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My heart pounded. So he did recognize me. And he thought he’d see me again? My mouth had gone dry, but I managed to croak, “How do you figure? Because as far as I remember, I’ve never seen you in my life.”
He shrugged with his unoccupied shoulder. “That’s to be expected, under the circumstances.” He extended his hand. “I’m Ronan.”
I shook his hand. “I’m… You know who I am.” I didn’t know what the else to do or say, but I did introduce Matteo.
As they shook hands, Ronan said, “I admit, I didn’t anticipate seeingyouhere.”
Matteo swallowed, flicking his eyes toward me. “Yeah, it’s all been… It’s been a surprise for me too.”
From the vaguely suspicious way the fae regarded Matteo, I suspected I’d mentioned him when I’d come in, and I hadn’t had anything nice to say.
After introductions had been made, Ronan faced me. He was about to speak, but his raróg fidgeted and chittered. Ronan put up his hand, encouraging his pet to step onto his finger. When it did, he put it down on the counter, and the raróg started wandering away, scampering across the counter, talons tink-tink-tinking on the glass. Matteo’s gaze followed it—he probably didn’t like the idea of it being out of sight—but he stayed firmly planted at my side. Even after the raróg went around a corner and vanished from view behind some shelves, and then something crashed, Matteo didn’t move.
Unconcerned with his pet or the racket it was making, Ronan met my eyes again. “Since you’re here, I presume you’re looking to undo the spell.”
“I want my memories back, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Ronan nodded knowingly. “I suspected as much.”
“Well, yeah.” I set my shoulders back and glared at him. “I don’t remember what we talked about, but I can’t imagine I asked you to blank my entire memory for a year.”
He pressed his palms onto the glass case and glanced between us. “You wanted to forget about your ex cheating on you.”
“Right.” I crossed my arms. “But I didn’t tell you to erase a whole year of my life!” I tilted my head. “Did I?”
Ronan shrugged. “Not explicitly, no. But how else could I erase something so significant from your life?”
I blinked. “What… What do you mean?”
The fae’s expression softened to one of sympathy. “Owen. We’re all the sum of our experiences and memories. What happened back then—it touched everything in your life. Didn’t it?”
I glanced at Matteo, finding my own confusion written all over his face, before I turned back to Ronan. “I guess? I don’t remember anything.”
“Of course you don’t,” Ronan said. “You can’t just cherry-pick the memories you want to remove when they influenced who you are today.” He smiled in that way fae often did when they were so proud of their wit. “Or, well, who you were before you drank the potion.”
“Who I was before—” I shifted my weight. “So I’m…”
“I reset your memory to what it was right before you learned about your ex cheating on you. There’s no way to do that without resetting you to who you were that day. Even the moments when you weren’t thinking about your breakup or your feelings about the same—they were affected by it. Everything you did, said, thought, or felt after that moment were, on some level, influenced by it.”
“So, like the butterfly effect?” Matteo suggested softly.
“Precisely.” Ronan gave a sharp nod. “If the butterfly never flaps its wings in the Amazon, the hurricane never spins up in Florida, and the shopkeeper’s store is never destroyed. He never moves to California for a fresh start, and he never meets the love of his life there. Were he to come in and ask me to erase that hurricane from his past, would it not stand to reason that his new wife would also be erased from his present?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, seriously annoyed by how much sense he was making. Admittedly, some anger boiled up in me. I couldn’t remember that year, but I also couldn’t help resenting Matteo for hurting me enough that the pain had warranted having my memory erased. Because of him, I’d lost so many good memories, too. Because of him, I wasn’t the same person I was two days ago.
I took some deep breaths to quell those emotions. Over and over, I reminded myself Matteo was trying to help me, and that he’d made it clear he regretted making my most recent year so unbearable.
With some effort, I kept my voice level. “Is it reversible?”
The fae actually looked surprised, his mostly silver eyebrows snapping up above his glasses. “You want to reverse it?”
“Yes!” I threw up my hands. “I get—I guess I get the logic and all, but I can’t just have a year missing from my life!”
The way he stared at me—eyeing me as if I’d just suggested the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard—made my heart sink. It was permanent, wasn’t it? That whole year—the good, the bad, and the ugly—was gone forever. I was going to have to explain to everyone in my life that I was missing a year that probably included some of their major milestones and moments. It was all just… gone.
Matteo touched my back, and I glanced at him again. Resentment once again flared up in my chest—this is your fucking fault—but it was quickly tamped down by a mix of love and gratitude.
I’m so glad you’re here.
