by Megg Jensen
“Then why does she treat him the way she does?”
“Reychel’s had a hard life. I can’t even imagine how she copes with it. She tries, Lianne, she does.”
It seemed so simple to me. If she really loved her son, she wouldn’t have to try.
“What about the others like her? How are they coping?” I’d learned in my early days here that the Malborn had attacked, and nearly conquered, Serenia before Chase was born. Chase’s parents found a way to take away their magic and make them forget.
“We severed quite a few Malborn before Reychel. They now live in camps scattered throughout the forest. I believe your mother is in one of them.”
I didn’t let on that I knew about the camp, or my mother. I still hadn’t puzzled out why Mags was there. She didn’t have any magic, or a hurtful bone in her body. It sounded like these were prison camps of some kind. Until I had the answers I needed, I would hold the information close.
I nodded, encouraging him to tell me more.
“Most of them seem to be dealing with it well. Many of them were dangerous, part of the gifted Malborn army set out to destroy us. I am sorry we only contained the danger here. I guess we never thought they’d reached outside of our realm. If we’d taken greater steps, then perhaps your people and the Fithians wouldn’t have suffered at their hands.”
“We had enough of our own problems,” I assured him. “My mother was trying to take control by using me.”
“Yes, I know your story. Chase filled me in late one night while you were sleeping. In the first few days you were here, you spent more time sleeping than awake. He used the opportunity to tell me your whole story.” Mark cleared his throat. “I know this is an awkward question, but what exactly are your intentions toward my son?”
I wished I knew the answer. I could see the curiosity in Mark’s eyes, but I also saw the love for his son. Chase was a romantic, much like his father, but Chase and I weren’t his parents. It wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t Chase and I against the world. It wasn’t a love born of time and nurturing. Chase loved me before he met me and I hadn’t had the chance to really know how I felt about him. He’d become my dearest friend. My only confidante. The man I tried to kiss when I realized that life might finally be worth living.
A shiver raced through my body, remembering how his lips had felt against mine. Something had changed, but I couldn’t put a name to it.
“It’s okay,” Mark said. “You don’t have to answer. It wasn’t really a fair question, was it?”
His smile relaxed me. I wasn’t ready to answer, but maybe someday I would be. It was too complicated now. “Not really, no.”
Mark shrugged. “If you’re going to question me about my wife, it’s only fair I get to question you about my son, but I know you may not have an answer today.”
“Maybe not tomorrow either.” I smiled back. “But when I do have an answer, I promise you’ll be the first to know.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “The first?”
“Okay, okay. Maybe the second. After Johna. She’s a bigger busybody than you are.”
We both burst into laughter.
A flash of light burst into the room. Reychel walked through the portal with Chase only moments behind her. I jumped up from the couch.
“What’s going on here?” Reychel sounded weary.
The mirth I’d felt with Mark disappeared with the portal. “I was looking for Chase.”
Mark walked behind the couch Reychel sat on. He placed his hand on her shoulder, rubbing it lightly. “Did you and Chase finish what you set out to do?”
Reychel nodded. “Yes, for now, I think so. It seems our friends had a visitor today, though.”
I looked at Chase, but he didn’t offer an explanation. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve obviously walked into something private. I’ll leave. Chase, when you’re done, can we talk?”
He shook his head and put his hand on my arm. “No, this concerns you too. You should stay. Right, Mother?”
His voice was strained. Whatever they’d come back from had done nothing to help their relationship.
Reychel brushed Mark’s hand off of her shoulder. He backed up, but not far. He gazed at the back of her head with the same look I’d seen Chase use on me. I shuddered. She didn’t treat him the same way he treated her. Everything seemed like such a burden to Reychel. Guilt crept through my veins. I treated Chase the same way all too often. I tried to convince myself it was different. Reychel was Chase’s mom and Mark’s husband. I hadn’t made any commitments to Chase. Up until a few months ago, my loyalties were solely with Bryden. Even in death, I felt like I owed him my love. If I let go of Bryden, would anyone else honor his memory?
“Yes, Lianne, you should hear this from me. You know that we subdued your mother?” Reychel asked.
I nodded.
“She’s staying in one of the camps we put our Malborn prisoners in,” she continued. “We monitor these camps on a regular basis. There were so many gifted women in their reproductive army and we couldn’t let any of them go home the way they were. We severed them, then set up little communities for them.”
“Do you plan to keep them there forever?” It wasn’t just my curiosity about my mother leading me to question them. I wanted to know what was in their future. I wanted the wars to end, at home and here, if possible.
“That’s part of the problem,” Chase said. “My parents have been managing this issue since right before I was born. So far, my mother is the only one who’s retained her memory.”
I didn’t dare glance at Reychel.
“But,” Chase continued, “if any of them do regain any bit of their lives before being severed, then we have a problem. A big one.”
“It doesn’t help that someone penetrated the boundaries to our closest colony today,” Reychel said.
I held my breath, waiting for her to point a finger at me.
“But we don’t know who it was,” Chase said. “We didn’t want to ask them a bunch of questions. We don’t even know if the intruder made it into the village.”
“How do you even know someone was there?” I asked.
