Ellie turns bright red, then swallows. “Yes, I recall that as well.”
What conversation was this?I tilt my head at her, raising an eyebrow.
She shakes her head. “So it happened after that. But when?” Her face crinkles in thought.
My memory’s so fuzzy, I can’t imagine how we’ll possibly solve this. I fold Ellie into a tight embrace, resting my chin against her hair. Now that I know how easily I can lose her, I never want to let her go.
“Maybe we should go to the headmaster,” I suggest. Not that I really want to, but the gravity of the situation kind of calls for it.
Ellie stiffens. “No, we can’t. My father…” She takes a breath, collecting herself. “We should try to sort this out on our own first. We don’t need my father—the Order—studying our relationship.”
Yeah… I can agree with that.She may not be noble herself, but she’s still a viscount’s daughter. A viscount who’s also the most powerful incanter alive. I’m not in any rush to find out where he falls on propriety’s spectrum.
Then again, potential brain damage isn’t something we can just ignore.
“Well, it’s not related to incanting, right?” I look between Ellie and Reid. “It has nothing to do with the elements. And that’s how fae fight, too? Something similar, at least?”
I really need to pay better attention in class.
Good thing Reid and Ellie are the top students in our year. “Have either of you heard of anything like this?”
They exchange glances.
Reid shrugs. “I can’t think of anything offhand.”
“Me neither.”
Perfect.I rub my face with my hand. “Alright. So let’s figure this out. If we know what causes us to forget, that could lead us to the source.”
Reid sighs, then pushes himself to his feet. “Fine, but you’ll need to let go of each other.”
That’s the last thing I want to do, but I reluctantly drop my arms and step back, still keeping a tight hold on Ellie’s hand. The smile she gives me twitches with uncertainty before she turns her attention to Reid.
“Now then—Ellie forgot about you when she couldn’t see you, so let’s see what happens if you hold hands while not looking at each other.”
We do as he said, and to our great relief, nothing happens.
“Great,” he grumbles. “Because you needed another reason to be all over each other. Now what else can we try…?”
A bell later, I find myself praising Fortune that I have a friend like Reid. Despite his complaints and near-constant snide commentary, he tests the limits of our memory in ways I never would’ve considered. I watch as he has Ellie face the wall, repeatedly trying to tell her about me to see what sticks. Nothing does. Even the vaguest mentions—saying she has a boyfriend, or Reid just calling me his friend—slip away as the conversation continues.
Our memory loss seems based entirely around sight and touch—if I only hear Ellie, I don’t recognize her voice, but if she touches my arm while she speaks, I do, even if I can’t see her. In one particularly disheartening test, we discovered just how long it takes for us to lose one another by having me repeat Ellie’s name while turning around.
I forgot what I was saying the second she left my sight.
He checks whether our sense of touch keeps us linked if we’re both in contact with the same object. It works through clothing, probably because we can feel each other’s warmth and pressure, but when he incants a stick and has us hold opposite ends of it, we lose everything once our gazes turn away.
“Wait,” I say as the stick crumbles to dust. “What if Ellie makes it?”
She gives me a doubtful look before a pair of vines twist out of her hand, hardening into a short branch. We repeat the test…
“It worked!” It’s not much, but my chest still feels lighter.
“Great.” Reid collapses onto the settee. “She can leash you with vines and solve all your problems.”
The shadows from the dim light emphasize the worry in Ellie’s face. “That’s not a solution. It can keep us from losing each other, but we won’t remember to get together in the first place.”
“And we still don’t have any idea what’s causing this,” I add, despite feeling calmer now that we have a better understanding of things.
