All the blood drained from Maeve’s face.
“Enough, Laurel.” Rowan stood, setting down his cup and book. “You’ve had your amusement. Now leave.”
Her full lips pouted. “I couldn’t possibly go now. I was just getting started.”
“Why don’t the two of you stay and I’ll leave?” Maeve got to her feet, snatching the pink leather book and holding it close to her chest. “It’s quite obvious Laurel’s in a shitty mood because she wasn’t able to finish what you started.”
She sent Rowan a caustic look and he had the decency to duck his head.
“If you’ll excuse me…” She started for the door. “I’m going to—”
Fire scoured her wrist and the book she held tumbled to the ground. She tugged up the sleeve of her blouse, rubbed furiously at the mark on her wrist, but the pain would not ebb. Gasping, she winced as it intensified, and needles of panic coursed up and down her spine. White hot fear clutched at her, wrapped its cruel claws around her throat and squeezed. As she stumbled forward, a sob broke free from somewhere deep inside of her.
“Maeve?” Rowan was beside her in a heartbeat. “Maeve, what’s wrong?”
But she didn’t know the answer. All she knew was crippling dread. A heavy weight of foreboding fell around her shoulders, smothering her. She sucked in a strangled gasp as the mark searing her skin throbbed with a kind of magic she didn’t recognize.
“I…” Her mind was a haze, like walking through thick mist. Unable to see. Unable to focus. She tried to think, but each time she reached for the familiar, for the recollections of her past, the memory slipped through her fingers. Vanishing. Emotions she couldn’t register crashed into her like a rogue wave, swallowing her. Drowning her. Dragging her deeper and further into an abyss of absolute nothingness. “I don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember what?” Laurel’s voice sounded from somewhere above her head, but it was distorted, like Maeve was underwater. “Talk to us, Maeve.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Something pulled at her heartstrings. A bond. A tether to another time, another place, another soul. A thread of dazzling colors expanded in her mind, stretching between a swirling golden sun and that of a crimson leaf. But it was fraying, falling apart.
She couldn’t let go. She couldn’t lose this last piece of herself. Time slowed, and with each passing second, her heartbeat diminished, along with her breath. There was nothing she could do. No way to stop it. And she watched in horror as the strand binding the two unraveled completely. Like the final crashing of a wave upon the shore, the last glimpse of a setting sun, an endless night without stars.
Screaming, she tore at her blouse to reveal the flesh above her heart. But the skin there was bare. Unblemished.
Agony swept through her. There was nothing left.
Maeve’s memory was gone.
And with it was everything and everyone she ever knew and loved.
* * *
“What in theseven hells are you doing here?” Ceridwen asked, scrubbing the sleep from her eyes. She wrapped her flowing blue robe around her, crossing her arms. “It’s barely dawn and I haven’t even had my tea yet.”
Tiernan barged into his sister’s room, sweeping past her.
“This had better be good,” she grumbled, dropping back down onto her bed. “I hate waking up early.”
“You hate waking up in general,” Tiernan countered, shaking off the distraction. He rounded on his twin. “The mural.”
She yawned. “What about it?”
“It’s sentient.”
Ceridwen stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “No, it’s not.”
“It is. I was in the library a few hours ago, reading up on some history.” He paced the room like a caged animal, the excitement of his discovery spreading through his chest. “I asked the mural a question, Cer. And it answered.”
“That’s absurd.” She snorted in disbelief. “You’re not sleeping well. Maybe it was just a dream. A hallucination perhaps.”
“I know what I saw.”
Ceridwen dragged herself off the bed and padded toward him. “Tiernan, listen to yourself. It is amural.Is it magical? Yes. Does it show us certain scenes? Of course. But it doesnothave a mind of its own.”
“It does. The mural showed me how to break through the shroud surrounding the Spring Court.” He pulled a piece of parchment from his back pocket and opened it. His rough sketch of a map paled in comparison to the ones Aran drew, but it would be enough to suffice. “Look here, see the Pass of Veils? It’s the one area where Parisa’s magic doesn’t reach. It’s an opening, a breach in her plan. We can enter Suvarese through the Pass of Veils.”
