I relived a moment of laughing with Tova in her room in Felstad. Next, a younger Hagen brought me sweet milk cakes in the hayloft and wiped away my tears after Kase disappeared.
I saw the flash of the scene when Kase and I grew our first turnip behind the stables all on our own. I was going to the past. In the memory, we’d only been eight turns and laughed as we congratulated ourselves on our gardening prowess.
I gasped when the memory of Jens caring for my dying mother flashed in my face. Amongst the images, there were three shadows—no—three figures. They seemed almost feminine. The shadows remained unmoving and steady as the cyclone of memories flew past.
The Norns. I could think of no one else they could be. Was I truly seeing projections ofgods? Kase would tell me it was all in my head, true women of fate did not exist. Imagined or real, the shadows were a strange comfort in the storm.
All at once, the spinning ceased, and I was no longer in the clearing. Blood pulsed in my skull like an incessant fist beating on the bone. My fingernails dug into my palms until I swallowed the burn of sick back into my swirling stomach.
Where was Kase? The Kryv?
I’d dropped into an unfamiliar room. A warm fire burned in a small inglenook. Furs on a wide bed were tucked around a basket filled with soft linens. I held my breath and peered over the edge.
A baby? A child no more than a few months slept peacefully in the basket.
“Jonas, you cannot go back out there. You won’t return.”
My heart stilled when a tall man, his hair was dark auburn with glints of sunset red highlights, wheeled on a woman and held her face in his hands. “Sig, we were never meant to return. I’ll hold them off. Take her. As far as you can and hide her.”
“No.” The woman’s voice cracked.
Tears burned my eyes. My mother. She was my mother. And he . . . he was my father. The whisper of the truth threaded from my mind to my heart, and I simply knew. Moss green flecks in his eyes, the playful curve of his smile, skin flushed pink no matter the emotion. Bits and pieces of this man were reflected at me whenever I looked in a mirror.
My father held out his hand, revealing the glowing queen’s ring in his palm. “Have faith in what you saw, my love.”
“I do. All the more reason for you not to go, Jonas.” My mother sounded frantic. “They’ll kill you and take the crown.”
“Sig, what choice do we have? If we run, they will kill her. I will fight knowing she will be safe,” he said. “You saw this path. Like the queen of old, you are not merely a memory worker. You see into the future paths of fate itself.”
