“Alessia!” The voice in my ear was vaguely familiar.Liza? My ancestors?
I didn’t know; all I knew was that it was familiar and desperate, and I knew whatever was about to happen next wasn’t good.
Indeed, the next thing I knew, I was dragged beneath the surface of the water. I didn’t have time to drown; things simply went black.
ten
WhenIwoke,Ifound myself in a small, grimy room with no furniture in it whatsoever. As I glanced around, I realized it was a cell, complete with bars—iron bars laced with magic—blocking me in. I was likely in the castle, in a prison cell in the dungeon.
An emptiness accompanied my feeling of disembodiment that I hadn’t felt before. Before, I had vague, dampened memories from the land of the living. I could remember the feel of...
Of what?Of something. I struggled to place the sensations that had tethered me to the land of the living, but they were gone—a murky blur that existed in the back of my mind. I couldn’t access them; I only knew they were there, and that angered me further.
I banged my hands against the bars, a guttural cry spilling out of me. I was missing something. Something important, and I didn’t even know what.
After the ruckus I made, it didn’t take long for someone to come find me. A figure in a cloak, this one moved differently than all the other spirits here, as if he wasn’t truly a spirit.Something niggled in the back of my brain, like maybe I knew him and had forgotten?
“The feelings of discomfort you’re feeling are due to your spirit being disconnected from your human body,” he said. “The memories you’re clinging to now will fade swiftly. This is the worst of it, and then soon enough, you won’t remember at all.”
“The discomfort I’m feeling?” My fingers gripped the bars. My voice was shrill. “You ripped my spirit out of my body, and you think it’sdiscomfortI’m feeling?”
“Consider this a detox from the land of the living. By the time we let you out of here, you won’t even know what you’re missing. The yearning will fade. The memories will fade away, like a rock tossed in a river. There are ripples at first, and then eventually, nobody remembers a rock ever pierced the surface.”
“Who are you?” I stared at him, trying desperately to remember that voice. But it was distinctly tied to my time in the realm of the living, I knew that much. And those memories were but a distant fog in my brain. “I have help.”
“Yes, we know,” he said. “The potion you took was helpful for you to get down here, but the girl’s powers waned once she was here. Unlike you, she did not give her spirit to enter the realm completely.”
Liza. The name hit me like a brick. I clung to it.Liza. I said it aloud. “Liza!”
I repeated it, unwilling to let the memory of the girl go. I closed my eyes, and I could feel it. That softness of a child’s hand in mine; my only lifeline to the world from which I’d come.
“Your memories are strong, but not surprising, given the extent of your power,” he said. “A Fae Queen has always been quite in tune with the spirit realm.”
Fae Queen.I repeated the words to myself. I didn’t want to give anything away, but the more he talked about the land of the living, the more I remembered it myself. My ancestors werehere with me.Sisters, I thought silently. This man didn’t seem to know about my connection to them, so maybe he hadn’t been able to sever that connection like he had my more tangible one with Liza.
I needed to keep him talking. The more words he repeated that jogged my memories, the more I felt, if not whole, then halfway there. I couldn’t let myself forget entirely. I had a feeling if I did, then he was right. This place would swallow me in one gulp.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. He’d confirmed what I’d already known somewhere inside myself. That this man wasn’t a complete stranger to me.
“I remember you,” I whispered. “But I don’t know who you are.”
He barked a dry laugh. “Yes, that’s why I’m very good at what I do. People tend to view me as invisible.”
The name of someone hovered in the back of my mind. I couldn’t remember what the name had to do with anything, except that it summoned a sense of visceral distaste in my mouth.
“Fenlon?”
The man barked a laugh at that. “Even that idiot gets a place in your memory, while I do not. I am, apparently, entirely forgettable.”
“Not Fenlon.”
“Certainly not. Thankfully not. The man doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together. How he managed to gather any sort of following is beyond me.”
I still couldn’t exactly place Fenlon, except that it was a person I hadn’t liked before in my previous life.No,I quickly corrected. In my current life. I would return to that life.
I was also under the impression that this man didn’t like Fenlon all that much, either. But if he was not Fenlon, then who?Names eluded me. Faces eluded me. The eyes, though, were familiar. I’d seen them before. The memory felt stronger because it was tied to a spirit memory, and that’s when I knew—the spirit on the chariot.
