Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (47 page)

She sprinted down the tower steps, round and round, grazing her elbow against the wall in her rush, trying to expend all of her emotions in physical form. The fires in her chest burned bright hot. A rumble built within her. She ran hard, trying to escape herself.

She stumbled out into the eastern entrance yard, having blindly made wrong turns and run too far. She bent over, her hands on her knees, to catch her breath.

Hayes’s voice reached her, and she ducked back through the doorway again. She loathed the idea of him seeing her like this, running wild and dressed in otherworld clothes. Marching feet and another man’s voice, crying accusations and pleas, passed by right in front of her. Peering out, she saw her uncle, Ewain, being lead bound and under armed escort toward the main keep. The guards wore a strange uniform, something new that Memory hadn’t seen before. The symbol of the Wizard’s Council, a stylized mouth with a star inside, was embroidered on the sleeves.

“I did nothing. These are lies.” Ewain spoke to Hayes, to the guards around him, trying to get the attention of anyone but no one responded. “I wanted the twins off the throne, of course I did. But I have no army in my control, and I’d be a fool to attempt their assassination! I only voiced my wish to remove them from power because it is the right thing to do. They’re an abomination, a corruption of the Maellan line. My brother and Loredanna never consummated their marriage.”

Memory found herself running toward the small group, and she skidded to a stop on the gravel right in front of her uncle. “What are you talking about?”

Hayes stepped between them, putting his hands on Memory’s shoulders. She flung them away.

“Princess, what are you doing out here at this hour? This is no time-” he began.

“What is he talking about? Tell me.”

Memory couldn’t see Ewain behind Hayes blocking her way, but she could hear him.

“My brother wasn’t your father. He told me your whore mother never opened to him.”

Hayes turned and hit Ewain across the face with the back of his hand. “How dare you speak of the beloved Loredanna like that. For such disrespect, I’ll make what is ahead for you all the more worse.”

Hayes clicked his fingers and the guards picked the man up, dragging him up the stairs into the building.

Memory chased after them, half jogging to keep pace. “Then who? Who was my father?”

“As if you don’t know.” The prisoner spat at her feet.

Thayl?
The burning inside her, already alight, roared and her vision blurred, the world flashing grey. The idea crumpled Memory’s heart. So much was wrong, everything about their lives broken from start to end. She thought Thayl had just been some sick father-figure in her life.
Did I watch my real father die? Did I cause it?

“No, you have to tell me more, I need to know for sure.” Memory tripped as she tried to keep up and keep talking to Ewain. She yelled at the guards. “Stop. Stop walking. I order you to stop!”

They continued. Hayes paused briefly to look down his hooked nose at her. “You have no authority here. These men are under my orders, as Grand Bailiff I am in control. Do not listen to this lunatic. He is lying, trying to sow the seeds of mistrust to weaken you and your sister. You must not tell anyone of this fabrication. Go back to bed, princess. The truth will be revealed under duress.”

Memory shook her head, incredulous, and followed the group down the stairs into the dungeon. The rooms on the first level looked different to the last time Memory had been through there. Vicious contraptions filled the space, and the tables were laid out with all manner of unkind tools. Memory clutched her chest, wringing her t-shirt in her hands, the heat inside her torso unbearable. The room shifted, contorted. It became beige walls in a small space, tall shelves on either side filled with plastic chemical bottles. Shelves with knives, pliers, hooks. The back wall had mops propped up in a messy pile. The back wall had chains hanging down, manacles on the ends. The floor was wet and smelled of detergent. The floor was stone, rough, spotted red.

Memory didn’t know what was happening.

She didn’t know where she was.

She ran.

Roen sat up in bed and rubbed his face. He could have sworn he just saw Memory step through his room. The way she used to look, in her strange otherworldly clothes, but her hair was its current natural blonde. She seemed distressed, careening past then blinking out of existence.

He pushed the covers back and grabbed the pants and shirt he’d worn that day. He tugged them on, not bothering with shoes in his rush to leave the room. He might have just been imagining things, but it shook him up so much he thought he better check on Memory to be sure. He hadn’t been able to sleep anyway.

The chambers he and his parents had been housed in were smaller guest quarters just downstairs from the old royal chambers Memory and Eloryn were in. Given the time of night Roen was grateful it wasn’t far to go.

