by Coco Ma
She let out a little gasp when she peered into the first glowing sphere. A blurry image shone from within—a handsome man with a crown atop his head, gazing down at a tiny baby with a smile full of pride.
Her father.
She understood, then, that this was a memory. Her earliest, she supposed.
The waves continued to tug her along, and she stared into each little ball of light, each memory growing sharper as she drifted down the line. Her first winter, her first footsteps in the snow. Her first time riding a horse.
And then one particular light made her pause, a wondrous smile creeping onto her face. When she lingered on the memory, the sphere began to swell and expand until it had stretched into the size of a doorway. Her eyes widened as a gravity from within pulled her closer, the golden light swallowing her body entirely as she drifted through.
When she blinked, she stood in the middle of the palace ballroom, the air filled with laughter and sweet music. Two servants carrying a roast pig bustled toward her. She braced herself, only for her body to pass right through them. She tried picking up a glass of champagne, but she might as well have been grabbing mist.
In a daze, she wandered through the crowds of nobles feasting and dancing, their faces so vivid that she recognized almost every one—Lady Peonia with her usual condescending smile, Lord Valdric squinting through his monocle. Both had been from her father’s old inner court. She hadn’t seen them in years.
Asterin turned in a slow circle to take in the scene playing out around her—the long table running down the center of the ballroom, piled with flamboyant gifts and a birthday cake as tall as her, decorated with tiny silver flowers and light-pink frosting.
The sight of the cake sparked her memory. My third birthday, she realized. She searched the crowds for more faces she knew, for Orion and Luna, but then she remembered that she hadn’t met them yet.
And then Asterin saw herself, her three-year-old self, tiny and giggling, running beneath the table and giving the cloth atop it a good yank. Plates shattered in her wake. A hysterical nursemaid dove beneath the table to grab her, but little Asterin darted away and ran for the cake, chubby fingers outstretched.
A man scooped her up just in time. “You little rascal,” he laughed. Theodore Galashiels grinned as the little princess fussed and squirmed in his arms, finally mollifying herself by tugging at his thinning ducktail beard with a pudgy hand. The king’s Royal Guardian stooped to look underneath the table. “Look what you’ve done to poor Madge.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” Madge gasped as she scrambled to her feet, on the verge of tears. “I—”
“No apologies needed,” Theodore assured the nursemaid. He pinched little Asterin’s cheek, unaware that she had frozen his whiskers. Cooing, she pointed down, and when he tipped his chin to look, his entire beard snapped off against his chest and shattered like the plates on the floor.
Asterin—present-day Asterin—slapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a burst of laughter before remembering that no one could hear her anyway.
“Just how many more beards will you have to grow to stop falling for that trick?”
Asterin’s head jerked up at the voice, her throat suddenly tight. A path had cleared through the crowd to allow two figures to approach, the nobles around them smiling and bowing respectfully. Behind the couple trailed General Garringsford, her face unchanged by fourteen years’ time, but Asterin barely noticed her. She had eyes only for the man approaching her younger self.
“It’s not my fault your daughter is so clever,” Theodore grumbled, tickling little Asterin’s chin.
King Tristan smiled, coming to a halt at their side. Asterin had forgotten how her father looked then, healthy and well, his skin golden with life. His presence, from his strong voice to his posture, flooded the hall. “The cleverest. Asterin, my love, I have a gift for you.”
Hot tears welled in Asterin’s eyes as she watched the king present little Asterin with a tiara, the one that sat on her bedchamber vanity today.
“My mother wore this when she was young,” her father explained, placing it on little Asterin’s head. It was much too large, slipping past her brow and covering her wide eyes. With a laugh, her father adjusted it as best he could. “You’ll grow into it,” he promised, and then wrapped an arm around the waist of her mother.
Asterin turned to look at the Queen of Axaria, but her heart stopped.
The woman her father looked at with adoring eyes was not Priscilla.
Priscilla had been replaced by another woman, with hair as black as polished onyx and emerald-green eyes identical to Asterin’s.
No, Asterin thought.
Her heartbeat thundered, each breath shallower than the last. She stumbled backward, and the memory evaporated around her, returning her to the oblivion.
It wasn’t possible. It simply wasn’t possible. Asterin still remembered that moment, remembered how Priscilla had smiled her beautiful, prim smile and had summoned water droplets from thin air to dance around little Asterin—
But Priscilla couldn’t wield water. How could Asterin have forgotten that?
She looked around at the rest of the floating orbs, wondering what other altered memories might await her discovery. As if sensing her thoughts, the orbs expanded, growing into a hall of doorways. Hastily, she flung herself toward the first doorway and plunged through it.
She arrived in her palace bedchamber, lit by the soft glow of a single candle. In the bed lay little Asterin, perhaps five years old. A woman cast in darkness tucked her in, singing a lullaby. The melody sent a pang through Asterin, excruciatingly familiar.
Priscilla, it was Priscilla tucking her in, surely … but Priscilla never sang.
In a trance, Asterin drifted closer to the bed. The candlelight flared brighter and caught those same emerald eyes from the last memory, as bright as the stars themselves, filled with a love and warmth that Asterin couldn’t remember ever seeing in Priscilla’s teal eyes.