“We have our ways. If someone gets through, we’re aware, but that’s about it. Unless we resort to placing live guards around the colonies, we won’t know much more than that.”
“Then why don’t you ask the people there if someone discovered them?” Guilt washed over me. I knew I should say something, tell them it was just me, but until I knew why Mags was there, I had to be quiet. Chase knew Mags was my best friend, so he was holding back from me too.
“We don’t interact with them at all. We have a messenger who delivers food and preaches Eloh’s word to them.”
“So you’re basically holding them prisoner and forcing your religious dogma on them?”
“It’s not that simple, Lianne,” Reychel said. She pushed her hair out of her face, her amber eyes searching my face. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for. I wouldn’t be the one to tell her I was their intruder. “Many of the people in those communities committed atrocities. We don’t know if it was their gift poisoning them, and the power it brought, or if it was their nature. Either way, a little instruction in religion will only help rehabilitate them.”
My mind flashed back to the community and Mags. She didn’t possess an ounce of magic and yet, there she was, her memory erased along with the rest of them. I wanted to know why, but asking directly would be an admission of guilt. “So, it’s just my mother and these evil Malborn you captured years ago?”
Reychel’s eyes flitted toward Chase. He didn’t acknowledge her glance, but she’d given herself away in that moment.
“Mostly.” Her answer was so simple, so abrupt.
“What’s that mean? Who else is there?”
The silence in the room screamed in my ears. Not even an errant breath gave away the answer I already knew. I wanted them to tell me.
Chase draped his arm around my shoulder. “Everyone in Serenia
knows these camps exist, they just don’t know where. Sometimes people come to us, begging to be severed. Some of them aren’t even gifted. They want to erase a painful life and start over again. It’s easier to leave devastation behind than to deal with it every day. Some of them take the easy way out.”
It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that I could make all of the pain go away. Bryden’s death, my mother’s deception, the lies my people told – by being severed I would lose the memories. A sharp knife stabbed my heart. Even though I could ask them to help me forget Bryden, I’d never do it. Life without him was hard, but if I chose severing, I’d also lose the stolen moments of joy we shared. I couldn’t bear it.
That explained Mags’ presence in the camp. She’d lost her love. Her older sons were out of her grasp, held prisoner by the Dalagan invaders. She chose an easy way out.
“But I don’t understand. If someone doesn’t have magic, then how does severing work?”
Reychel stood up. She paced the room, and then stopped abruptly. Her eyes looked down at the floor. “We’re not sure. A few years ago, there was a terrible criminal, one of our own people, who murdered his wife and children. Instead of placing him in the dungeon for the rest of his life, we decided to attempt to sever him.”
I gasped. “Without his permission?”
“No,” Mark said. “We gave him a choice – death or be a part of the experiment.”
I placed my hand on Chase’s arm. I suddenly felt unsteady. It was one thing to stop people who were using their magic against others. Using magic on someone who didn’t have it seemed extreme. My mind flashed back to the day of Bryden’s death when I’d destroyed a good portion of the Malborn army with fire. I hadn’t stopped to think if any, or all, of them had the magical ability to fight back. My heart sank as I realized their quick deaths meant they hadn’t.
“We formed a circle around him, our hands joined, just as we did with all of the others,” Mark said. I glanced down at his missing hand wondering how he was part of the circle. His eyes followed mine. Embarrassed, I pulled my gaze away, but not before he rubbed his wrist with his good hand. “I entered his mind. It was the first time I’d read an ungifted person. His mind was,” Mark paused, scratching his chin, “blank. I guess that’s the best way to put it. Except for one tiny thread. I travelled along it with my mind and was bombarded by memories of the night he killed his family.”
Reychel stood behind Mark, her arms around his chest. He heaved a deep breath, sinking into her firm embrace. She loved him as much as he loved her. I felt it deep in my soul.
“It was truly horrifying,” he continued. “He had no regret, Lianne. I can’t even fully express what it was like being in his mind. There was no redemption for him. I was sure of it, so I did the only thing I could do. I cut the thread with my gift. He fell to the floor, and rose a new man.”
I stepped backward into Chase, needing him to support me. There was a problem. “How do you know he wasn’t faking it?”
Mark sighed. “We don’t know. That’s why we’ve put them in colonies in the forest and kept guard. We think the problem has been solved. We know the gifted among them can’t access their gift. It’s been twenty years. Someone would have slipped by now.”
“Unless they’re plotting,” Chase said. “This has been my concern all along. What if it didn’t work?”
“It works,” Reychel said. “Trust me. I cannot access my gift anymore.”
“Her mind appears the same as the others who have been severed,” Mark added.
Reychel smiled, a rare occurrence. “He checks all the time to see if my gift is healed. It hasn’t. There’s one thing we know for sure about severing. It makes the mind clear.” She shook her head and her dark hair settled on her shoulders. For a moment, I envied her. Reychel was older than me, but her hair didn’t show even one strand of grey. I stood before her, an oddity. A shadow of my former self. We were both broken, forever changed, because of magic.
Maybe there was a place for common ground between us. As quickly as it appeared, Reychel’s smile fell. “I have work to do. You’re both dismissed.”