Up the stairs in the corridor leading to the twin’s rooms, Roen was surprised at the complete absence of guards. He assumed Eloryn was working late in the queen’s office as she often did. Maybe Memory also wasn’t in her room, but he still went to check. No guards meant no gossip, for which he was grateful.

Roen knocked at Memory’s door and heard whimpering and the rattling of furniture. He pushed the handle and it clicked open, so he slid inside. Armchairs and desks were tipped over throughout the sitting room, and the floor seemed to tremble under him. He pushed through urgently into Memory’s bedchamber.

The room was dark, but he could see Memory curled against the far wall, between her bed and a knocked down wardrobe. Tussled gowns tumbled out around her like she was a castaway in a sea of lace.

She muttered to herself, shivering. She flickered in and out of sight.

The wall behind her had cracked and grout shook from it when the room trembled again.

By the fae, what is happening?

Roen knelt beside Memory and brought her into his arms. At first she pushed back, her hands in fists, rigid around her folded iron knife. He held her tighter.

“Mem, it’s me, it’s okay,” he said, using the word she’d taught him.

She dropped the knife and grasped at him, pulling in close.

The tremors stopped.
Was she causing them?

Memory cried hard in his arms. She mumbled into his shoulder, the words jumbled and incomprehensible. Memory always seemed on the verge of both laughter and tears at any moment, but he’d never seen her like this. He could make no sense of what was happening.

Roen ran his hand over her hair, trying to calm her, reassure her. He kissed her softly on the forehead.

Memory jerked away and looked up at him. Her eyes were fierce and questioning. With a sob, she leaned in and kissed him hard on the lips. She pressed her body into his and he tasted the salt of her tears.

The kiss was so desperate Roen didn’t dare push her away, and it stirred confusing feelings in him.

Roen knew he loved Eloryn. He knew it since the morning in his family’s old ramshackle home, when she’d charged in, interrupting his father, demanding to know the fate of her guardian. Seeing so much affection and bravery changed something in his heart, and he was hers. He still longed for her, dreamed of her, but he had no hope to ever be with her.

Memory meant so much to him. She was a summer storm, with passion and intensity that awed him and at the same time she was the flower caught within that storm. He would do anything for her.

Memory’s lips broke away from Roen’s, and she buried her face in his chest. He held her on his lap until she fell asleep, leaving him with nothing but questions.

Memory’s whole body ached. She woke slowly, hating the idea of moving, doing anything other than lying still, half-conscious.

She’d gone right off the deep end last night and a dark apathy spread within her. Even opening her eyes was more effort than she liked.

Hope sat on the end of her bed and poked her feet through the blankets. She smiled widely.

Memory pulled one of her pillows over her face and mumbled through it. “What are you happy about?”

“This time I will say it. I told you so. Didn’t I say you could have him?”

Memory bolted upright, her heart kicking into life again.
Roen. Frotz.

“Don’t freak out. This is a good thing. Forget about Eloryn, you and Roen can be happy.”

Memory’s head spun like a killer hangover. Still in her old jeans and t-shirt, she tripped out of bed, her feet getting caught in the sheets. She wobbled to the doors to her sitting room.

“I need some water. I need to think this out.”

Swinging the doors open, she saw Roen, looking disheveled in one of her armchairs, his caramel hair falling over his face. Memory cringed and hoped he was asleep but didn’t get lucky. He stood up and walked to her, looking her over as if checking for injuries.

“Morning. I thought I heard you talking to someone?” he said.

Memory glanced over her shoulder, her bedroom empty. “Just myself.”

They stared at each other, both unmoving.

Roen coughed quietly. “About last night-”

“Assbuckets.” Memory covered her face with her hands. “I am so sorry. I was freaking out and not myself and it was just a mistake. I didn’t mean it. It didn’t mean anything. We can just forget it ever—”

Roen put his arms around Memory, gently pulling her in and kissing her lips over her rambling. Memory froze, stunned, then softened into him. He lingered just a moment before pulling away, his arms running from her shoulders down her arms to hold onto her hands. He stared at their joined hands instead of looking in her eyes.

“If this is what you want, then it is what I want.”

