Memory's Wake (30 page)

I can do this,
Memory told herself.
God, I hope I can do this.

Memory took her mind back, remembering how she felt the morning after Eloryn healed her, going over what happened between Eloryn and Roen in the wagon. The way Eloryn described the process.
There is magic in everything, an energy of life that can be spoken to. Our bodies remember what it is to be whole and healthy, and they want to be that way. The magic just gives the body the power to right itself. Reminding it how to be whole. Visiting the broken areas and helping to put them back together.

Eloryn had spent hours putting Roen back together from just a bruising. Why the hell did she think she could do this? No magic she’d tried worked the way she expected. She was more likely to blast Eloryn away than to help her. Numbly, she realized at this point Eloryn couldn’t be much worse off. Beneath thin bandaging, Eloryn still bled. Thayl’s words to her repeated in her head, and she cast them away. If this didn’t work, she didn’t want to think about what she could be losing.

Memory put a shaking palm onto Eloryn’s chest, tacky with blood, and one onto her forehead.

She took a deep breath. “Move back a bit, just in case.”

Roen stayed and held Eloryn’s hand.

This has to work. I hope you trust me, Lory.

She reached out to Eloryn with the furnace of magic within her.

It came faster and easier than she expected. The shock of the connection almost made her break away. Warmth, pulse, blood, muscle and bone. Pain. Surreal and abstract she sensed them. They engulfed her. She focused on the pain, feeling it herself, almost overwhelming. Willing it gone made it so. She imagined Eloryn’s pale skin flawless and whole. She mended what she felt torn with a giddy omnipotence, spending energy without guard. She gave her own blood to replenish what Eloryn had lost. At the fringes of her perception, she could taste consciousness. A dreaming mind thick with emotions, memories and an ocean of painful guilt.

Memory gasped back into herself, needing a world worth of air.

She pulled her hands to her aching chest, pressing them against her burning skin. She struggled away from her body’s demand to faint. Passing out could come later. She needed to know if it worked, first. The forest was still dusk lit and no one had moved. How long did that take? Did she do enough?

Roen stared, mouth opened, and Memory feebly clawed away the bandaging he’d done. She dug her hands underneath, feeling for skin, finding it smooth and unbroken.

Roen squeezed Eloryn’s hand, and Memory shook her gently, then harder, then roughly, calling her name.

Eloryn didn’t move.

“I don’t know, I thought I did something. Maybe I didn’t do it right. Maybe I didn’t get in far enough, like she couldn’t with me?” Memory rocked on her knees.

Roen’s head shook as if he was drunk. Knuckles cracked in a tightening fist.

“I can try again.” Memory moved flimsy arms back toward Eloryn, but Roen lifted them away.

“You can’t see yourself. You can’t try again.” Roen held her arms, and Memory found they were too weak to take from him.

Memory fell onto his bare chest, bridging Eloryn’s body beneath them. She let out in long, painful breaths what she couldn’t in tears. Roen brought his arms up around her, shaking from the cold, or something else.

“Mem?”

Memory and Roen jerked apart.

Eloryn stared up at Memory wide eyed. Fear, comprehension, and loss played across her face, taking her from relief to pain in seconds.

Eloryn flung herself around Memory, arms tight around her chest, face buried in her shoulder. Memory sat limp, arms hanging awkwardly, and Eloryn bawled.

“He’s dead, Mem, he’s dead. Alward’s dead.”

As Eloryn’s sobbing quaked through Memory’s body, empathy built like acid in her eyes. She wrapped her arms in a returned embrace and held as tightly as the weakness in her body allowed.

Eloryn wept wretchedly, and with the shared wetness of their faces, shared pain, and shuddering sobs shaking them both, Memory wasn’t sure whether she wept as well.

“Thayl said such horrible things. They couldn’t be true. I can’t believe his words about Alward,” Eloryn squeaked between gulping teary breaths.

Twice Memory had dreamt of Thayl. Twice she’d met him. Each time there had been things he’d said she also didn’t want to believe, and others she hoped weren’t lies. She could hardly tell which she wanted most. For now, for Eloryn, she would believe that he lied.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Eloryn felt more pain in her now than when the dragon had sunk its claws deep into her stomach.

A fury she had never known before overtook her pain. It burnt her tears away. It was her fault. Alward died because of her. If only she’d told him the mistake she made, instead of trying to hide it. Too scared of disappointing him, instead she’d got him killed when he’d done everything to keep her safe, had been everything to her.

Alward only ever took you in, kept you to himself because of the guilt he felt over what he had done.
Liar. Why would Alward kill her mother? And if that wasn’t true, could he have lied more? Could Alward still be alive?

Desperation ran riot through her with that small spark of hope. She had to know the truth.

“I have to see his body,” Eloryn said, pulling away from Memory. “I have to know he is dead, and if he is I need to bury him. No matter what happened, I still love him. I can’t just leave his body to whatever Thayl has planned.”

“We don’t even know where he is,” Memory said.

Eloryn screwed up her face. Her body felt too healthy to be holding these dark feelings. The smell of wet leaves and her own blood on her dress were like the aftertaste of death. “If he is dead, he is only a body and no longer has will. He can be brought.”

“
No way.
Lory, you can’t be serious?”

Eloryn ignored Memory. Instead, she pleaded with the earth in timeless words of magic, trying to get it to listen, wishing for it. She spoke of Alward, the man who cared for her, taught her, kept her safe. She described every part of his face, his kind smile and ink stained fingers, and how she loved him like a father. She ended with the words she had not long ago taught to Memory. “Beirsinn fair nalldomh.”

