A single tear drops down my cheek as Elena resumes our walk, the Princess having the grace to pretend she didn’t notice.
“The sounds of the screams that filled the village that night will haunt me forever, Alexis. I know they haunted you. As did the continual sight of me pulling you through your family’s home...”
“I had to force a sleeping draught down your throat,” she whispers, almost as if ashamed of herself, “you were fighting against me so violently. You tried with all your might to get out of my hold and looked at me with such hate in your eyes that I knew the once vibrant girl I watched from afar was completely and utterly gone.”
“I held you in my arms…” she murmurs, “held you tight as the draught took over… but then your eyes fluttered open with a determination that should not have been there!”
“The look in your eyes, Alexis,” she brings her gaze to mine in astonishment, “I see it sometimes in my dreams. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that the flames from the burning home were reflecting within them. You pushed away from me and ran out of the room, your hand gripped on the knife as if you would deliver justice to the terrorizing Discerni yourself. I ran after you, ran through the flames until I found you stopped just before the front door. There were tears flowing from your eyes as you looked over your dead father, his body brutally slain defending your home.”
Ancients.
“I don’t know if it was the sight of him that caused you to pass out or if it was the sleeping draught finally taking its effects, but your whole body suddenly buckled in place. You fell hard to the ground a moment later and landed on the sword he used for his own defense, the weapon slicing across your forehead in a large gash as the two of you laid in your own blood.”
My fingers are trembling when I reach up to Stormfall, genuinely needing his comfort from Elena’s too detailed account. The Bird of Ash grips my shoulder hard and rubs his head against my neck in a calming caress.
“The rest of the story I believe you know. I hid you under cover and rode immediately to Bardot and my father, not daring to let you live in another Woodlands city where too many of the Discerni there would hold a bleak reminder of what happened to you.”
“But why can’t I remember any of it?” I ask quietly, “does your brother’s summoning erase memories as well?”
Elena looks at me and considers the question for a long moment before finally shaking her head.
“Troy’s summoning does not work like that to my knowledge. Perhaps the shock of everything that happened caused your mind to forget. You could barely look at a me after that night and hated anyone who reminded you of the man, or men, who murdered your parents.”
My mind flashes to Zander’s visions of me in Castle Bardot when I arrived. I was tattered and torn, holding a look of pure animosity towards every Discerni in the room.
Elena nods her head in sadness.
“I truly do not know why you can’t remember your time in Woodlands,” she reiterates, replying more to herself than to me, “I can only suspect that after Troy used his summoning on you, your mind chose to forget, that it chose to erase the memories and move forward without them.”
I frown.
There’s no way I would willingly choose to forget something like that. I know myself too well.
“How does his summoning work?” I press.
The Princess remains quiet, lost in her own thought.
“I know that he can read emotions, Elena,” I offer, “and it seems, from what I’ve seen of your father’s visions and what you’ve told me now, that he can push emotions into a being as well. I’m living proof of that. He helped me regain my happiness at the expense of ignoring my past. So it’s not a far leap to question his ability to erase memories.”
Elena turns to the Bell Grove with a deep sigh, “my brother does notpushemotions into people, Alexis. He cannot command the genuine feelings of the soul.”
“But he can!” I cry out, “he commanded me to feel happy and content. When I think of my parents I only think of love. There’s no feelings of loss there. He summoned me into blissful ignorance!”
“No, Alexis,” Elena replies sternly, “Troy’s summoning does not tell you what to do or how to act. It does not command you one way or another. His summoning is suggestive. The emotions he coaxes help your soul to come to a certain conclusion on its own.”
“Semantics.”
How does she not see that?
“No,” she sighs again, bringing a hand to her temple and reminding me so much of her father, “the fact that you embraced his summoning when you were younger means that your soul was ready to move on. It was ready to step away from a past that it knew would always haunt you. Troy’s summoning does not always work, but it did generously when you arrived in Bardot. Your being accepted it wholeheartedly.Youwanted to be happy again.”
My mind runs to Zander’s visions again, to me sitting so silently at the edge of my bed. I was so desolate and far away, no longer present to what was around me. Troy hesitated when he leaned down to me, probably worried that I would attack him as he looked so much like the otherWoodlands Discerni. But I did nothing. Didn’t even react. Just sat there, completelygone.
Did my soul truly accept his summoning in a want to feel again?
“And my memories?” I whisper.
Elena smiles sadly, “erasing memories from a traumatizing event could have been a product of your own mind. That is the best answer I can give you. On my father, Troy does not have the ability to do it.”