But she knew what came next. Priscilla would blow out the candle on her way out the door, and whisper Good night, child, as she had done every night when Asterin was young—
“Sweetest dreams, my love.”
The words she heard now, spoken so tenderly, and the ones she remembered with such clarity … Asterin knew for certain the words “my love” had never passed Priscilla’s lips, and yet, just like that lullaby, they were so familiar that they warmed her from the inside out.
She entered the rest of her memories one by one: her mother holding her close, braiding her hair, eating with her, telling her stories, watching her grow up—except instead of Priscilla, this unknown woman had taken her place.
Or was it the other way around?
Then two more years passed, and the woman was gone, little Asterin was now six, and the memories continued with Priscilla’s face, Priscilla’s voice, and Priscilla at her father’s side.
And then came King Tristan’s illness. Asterin looked around her father’s chambers at the ornate carvings upon the ceiling, at the nine suits of armor lining the wall, guarding the sickbed. The king’s quarters had been closed since his death, and she had almost forgotten what they looked like.
Her father’s illness had crept upon him like an autumn chill, beginning with dizzy spells that intensified to headaches and explosive migraines that forced him to retire from the throne to his bed. Doctors from all corners of the world were summoned, but none could make a diagnosis. Meanwhile, in his absence, the obligation to rule fell to Queen Priscilla.
By Vürstivale, Asterin’s father could no longer move on his own. That winter would be his last.
Now, in the memory, she stared at his sunken eyes and the ever-darkening purplish bags. She reached out to lay her hand on his but clenched her fingers into a fist when they only passed through.
Just then, two legs dangled into sight outside the win
dow overlooking the balcony. Young Asterin, now eight, dropped down onto the marble platform and hurried to the doors, tracking prints into the heaps of snow. She picked the lock and snuck inside the bedchamber, shedding her wet boots. Her ruddy cheeks paled as her eyes fell upon her sleeping father.
As if sensing young Asterin’s presence, or perhaps simply stirred by the gust of cold that had followed her through the door, the king awoke and turned his head. “You shouldn’t be here. I’m unwell.”
“I know, Papa. General Garringsford told me that I wasn’t allowed to see you, but it’s been nearly a month and I miss you.” Young Asterin scuffed the carpet with her toe. “Are you mad at me?”
Her father’s face softened with a smile, though it wasn’t like his usual smile from the older memories. Strained, the light not reaching his eyes—fallen and burnt and dull. “Of course not, my love. How could I ever be mad at you for wanting to visit me?”
Seeing the pain etched so vividly in every line of his tired face, hearing each breath rattle through his chest … a grief Asterin hadn’t felt so strongly in years threatened to overwhelm her.
Young Asterin ran to his side. “You can’t go. Just till the spring, Papa,” she begged, silver lining her eyes. “The warm weather will make you better.”
“I’ll try, my love,” her father rasped.
It was then that Asterin noticed something strange about her father’s face. The veins up his neck ran black. She couldn’t recall ever seeing that before. Yet suddenly, Asterin knew something she had never even suspected—it was poison, not sickness, eating away at her father’s life with each passing day.
Young Asterin buried her face into her father’s shoulder. “Promise, Papa.”
“I promise.”
Not a week later, the frost still thick on the balcony doors, her father closed his eyes, never to open them again.
The next day, dressed in her finest mourning black, Priscilla Alessandra Montcroix-Faelenhart claimed the throne as ruler of Axaria. Asterin remembered the cloud of sorrow at her lost love hanging over the queen—that memory had to be real, didn’t it? General Garringsford was there, too, standing at Priscilla’s elbow during the funeral. Asterin would never forget the moment her father had been lowered into his grave, but now she watched, feeling sick, as the tiniest smile flitted across Garringsford’s lips.
Asterin emerged from the memories, her mind empty and her heart raw.
The golden light of the memories sputtered out like candle flames. The waves ceased, leaving her to hang in the empty oblivion.
She didn’t know how or why her memories had changed, but she knew one thing for certain. That green-eyed woman—unknown and yet so familiar—was her mother.
Her real mother.
Which begged the question … What had happened to her? Asterin couldn’t remember anything about her disappearance—or even her name, for that matter.
Even more alarming was the mystery behind how her memories had been altered. No magic or spell had the power to change memory, except for shadow magic.
But who would dare use the forbidden element? And who had poisoned King Tristan? Could it have been Priscilla? But Asterin knew Priscilla missed him desperately, knew she even kept a chest of old love letters somewhere. Priscilla had definitely married her father. Asterin had seen the official documents—although, she had to admit that they could have been forged. The dates had certainly been forged, if Priscilla had replaced Asterin’s real mother after Asterin had been born. All these years, Priscilla’s coldness, Asterin’s inability to please her … was it the result of having to raise another woman’s child?
Frustration coursed through Asterin. Nothing made sense, and too many questions had been left unanswered. Not the least of which being who could have wanted her father dead, if not Priscilla? Someone seeking revenge? Power? Perhaps a soldier? A hireling?
The revelation jolted through Asterin.