Chase grunted under his breath, then replied, “Yes, Mother. We’ll leave now.”
I was anxious to leave too. Without realizing it, she’d given me the answer I’d been searching for. It couldn’t have been a coincidence she’d used the word clear to describe her mind after severing.
Find the one whose mind is clear.
I was looking for someone who was severed. I had to see my mother again.
Chapter Fourteen
Chase and I walked down the stone hallway together. Tapestries dotted the walls, depicting everything from scenes of chivalry to moments of war to placid landscapes. I wished, if only for a moment, I could jump into the nature scenes. They reminded me of the private grove I’d had back in Fithia. Whenever I needed to think, or be alone, I had escaped there. No one, other than Bryden, had ever disturbed me.
Here, I couldn’t even take Aphotica out for an innocent ride without wandering into a secret.
“So where exactly did you and your mother go?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes focused on the hall ahead of us. “We checked out the perimeter. Looked for clues of who’d been there. That sort of thing.”
Guilt washed over me. I couldn’t keep the truth from him for another second. Chase was my only true friend. I needed his help more than ever.
“It was me,” I confessed.
Something tapped my arm. A small velvet bag dangled from Chase’s forefinger. My hands fumbled at my hip, but found air where my bag usually hung.
“I found this in the forest.” He grabbed my hands, bringing us both to a stop. “Thank you for telling me the truth before I had to force it on you.”
I snatched the bag, my hands shaking. “Does your mother know?” I asked even though I already knew the answer. Half of the conversation wouldn’t have happened if she did.
Chase shook his head. He took the bag back out of my hand. His gentle fingers pulled the drawstrings through my belt. Then he tied it, knotting the strings twice. I wished I would have thought to double knot it myself this morning.
His hands hesitated for a moment on my hips. His fingers barely grazed the leather of my pants, but I felt his touch like a bolt of lightning. Before I had even a moment to react, he pulled back. My heart pounded and I licked my lips, trying desperately to counteract the feeling I’d just been struck.
“I didn’t tell her. I wanted to talk to you first. What did you see there?”
We continued walking down the hall, both pretending nothing had just happened between us. If my palms weren’t sweating so hard, I might have thought the moment was only in my imagination. I could tell by his quick breaths that it wasn’t just me.
“Not here.” I grabbed his hand, dragging him faster down the hall, toward our chambers. Mine. I mentally corrected myself. I had forgotten he’d moved out that morning.
I cursed myself for not wiping my palm first. He’d feel my sweaty palm and probably be grossed out. Instead of letting go, he squeezed my hand tightly as we ran through the hall. I felt a sense of urgency. Not a moment could be wasted anymore.
Elessia’s final message that the Malborn army was coming for me soon, finding my mother and Mags hidden in a community founded on forgetfulness, and knowing that every second that slipped by led me closer to an ending of some kind that I didn’t even understand. Why anyone was entrusting the fate of the world to me was beyond my understanding. I was more confused and clueless now than I was months ago, before all of this started.
Chase flung open the door to my chamber, dragging me in behind him. I looked both ways and let out a sigh of relief. No one had seen us in such a hurry. The last thing we needed was more prying eyes and gossip.
He let go of my hand. A momentary pang touched my heart as he sat on a chair across the room. His hands folded together, elbows resting on his knees, he stared at me in rapt attentio
n.
“When I rode up on Aphotica, I wasn’t sure what to make of the village. It was really odd, Chase. There were a few cottages, set up in the middle of a cleared field. There wasn’t a road leading to it at all. The first person to come out was my mother, of all people.”
“I’ve often thought about what that would be like,” Chase said under his breath. He stood up and circled the chair. “If I wouldn’t have asked Eloh to let my mother remember, I would know exactly how you feel.”
Chase grabbed the pitcher, poured a cup of water, and handed it to me. I hadn’t even realized I was parched until I took a quick sip. I tilted the cup up, swallowing a large gulp. A bit of water slid over the rim. It trailed down to my chin before I could wipe it away.
“Attractive,” Chase said.
I stuck out my tongue at him.
“Thanks for the water,” I said. Chase took a long drink and then I continued. “My mother wasn’t the only surprise I found in the camp. Mags is there too.”
“Excuse me?” Chase asked. He slammed the cup down on the table. “She can’t be. I set her up in Keree months ago. It’s a nearby town, the one that Johna’s from. I made sure Mags had a home and enough money to last her for at least a year.”
“It was her. She had Trevin in her arms. She said her name was Anne and his was Charles. It was so bizarre, Chase.” I frowned. “Do you think she gave up her memories willingly? I could understand wanting to forget seeing Aric’s head on a table, dripping with blood, but to voluntarily give up the memory of her two older sons…” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I just can’t imagine she’d do that.”
Chase nodded. “That was all she talked about when I ported her to Keree. She kept asking about her sons and when we were going to rescue them from the Dalagan invaders. I don’t believe she’d give up, either.”
The leather laces on Chase’s shirt hung loose at the collar, exposing the top of his muscular chest. I had to force my eyes back up to his face. My instincts screamed at me to grab him, but I forced myself to hold back. “Then who did this to her?”
