Rage built and I tried to shove it down. At my core, I knew this wasn’t the time, but it was hard to ignore the sheer terror on Caspian’s face as he peered through the bars. Pleaded. Was ignored by Grey, Kylan, and everyone else.
“You’re a monster.”
The thought was so loud he heard it, though he wasn’t in control of his own mind anymore.
“That’s in the eye of the beholder.”
“You can’t seriously tell me you don’t believe yourself to be one?”
“I learned young the only way to keep the people you love safe is to step on others on your rise to the top.”
It was ridiculous. No good person would be happy being kept safe by their protector prolonging others’ suffering. My head pounded and I wasn’t sure if it was the magic expenditure, or how aggressively I was grinding my teeth.
I dove back into his memories, this time searching for certain ones. Any with me in them. The first I found was from a year ago. Kylan showed him a picture of me from Club Chaos’ website. I mentally wrapped the memory in my fist and pulled it from him.
He let out a pained groan and I paused.
I hadn’t been told this process would hurt him. There were a lot of memories for me to extract. Was this a superficial pain, or could it seriously fuck things up if I took too much from him?
Grabbing another vision of me from his mind, I yanked. Grey moaned again, but the pain seemed low grade. An amount he certainly fucking deserved, and could survive. I took more memories, uncaring about the sounds he made. When I could see nothing else of myself in his mind, I pulled up one of the images I wanted to implant.
It was the fallen angel Shan and Caspian had fought against. I’d remembered him clearly enough I could create a mental picture, and in this false memory he was asking Grey to leave a specific side door unlocked and unguarded, so he could come and go freely. I hoped it wasn’t completely unrealistic for Grey to comply with such a request, but there was a degree of compulsion to what I was doing. In this memory, he’d already agreed.
He just had to not question it.
I was about to implant the memory when sharp pain pierced my head, a memory of my own drawn to the forefront of my thoughts.
Maisie and I were gallivanting along the beach, both of us younger than ten years old. It was the earliest memory I had of my sister. For a second I wondered why it was coming to the forefront now, and then Joanne’s warning echoed.
“Be aware it won’t come without a cost.”
My blood ran cold as the image played out in front of me, pictured alongside the memory I wanted to give to Grey. I removed one hand from his temple, blindly grappling for the carneliclase keychain. It grounded me, but Maisie and I didn’t vanish.
This was what I would lose.
Memories I couldn’t get back because my sister wasn’t here, and there was no guarantee I would ever be able to save her.
Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes and I hesitated, hyper-aware of how little time I had to decide. There was no time to bid farewell to the memories.
After my moment’s pause, I shoved the new memory into Grey’s head, feeling it pulse down our temporary, forced connection. My memory dissipated like a plume of smoke, blowing away from both of us. Another memory appeared right away, before I’d pulled up the next thing I wanted to use to manipulate Grey. Rapidly, it went up in smoke too.
No. Fuck. No.It wasn’t a one-to-one trade. I’d started, and I wouldn’t stop losing memories until I was out of Grey’s head.
I tried to take my time concocting the next memory, featuring Kylan telling him he was one wrong move from being a training dummy. It was meant to be a motivator; to help convince Grey he wanted to kill Kylan like we wanted him to. With my distraction, it was half-baked but I shoved it into his mind, anyway.
For the last memory, I tried to focus. Did my best to ignore my memories of Maisie slipping away as I formulated a visual of Grey and I talking. I knew what we were supposed to be talking about. The words had been carefully chosen by the group, looked over with a fine-tooth comb to ensure they were as believable as possible.
In the panic of the moment, I forgot all of them.
I made them up, telling him some bullshit about how he needed to take out Kylan once and for all when I gave him the signal.
Then, I pushed the memory in and tried to bring myself out of his mind.
It didn’t work.
I couldn’t cut the cord holding us together, that imaginary string. Maisie was vanishing before my eyes and no matter how hard I fought, no matter how I mentally screamed and pulled and tugged at the thread, I couldn’t sever it. My sister would continue to disappear unless I broke myself apart from Grey.
What would disappear after her?
