Orion is still leaning nonchalantly against the wall, his black and silver eyes glinting in the dim light as he watches me.
Cold dread washes over me. Orion. Oh Goddess, hesaw. He saw me use my magic on this man over and over again like a fucking addict. What if he tells the others? Then they’ll start to see me as a liability. I don’t want them to think that I’m the weak link. I refuse to be the weak link.
“We probably shouldn’t tell the others about this,” I blurt out.
Orion tilts his head to the side for a few seconds, as if considering. Then he says, “I agree. If Draven finds out what I subjected you to, or at least the true extent of it, he’s going to try to kill me. And I would hate to have to kill him now that Haldia has finally finished healing him.”
A jolt shoots through me. Healing him? From what?
Goddess above, the battle! The Icehearts tricked us into breaking the wards on the Green Clan’s archives and then sent both Diana and Kander to take us out. I shoved Isera out of the way, but Kander’s attack hit me instead and wiped my memories. And Draven…
Ice spreads through my veins. Draven, Galen, and Lyra were fighting an entire host of silver dragons while Diana and her Purple Clan were hesitating on the ground.
“What happened?” I press out, my frantic eyes on Orion.
“Diana and her people finally decided to help,” he replies. “But they were still outnumbered, and all of them were wounded quite badly while they bought time for Grey to open the portal.”
“Are they…” I swallow. “Are they okay?”
“Yes. They’re sleeping right now, and have been since we got here.”
Here. The Unseelie Court. Worry snakes through my chest as I remember something else that was revealed in that forest outside Frostfell. That Isera has been lying all this time and is in fact not a descendant of the Seelie Queen. Which means that her bargain with Orion is based on a lie, and he therefore doesn’t have to help us anymore.
I lick my lips nervously but don’t dare to bring that up. Instead, I finally struggle to my feet.
Orion watches me with eyes I can’t read as I at last straighten on the floor.
“It’s a good thing that it was you who was hit by Kander von Graf’s attack,” he says.
Hurt flickers through me, but in my already aching chest, I can barely feel it. “Because I’m the least important one?”
“No, because you have the most traumatic memories that involve people you care about.”
I blink in surprise.
“Painful memories alone would never have worked,” he explains. “It’s only because your incredibly traumatic and graphic memories involve people you truly love that I could make the pain so overwhelming that your mind was forced to remember who those people are, which in turn made you remember who you are.”
“Oh.”
He shrugs and then flicks a glance down at the now dead criminal on the ground. “And we’re also lucky that it was you because you are the only one of us who would be able to snap out of the pain and desolation that my magic plunges you into when it’s used to this brutal extent. Creating emotions from nothing floods your body with euphoric pleasure.”
My heart jerks.
“Oh don’t look so shocked.” He gives me a pointed stare. “Jocasta might be your emotion magic teacher, but she ismysubject. Remember? And she is the leader of the Black Faction. I’ve had dealings with her a number of times over the decades.” He flicks another look at the dead rapist. “Why do you think I brought him for you to use?”
I clear my throat. “I, uhm…”
“My point is that out of all of us, you are the only one who can use your magic as a lifeline to claw your way out of despair and return to normal. That’s why it’s a good thing that it was you.”
Return to normal. Right.
My chest feels like it has caved in from the grief and regret that is still crushing me. When I look down at myself, I half expect to find my chest torn open and bloody flesh hanging down around the hole where my heart should be. And that terrible hunger to use my magic again is burning inside me, craving that addictive pleasure that will drown out all those awful emotions that now thrum inside my aching chest.
But sure. I’ve returned to normal.
That is what I will let him believe, at least. That is what I will let them all believe. At least until I can make it true. Until I have actually returned to normal.
Because I refuse to be the weak link.