General Garringsford.
General Garringsford, who had always harbored such barely restrained hostility toward Asterin, who never forgave King Tristan for sending her sons to their deaths in Orion’s hometown. Asterin didn’t know much about the circumstances of Alex and Micah Garringsford’s deaths, but she knew that it had partially been her father’s fault. They had only been trainees at the time, and when General Garringsford had protested against them accompanying the soldiers to intercept the hirelings, King Tristan had accused her of coddling her sons.
So that could explain the general’s motivation for killing the king, but why replace Asterin’s memories?
Garringsford, always walking two steps behind the queen, Priscilla’s pet—but maybe not her pet after all. For as long as Asterin could remember, the queen had allowed Garringsford almost total control over the military. The general was more powerful than any other servant of the crown.
Control and power, without responsibility.
Armed with dark magic, Garringsford could even be controlling Priscilla from the comfort of the queen’s shadow.
Could even have summoned a demon.
In fact, Garringsford could have orchestrated everything from the start. Garringsford, who had so generously convinced Priscilla to allow Asterin to hunt the demon. Garringsford, who had been around the palace longer than anyone, even King Tristan. For someone who had watched Asterin grow up, who had familiarized herself with her short temper and need to impress Priscilla, it couldn’t have been difficult to predict that she would want to hunt down the demon herself.
Asterin wondered if she had blindly walked herself to her own execution—and taken everyone else with her.
Asterin’s real mother and father were gone, and she would not look back and wish for what could have been—but their killer was still alive, and Asterin made a vow right then and there that she would make Garringsford pay for taking her parents away from her … that she would fight to protect her kingdom until Carlotta Garringsford breathed her last breath.
And so, when Asterin emerged from the darkness of her memories on that muddy shore and opened her eyes to see Rose’s distressed face hovering inches above her own, she looked beyond her fellow ruler and saw not a bleak, dismal sky, but a silver dawn, full of vengeful promise.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Rose knelt in the mud over Asterin, on the verge of giving up hope that the girl would awaken anytime soon—or possibly at all—when her lids finally fluttered open. She exhaled. “Finally. Thank the Immortals.”
Eadric had carried Luna into the shade on the other side of the grove, half-hidden by bushes as he stayed by her side and monitored her vitals. Both Harry and Orion had yet to return. Quinlan had almost decided to go looking for them, but when he saw Asterin struggling to sit up, he rushed over.
Her cousin dropped to the ground, helping Asterin upright. “Are you hurt?”
A moment of silence passed. Rose frowned, worried that perhaps Asterin had gone brain-dead or something, when the princess finally spoke, no louder than a dry rasp.
“I know we haven’t killed the demon yet, but we have to go home.”
Rose exchanged a glance with her cousin. He put a hand on Asterin’s shoulder. “Did something happen after you jumped into the lake?”
Asterin stared into the distance beyond the treetops. “I—I remembered something. Many things. All these … forgotten memories. I saw my mother, but it wasn’t Priscilla. It was another woman, with my hair and eyes and face. I can’t even remember her name, but I know it was my mother.”
Her words left them momentarily speechless.
“What do you mean?” asked Rose.
Quinlan’s eyes widened. “Wait,” he blurted out. “So Priscilla isn’t your mother?”
Asterin shook her head. “Nor is she the rightful Queen of Axaria. With the help of shadow magic, someone used Priscilla as a puppet to replace my real mother.” She stared at her la
p, fists clenched. “And I think that someone is General Garringsford.”
She went on to explain everything from the deaths of Alex and Micah Garringsford to her certainty that her father had been assassinated.
Rose pondered the information. Quinlan’s face had gone blank at the news of Tristan’s assassination. He now paced to keep the emotions she could sense stirring within him at bay. So little was known about the tenth element. Mind control didn’t exist within the power of the nine elemental affinities, but shadow magic … the possibilities were endless.
“If Garringsford harnessed enough power to alter your memories,” Rose said, “she might very well be using its power to control Priscilla, even now.”
“I don’t understand,” Asterin said. “Why doesn’t anyone remember my real mother? She was a queen. Surely other royals around the world must have met her, or at least knew of her.”
Quinlan kneaded the heels of his hands into his closed eyes, his brow furrowed in thought. “Garringsford probably used a memory-erasing spell, but to affect so many people, so far apart …”
Rose’s pulse quickened. Could it be? “The butterfly figurines. My mother had one, and Orion said that Asterin had one in her room as well. That dark aura … it must have been traces of shadow magic. With the right amplifying charm, Garringsford could have used the butterflies to spread the memory-erasing spell through the kingdoms like a plague, infecting thousands at a time.”
Eadric jogged over, missing his jacket and cloak. “Quinlan, could I borrow your cloak?” He noticed Asterin, relief cascading over his features. “Your Highness, are you all right?”
Asterin swiveled around. Her head spun. Everything seemed to be happening at once. “Where are the others?”
Rose chose her words carefully. “Luna is … sleeping.”
“And shivering, which is why I need your cloak,” Eadric added, and Quinlan ripped off his cloak, then his jacket for good measure.
Asterin’s brow creased. “And Orion and Harry?”
