"Those memories wouldn't be happy ones," Elora continued. "Not like the life I was living then—protected, loved. And memory potions..." She shook her head. "They don't just unblock memories. You basically get to live in them for a period of time. Experience them like they're happening all over again."
The thought made her stomach clench. "I didn't want that. I had a relatively good life, a happy one. Besides that month of hell with Thorn and his guards." She glanced at Rell, her expression resolute. "What's the point of remembering bad times when you could be living good ones?"
She pulled her cloak tighter, the worn fabric a reminder of survival, of endurance. "This cloak is all I need from that time. It got me through then, and it's gotten me through everything since. The rest..." She shrugged. "The rest can stay buried."
Chapter 41
Symond
Symond watched vapor curl from a cracked alchemical lamp across the narrow alley, dissipating into the hazy Aszona twilight. The fog mixed with the residue of spent potions creating weird patterns if you stared long enough. Like faces, maybe, or memories trying to take shape. Not that he cared much about shapes or memories these days.
"Are you smiling?" Violette asked. Her eyes were wild, bewildered, like she’d never thought he was even capable of the act.
"Am I?" Symond touched his face, found his lips curved upward. "Huh. Guess I am."
The mercenaries trudged ahead of them, four figures in black leather with three painted tangerine yellow stripes along their backs, daggers and potion pouches hanging from their belts. Their boots scuffed against the worn cobblestone streets, echoing off the crumbling faded paint facades that lined this poorer quarter of Aszona. Symond found the rhythm almost musical. Scuff-step, scuff-step, scuff-step.
"Why?" Violette said, studying him with the same intensity she'd used when sharpening her daggers. "Something changed overnight. Yesterday you were... well, you. Today you're..." she gestured vaguely at his face, his posture, his everything.
"Just feeling better," Symond offered, still watching the vapor curl through the dim alley. "Amazing what a good night's sleep can do."
One of the mercenaries, a woman with a face like a clenched fist and fingertips stained purple from handling unstable compounds, turned back to glare at them. "Keep it down," she hissed. "Rylok has ears everywhere in these streets."
"Does he?" Symond mused. "Actual ears? Or just potion traps? Because if it's actual ears, that's pretty impressive alchemy. Little disembodied ears crawling up walls and hiding in shadows."
The mercenary—whose name he hadn't bothered to learn despite Violette's introductions earlier—stared at him like he'd grown a second head, then turned away with a disgusted grunt.
Violette grabbed his arm, fingers digging in. "What is wrong with you? This isn't some joke. Rylok betrayed the Hive. You said you wanted another chance to prove you can be more than an enchanter. Prove it. Take this seriously."
She searched his face, the concern in her eyes genuine. He knew that look—she'd worn it the day she'd found him, half-starved and full of rage, picking fights in the Lower Market with anyone who looked at him wrong. "The anger that drove you," she whispered, "what happened to it?"
Something flickered in the back of Symond's mind, not a memory exactly, but the shadow where one should be. The Institute had taught him to follow orders without question, that much he remembered allowing himself to keep—the useful parts, the survival instincts, without all the messy details of how he'd learned them.
"I'm fine," he said, though he felt nothing about Rylok’s betrayal. Who even was he?
The lead mercenary held up a fist, and the group stopped moving. Ahead lay a narrow townhouse wedged between a perfumer's shop and a dilapidated counting house. The building's upper stories were fashioned in the ornate Tudor style of the rising merchant class, with carved window frames and delicate ironwork. A warm amber glow filtered through the stained glass windows, throwing strange patterns onto the wet cobblestones.
"That's his safe house," the mercenary whispered. "Savaric, go around back. Dorn and Elise, take the sides. Watch for trigger-vials. We go in fast and hard."
"Ready?" Violette asked him, her eyes searching his face for... something. Recognition, maybe. Attachment to this mission they were on. The rage she'd been channeling since she met him, transforming his raw fury into something controlled and precise. She had no idea it was gone now, bottled and stored, never to be reopened.
"Sure," Symond said with a shrug. "Let's go catch the betrayer. I'll try to look appropriately vengeful."
As they moved toward the townhouse, keeping to the shadows between pools of alchemical lamplight, Symond felt strangely detached, like he was watching himself from above. Part of him knew this should be important—Violette had been training him for moments like this. But he'd joined the Hive for reasons tied to the Institute, reasons that now existed only as blank spaces in his memory.
The mercenaries kicked in the door with a splintering crack, vials of combat elixirs already uncorked in their hands. Symondfollowed, dagger raised, feeling like an actor who'd wandered onto the wrong stage. Inside, a man in a fine waistcoat sat at a desk covered in manuscripts and glowing alchemical instruments, resigned and unsurprised.
"Ah," the man—Rylok, presumably—said softly. "The Hive sends its little worker bees."
The mercenaries rushed forward, pinning Rylok against his desk. Papers scattered, and a small glass vial tumbled to the floor, its contents emitting a faint purple luminescence even as the liquid seeped between the floorboards.
The purple liquid began to smoke, tendrils of violet vapor curling upward like curious fingers. Funny how nobody but him seemed to notice it at first. People get so caught up in the big dramatic moments—the captured traitor, the triumphant mercenaries—that they miss the little details. Like poison turning to gas. Like a man who isn't struggling nearly enough for someone who's been caught.
"Hm," Symond said to nobody in particular. "That's probably not good."
The first mercenary dropped to her knees, eyes unfocused, hands clawing at her throat. The others followed in rapid succession, stumbling, vision swimming as the purple haze climbed higher. Symond felt his own thoughts begin to wander, edges of the room blurring.
"Violette," he managed, finding her among the confusion. "Maybe step back from the—"