“It’s what I keep telling myself I want. Maybe I should start listening.”

Roen smiled, but somehow it looked sad. “What I was going to say, however, was about last night and the scary magical cracking of walls and flashing out of existence business.”

“Oh. That.” Memory sat down on a turned over desk. Books and papers littered the floor under her feet. The whole room looked like a tornado hit it. Clara was going to kill her.

“Was that… you?” Roen asked.

Memory nodded. Roen was the closest friend she had at the moment, other than Hope. Maybe she could talk to him. “Things have been happening to me. Some of my memories are coming back, but other bad things are happening too, like the Memory-localized-tremors when I get upset. I’m also kinda slipping through Veil doors without meaning to.”

Outrage spread over Roen’s face. “You haven’t told anyone about this? Mem, you need help and this is far from my field of expertise.”

Memory kicked at the papers on the floor. “I wanted to work it out on my own. Promise me you won’t tell Lory, okay? She’s just too busy right now. I don’t want to worry her any more with this.”

“Mem,” Roen shook his head.

“No, I don’t want her to know. I just can’t trust her right now, to not freak out I mean, with all the other stress she’s under. I’ll work this out on my own.”

“All right. But you don’t need to keep secrets, not from me at least.” Roen shrugged and sat on the tipped over desk next to her. He pulled her iron knife from his pocket and handed it to her. “You dropped this last night. I thought you’d purged it.”

Memory cradled the knife in her palm. “Yeah, I thought so too. I should probably get rid of it again. Speaking of secrets, do you want to see something cool?”

“I suppose?”

Memory grinned. “Can you give me some time to clean up and meet up again after lunch?”

Roen gave her a deadpan look. “It’s already past midday.”

“So I slept in!” Memory pouted. “You were in here all night? I don’t think our reputations can take that.”

“It’s all right. No one saw me come in. I don’t know where your guards were, but they are back at your door again now,” Roen said.

Memory thought back to her climb to the tower and encounter with Hayes. The guards must have known she wasn’t in her room and been looking for her. “Okay, new plan. You hang out until I’m decent again, then I’ll leave first and draw the stooges off. You can get out when the coast is clear. Then we’ll go and get rid of this nasty iron again.”

Memory stood up, wafting her t-shirt and longing to get into clean clothes. Roen grabbed her hand and pulled her back to him, kissing her temple. He frowned as he looked at her.

“Last night, it wasn’t a mistake, at all, but we should still keep this between ourselves. There’s just too much politics involved. You understand, right?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Memory slipped into her bedroom and closed the door between them. She took a deep breath to steady herself.

The kisses made her feel wanted, warm and real. Alive again. But Memory kept spiraling to the same black thought.
He doesn’t really want me. He’s just taking the look-a-like runner-up prize.

Hope’s voice came from over her shoulder, whispering, echoing her thoughts. “He just doesn’t want precious Eloryn to find out and be upset. If you don’t do something, you’ll always be second to her.”

Memory wore the dress Isabeth gave her, since it had managed the journey well last time. Her bodyguards followed close behind when she left her chambers, and Memory realized her own escape would be trickier than Roen’s. She strolled the halls as boringly as possible, hoping they’d leave her be, but they remained diligent. Trying a new tactic, she took a seat and hitched her skirts up to sit cross-legged. When they turned away as they had before, Memory jumped back up and slipped unseen into the servant runs.

Roen waited there for her, and met her with a light kiss on her cheek.

Memory put her finger to her lips and motioned for Roen to follow her. She ran her hand along the stone wall in the narrow tunnel until she felt the waxy lump of her candle stub that she’d left as a marker. Feeling for the door, she tugged and it swung open. Roen followed her in, and when the door closed, she lit a candle for both of them.

“I thought you could cast the light spell now?”

Memory patted the purse at her side. “Not with my knife on me. And for other reasons, you’ll see.”

“What is this place?” he asked.

Memory led the way, skipping down the stone steps. “Something Will and me found. I don’t know if anyone else knows about it. Just wait till we get to the bottom.”

The permanently damp state of the tunnel made the steps slippery and Memory’s foot skidded. Roen caught her hand and held it tight. “Slow down, you’ll fall and break your neck.”