Neo quirks a single eyebrow. (I always wished I could do that, even tried it in the mirror a few times, but my eyebrows are determined to work as a team.) “What am I looking for?” he asks.
Adria exhales a shuddering breath. “Want,” she says, barely audible from where I’m standing. “Useless want.”
“That may not be enough information, Adria. If I grasp the wrong memory—”
“Don’t make me spell it out as though you were a fool,” Adria snarls, lips pulled back from her teeth. “It’s close to the surface, woven into countless sleep cycles of recollection. You’ll know when you’ve found it. I want it gone. All of it. Only the most essential thread untouched. The rest, tear it apart.”
“If this memory you speak of is embedded in so many others,” Neo says, hesitant, “then removal may do unforeseen damage.”
“Look at me, Neo.” Adria spreads her wings, every edge of her crackling with planetary energy, eyes gone nearly blue with the surge. “I am well past avoidingdamage.When you find this memory, I want itshredded.I want it unrecognizable. I don’t care what else comes of it, out of me. If I don’t remove it now, soon I’ll be positively sick with it.”
Neo takes a deep breath in through his nose and then slowly out through his mouth, the way Aspect instructs me to do (and I almost never do) when I’m panicking. I could really use a deep breath now, but I can barely seem to get any oxygen at all.
“If I hurt you, my lord,” Neo says, “the Shadow Court will have my head.”
“I’ll forgive your every trespass,” Adria says in a rush. “Set you free the moment it’s done, and your sister, too. You can go home together and pluck this very memory from your skull and try to pretend none of this ever happened. Just cut this out of me, Neo. Please.” The brokenness of her voice makes my chest ache. “I swear it on my mother, on my father. I know no greater vow.”
Neo inclines his head, his overgrown, unkempt red hair covering small round horns and drooping into his eyes. “As you wish. But I must warn you, I would be far more precise without a barrier between us.”
Adria half laughs under her breath. It’s not really a laugh, more the crackle of old branches underfoot. “A clever escape plan, I’ll give you that, but I’m no fool.”
“I speak only the truth. I have no known father to swear on, and a mother I hardly knew, but I will swear on Lail, my sister, my heart, if it pleases you.”
That’s when everything finally clicks for me. Lail. I know that name. Lail—Alpha.This Neo, also Adria’s prisoner, is herbrother, the one whose mental torment Lail hoped to ease with my memory of the sun.
So why is he still being held here? Entirely to remove memories from Adria? Her feelings for me are a recent development—was he originally kept alive for another purpose?
What memory did Adria, the eternal night’s unbreakable queen, experience that broke her so brutally, she wanted it surgically extracted? Enough to hold a boy prisoner, with his sister as collateral? Enough to hide any knowledge of this memory-removal quest from me entirely, despite having shown me the nightfolk archives, the Diakópsei, and so much more?
I watch Adria’s eyes flick from Neo’s tired ones to the freezeshot wall to the control panel just to her right. For my part, I think I believe Neo. His every syllable is weighty with sincerity, and I think Adria believes him, too. But I think again of every time we have brushed, not even skin to skin, and how I felt Adria’s whole body seize in defensive protest, sealing up like her fortress before an invasion, freezeshot walls slotting reflexively into place. She may believe him, but that doesn’t mean she wants him any closer to her than necessary.
“Don’t hold back on me,” Adria says with unnecessary force that only further confirms my theory. “My mind is open to you as we stand now. Now do your work, Neo, please. And when it’s done, I’ll set both you and your sister free.”
Neo nods. Boldly, I lean farther around the corner, nearly exposing my presence to his sight—but if he notices me, he doesn’t believe it warrants mentioning to Adria. Neo squeezes his eyes shut, which is somehow how I expect them to stay, but instead, they snap back open as pools of liquid azure, replacing the soft brown irises that had been there only moments before.
If he had arms to extend, I think he would reach them out, but as he doesn’t, he merely holds Adria’s gaze, unblinking, unfiltered, blue on blue on blue, and leans toward her like a rotted tree conceding to the wind.
Adria meets his stare with her own. But from the sheer force of the effort, the agony of the wordless intimacy, little shudders roll through her from neck to toes. Silence pervades the room save for the electric flicker of the freezeshot wall, stretching out to fill every square foot of empty space, until finally a scream tears from Adria’s throat.
Her legs buckle. She falls to one knee, obeisant before her own captive, teeth rattling in her jaw, claws digging into her own palms, nearly to the point of drawing blood.
“My lord—” Neo starts, but Adria’s scream rises to cut him off.
“Don’t stop,” she gasps, animalistic. “Not until it’s done. Get it out, Neo.” Withdrawing her claws from her hands, she presses them to the sides of her skull instead, digging into the increasingly wild curls of her ink-black hair. “Get itout.”
Neo’s voice is terribly far away. “If this is the thread you spoke of—”
“It is.”
“It’s already woven into everything, my queen. If I pull too hard, dozens of sleep cycles may unravel. And if those tear further threads with them, you may be left ragged, without place, without name—”
“Don’t you dare stop, damn it.”
“If I break the Shadowlands’ last royal heir—”
“If you cease to try, Neo, so help me, I’ll hand you over to the Shadow Court, and when they’ve had their way, you’ll welcome execution.”
Darkness flickers across Neo’s gaze, terror beyond words, before he unleashes a cry of his own, intensifying whatever he’s doing to Adria. Adria shrieks again, wings splayed now, broken down to collapse on both knees, voice reduced to only curses, blood from her hands and head alike already drying under her nails.
