The second memory came easier. Not softer—just faster.
A Potion of Rousing. A little experiment, Gerard had said. To make Symond more receptive. More lively. While his body reacted, internally he felt dead.
He screamed into his pillow then. Not in memory. In the room. Present. The cry cracked something in his throat, shrilling his vocal cords.
Another vial. Another cut.
“Potion of Rousing.”
The third memory nearly broke him.
For once the pain wasn’t being inflicted by someone else. Not Thorn. Not Gerard. It was by him. An enchanted blade he made at the forge, dragged across his thighs. The enchantment made the bleeding almost impossible to stop. That was what he wanted. What he decided. The one decision about his body that he was able to make. But Thorn stopped him.
“Failed Attempt 1.”
By the tenth vial, he didn’t flinch.
His hands still shook, but only slightly. Like after a forge shift—residual tension, nothing more.
He stopped gagging.
Stopped blinkingtoo long.
The memories came faster. Not because they hurt less, but because he stopped resisting.
“Days in confinement.”
“Finding out the truth.”
“15 minutes of revenge.”
“Last time.”
“Failed Attempt 2.”
“Barn fight.”
“Prostitute.”
Each one a slice.
Each one a brick pulled from the wall that held him together.
By the time he reached the fiftieth vial, he no longer read the labels as he wrote them.
His hand moved automatically, looping letters like sigils on a page he didn’t understand.
The memories blurred together, faces became shadows, voices static. The worst ones were starting to feel… dull. Like looking through water at something far away.
When he finally stopped—when the crate was full, and the table littered with blood-slick cloths, and his skin raw from wiping his face with the same sleeve—he sat back.
Not relieved.
Not broken.
Just… quiet.
He reached for the last vial. He didn’t remember what this one was for.
