The memories keep coming. One after the other. In one, I’m lying on my stomach on a table while some doctor yanks a shard of ice from my spine before telling me that I will never walk again and that I’m also going to freeze to death in a few hours. In another, I’m fighting a massive guy in white fighting leathers one-on-one in the middle of a crowded arena. Then another fae in white fighting leathers is screaming at me that I ruined everything while she tries to kill me inside some kind of strange colorful forest.
Then that dragon shifter with black wings is back again. He is fighting some fae-like being in bronze armor before he ends up on his back on the ground. A boulder is about to slam right down on him, which will definitely kill him. In the memory, I shove some kind of magic at him and then throw myself through a portal. We all end up on the sands of an arena, and when that guy looks at me again, world-ending hatred burns in his golden eyes.
I flinch again. The real me. Not just the me in the memory.
More memories bombard me. That dragon shifter with black wings is telling me that the world would be better off without me, that I ruined everything, that I always ruin everything. In oneof them, he almost drops me when we fly to some kind of floating island.
Gritting my teeth, I yank against my restraints again as he says, “It would be so much easier if I just let you fall. Everything would be so much better if you weren’t here. Because you ruin everything. You always ruin everything.”
Then he’s back again in another memory. In this one, he is kneeling on the floor before that female dragon shifter with silver wings. His own black wings are chained together with iron manacles, and he is beaten and bloody.
In the real world, I clench my fists, but I remain trapped in that chair.
The memory continues moving, and the shifter with silver wings suddenly brings out those two fae from the earlier memories. The ones in that kitchen with the broken glasses. I watch as the dragon shifter makes them kneel in front of her before she summons shards of ice that she presses against their throats.
I turn my head because I suddenly don’t want to watch this. But the me in the memory keeps looking at them, so my vision doesn’t change. I suck in a sharp breath and jerk against my restraints as the dragon shifter slits the throats of those two fae. But I can’t hear that short gasp, because in the memory, I am screaming my lungs out.
Abruptly, the memories stop flashing before my eyes.
The sudden change is so disorienting that I have to blink several times and shake my head to try to get my bearings back. Once my mind has caught up with what just happened, I find myself in that dungeon that I was in before all the memories began.
“Draven and your parents,” a voice says from a short distance in front of me. “I figured as much.”
Giving my head one more shake to clear it, I shift my gaze to the source of the voice.
An extraordinarily beautiful fae man is leaning against the closed door of the dungeon. His gorgeous features are somehow sharp and delicate at the same time, almost to the point of looking slightly feminine, and his long dark blue hair has been draped over his shoulders and rests smoothly on the fancy shirt he’s wearing. But despite his beauty, there is a ruthlessness and a distinct air of danger around him. There is no remorse, no hesitation, in his black and silver eyes as he holds my gaze.
“I’m glad it was you,” he says. And it sounds like he truly means it.
I have no idea what he is talking about, but it doesn’t matter, because right now, I need to…
That strange confusion drifts through me again, and I frown as I try to recall what I need to be doing. In fact, what was I even doing before this? How did I end up shackled to a chair here? And where ishere?
“This is going to be painful,” that beautiful fae man says. His spiky black crown glints in the faint illumination from the faelight gems as he cocks his head slightly. “Hopefully.”
Then his eyes begin to glow.
Panic pulses through me, and I yank against my restraints again. I need to fight him. I don’t know who he is or why he’s doing this to me, but I know that I need to fight him. Otherwise, he will shove me back into those weird memories that don’t belong to me.
I wiggle furiously, but my forearms are locked to the armrests with thick metal bands, and my legs are similarly trapped against the legs of the chair. Panicked, I try to summon my magic. I know that I have magic. I can feel it inside me. But it doesn’t respond because… Well, because I have no idea how to use it. I frown. Why can’t I remember how to use my own magic?
Yet again, I reach for answers that slip through my fingers right before I can grab them.
The ruthless fae man before me, however, doesn’t seem to have any problems remembering how to usehismagic.
Because he just shoves me straight back into those horrible memories that don’t belong to me.
CHAPTER TWO
Iscream in frustration as the memories start over again for what has to be the three-hundredth time. During that first time, it was a whole bunch of different memories. But now, the bastard who is keeping me prisoner has narrowed it down to three memories. And he keeps forcing me to relive them over and over and over again.
“You know the cost of failure,” says the male dragon shifter with silver wings in the memory. “Don’t you, Draven?”
Draven, the other male dragon shifter on the mountainside, walks a short distance away and turns his back on him before spreading his massive black wings wide.
Draven. The name feels… familiar. But why?
I suck in a sharp breath between my teeth as the cruel shifter begins whipping Draven’s wings. Even though I have seen it happen several hundred times now, my body somehow still recoils every time.