She felt no connection to the magic within or around her, that vile poison still blocking her. “Beirsinn fair nalldomh!”

Nothing. She screamed, digging her hands into the earth. “Bring him to me!”

She crumpled forwards, her forehead to the ground. “Bring him to me!”

“Magic may not hear you child, but we can. Screeching such vulgar pain.” The voice held a regal level of distaste.

Finding herself surrounded by fae, Eloryn jumped to her feet.

At the same time, Memory’s savage guardian dropped to his knees. “Yvainne, Mina.”

Her body quivering from a whirlwind of emotion, Eloryn stared at him and the fae he knelt to. She couldn’t remember anything from when the dragon sheathed its talons into her chest until she woke up and grief consumed her. She floundered, trying to regroup her thoughts. Memory must have healed her, and done it incredibly well. Impossibly so. A shot of panic turned Eloryn around to find Roen. He stood behind her, bloody but alive. Eloryn blinked a double take, wondering where his shirt had gone.

Memory stood up next to Eloryn and spoke to the savage. “Will, do you know them?”

Will nodded.

Eloryn hadn’t even noticed his presence before, while anger and tears blurred her eyes. Had he come here for Memory again, or come with the fae? Up from his knees, he moved to stand with the sprites. A red-headed fairy with a young face leant into him and tangled a long fingered hand in his hair.

The gathered fae reflected the twilight tones in a shimmering silver glow. More than she could count, the wild gathering ranged in size and shape, from lithe seven-foot statures to tiny sparkling lights. A bizarre and twisted mix; some had animal eyes, some had antlers or claws, and more, with rough bark skin, glowing glitter, hooves or gossamer veins. Although clothing and hair billowed with its own life, they did not move. They stood unthreatening, and some even nodded respectful bows as Eloryn passed her eyes over them. Seelie fae.

The only threatening movements were the glares and whispers directed toward Memory, who wobbled on her feet and looked more grey and ill than she had after calling the dragon through the Veil. Guilt edged in amongst Eloryn’s other emotions.

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” Eloryn said with downcast eyes. Seelie they may be, but no less dangerous to anger.

“Your call was loud, but not futile. We are pleased to know you have want. It means we can bargain. You may call me Yvainne. I know who you are.” The tallest of the fae, waif thin, took an elegant step forward through a cloud of wafting silver hair.

“Bargain, for what do you wish to bargain with me?” Eloryn’s voice wavered. There were lots of stories regarding fairy bargains. Few of them ended well for the human side.

“We will bring you the body of your Alward.” Yvainne spoke like sweet chimes in a breeze.

So he is dead.
Eloryn’s heart shuddered. “And what in return?”

“You will take Thayl’s place on the throne, and renew the failing Pact with Maellan blood.”

“But if-” Memory started.

Yvainne cut Memory off, her voice turning hard. “Not you. Daring to carry cold iron.” If she was the type to spit, Yvainne looked as though she would now. “No matter what you may think, you do not belong in Avall. You. A vessel too full. Liable to spill and spoil all around.”

The fae hissed in unison.

Memory simply gaped.

Yvainne turned back to Eloryn. “That is our offer, Maellan. Do you take it?”

“No.” Eloryn swore she heard audible sighs from Roen and Memory, but she focused on Yvainne. Pain and fury inside had been startled into submission, but still smoldered throughout. The word she sought came to her. Revenge. That is what she wanted, never having imagined before she could want it. Thayl had killed Alward, and she wanted it paid back. If she could do that, then it was a small step to take the throne after emptying it. “No, not as the offer stands. I will make a bargain though, for one more thing in return.”

Yvainne smiled pleasantly, sending a tremor through Eloryn.

“Mem, you said Thayl showed you his memories of how my mother was killed?” Eloryn spoke over her shoulder, keeping her eyes on the fae. “I want to see Alward’s memory of the same. Provide that, bring me his body, and I will take the throne and renew the Pact.”

“Agreed.” A chorus of birdsong and bell called from all the fae, covering the protests of the friends at her back.

“This is our binding deal.” Yvainne suddenly stood with her hand on Eloryn’s chest. Eloryn gasped to feel the spark of connection relight within her.

“We must go, and let the Summer Court know what has passed. The body will be brought.” Yvainne turned, and sprites all around began blinking out of sight. Some sparkled away into tiny lights, and some skipped into the Veil.

Yvainne flicked her eyes to Will. “You stay. Keep watching that one.”

“Keep watching?” Memory whispered.

The red headed fairy at Will’s side glared hardest at Memory, and passed the glare briefly to Yvainne before vanishing.

“Wait, how is the memory shown?” Eloryn cried.

“With your blood on your hand, and the body of the man, know what you want in your heart and plunge that sinful blade into his.” Yvainne pointed to Memory and faded away.

Eloryn’s bones turned to wet rope. Binding deal made, she slumped back to the ground, waiting on what that would entail.

“What the hell, Lory?”

“Princess, you should not have.”

Only Will did not yell at her. The strange young man crouched beside the ancient oak’s trunk, blending into the shadows, watching with hurt eyes.

“It is done,” she said. The biggest decision she’d ever made. Maybe the only one she had ever made, that wasn’t just to follow another’s. She hoped she would not regret it too much.

Memory put a hand on her shoulder, squatting down next to her. When she spoke, her voice was devastatingly tired. “Is this going to be worth it? I get the revenge thing. I so do. Thayl, he told me…”