Chapter Twenty-Five
Iris
As my eyes open, I pull in a deep breath. The sudden rush of air causes the muscles I my throat to spasm in pain, forcing me into a coughing fit.
“Try not to move.” I recognize Ezra’s voice as gentle hands drift under my head, lifting me higher on the pillow. As I blink, the room slowly comes into view, and I note that I don’t recognize it.
The walls are high, the colors are forest green with murals of locations in Xyrannis, I’m assuming. The window right next to my bed overlooks miles of forest, with some branches falling into my view. I’m not in the mountains, nor am I near the ocean.
“Where—” I break into another coughing fit as desperation to speak eludes me.
“Try not to speak. Remus crushed your throat. Can you write down what you need to say?” he asks, handing me an electronic pad with a pen.
My vision blurs as heavier tears fill my eyes, and I take the pad from him.
Remus attacked me. And not in the “I’m warning you” kind of way. He tried to kill me...intimately. And he would have, had Ezra not stepped in. I tremble as I recall the expression on his features. He was so cold, much colder than the moment I met him in the blight.
I sob aloud as the memory of what he was doing when we arrived hits me. He wiped my existence out and moved on without so much as a goodbye.
“Where am I? What happened?”
I flip the pad around to Ezra, and I can see from his expression that he doesn’t want to tell me.
Lucky for him, the door opens, and Xion enters the room.
It’s eerie how much she and Remus look alike.
And while his intimidation is unmatched, she is a close second, even if she seems to be dressed in what this world considers loungewear.
For once, irritation isn’t on her features as she looks at me. She is uncharacteristically gentle as she kneels next to the bed, her eyes falling to the pad. She places her hand on my leg, her tone soft.
“You’re in my home. It was the only place we could think to bring you. The only place she won’t expect you to be—”
“Xion!” Ezra hisses. “I haven’t told her yet.”
Xion’s eyes widen slightly, and she looks away, allowing Ezra to speak. Their hesitance is driving me crazy, and I sit up, tapping my finger over where I wrote ‘what happened’ frantically.
Ezra is the one who decides to tell me.
“We don’t know exactly why or how…but Remus doesn’t know who you are. He has no recollection of you,” he says.
My fingers feel numb as I sink against the pillow, looking into the faces of his siblings. Their faces blur slightly, and as I blink, they clear once again as the tears escape from my eyes, rolling down my cheeks.
My sob fills the air as I lower my head to write more, but Xion’s hand closes over mine, and as I look into her eyes, I see she has more to tell me.
“While you were unconscious, our mother came to both of our homes, looking for you. We were very lucky that she showed up to mine first, so that I could warn Ezra,” she says softly.
Remus’s words make sense now.
“Stop her. Protect her.”
He meant to stop his mother. And protect me. Xion and Ezra’s expressions indicate they know it too. I use what little bit of energy I have to rise in the bed, shoving Ezra. To my shock, he lets me, falling back as he looks away in shame.
“I told you!” My voice is a cracked, hoarse whisper. And only a few of my words even make it out as my throat constricts, forcing more coughs.
Xion’s arms are around me, gently moving back onto the bed as she tries to calm me down.
“You’re safe for now. She won’t be looking for you. She thinks you died from complications with the bond…that you were too weak to adjust to it. She doesn’t know that we know the truth. I swear Iris, we will fix this…”
Her voice disappears as my panic blooms. I’m not in his memory. He has no idea who I am or the past that we shared. My sobs grow deeper as I think of his words.
“She’s taking it from me.”
Our memories. Our life. Our hardships. Our growth.
She took all of it, just like that. Within seconds, as if it didn’t matter.
So the vision I had wasn’t from Remus’s point of view.
She tried to kill me, and he must have stopped her somehow.
Remus knew she was coming after me. He knew and tried to get a message out that none of us could decipher until now.
And if not for luck, she would have travelled to this plane to finish the job.
Why? Why would she do something so cruel to her son?
Why would she go to such lengths to keep him as a docile puppet to use at her discretion?
There must be something deeper happening here.
And as I am now, I won’t be able to figure it out.
No one will. Remus, before he met me, was never one to open up.
“Lie back, Iris. Let me heal you,” Xion says gently, cutting through my thoughts.
I hate how kind she is to me. It rubs salt into the already festering wound inside of me. She knows this is bad. It has made her see me as something other than an irritation or an enemy. It’s making her see me in pity as the whole of what was lost is realized.
“I’m not as good as Remus, but I can at least stop the pain,” she says as she places her fingers on my throat.
Warmth pours from her fingertips, easing the pain in my throat.
But it doesn’t stop the hole in my chest from growing.
And as I shift my attention to Ezra, I can see that he feels the same.
We all know this out of our depth. And none of us are strong enough to face Remus and figure out how to fix it.
I flinch as pain shoots through me. It’s sharp and near my stomach. I groan, my hand flying to the area when I hear Xion gasp, her hand lifting from my neck.
“Ezra!” she shouts.
But the world blurs as my body takes on a mind of its own, convulsing.
I feel their hands on me, holding me down as warmth spreads between my legs.
I choke on the air, unable to breathe, unable to move.
The pain is excruciating. I take one last deep breath, unable to scream from the state of my throat as my eyes roll back, and I lose consciousness.
Ezra
We’re fucked. And I don’t even know how bad.
I lean over the railing, vomit pouring past my lips from everything we’ve been through in the last seventy-two hours. Iris was right. Our mother wiped Remus’s mind, and after making sure the source of his bond was gone, she’s once again disappeared where neither Xion nor I can track her.
As a result, Remus not only almost killed Iris, but also triggered the loss of a life that was barely blooming.
I know my brother. I’ve always wanted to be like him. But I’ve always acknowledged that was nothing more than a dream. He was always able to do so much more than me and Xion. In my eyes, he was indestructible.
But now…with this…if he ever knew, it would kill him.
Hell, it might kill us. He’s different with Iris.
I’ve seen a side to him that I’ve never seen in all my years of life.
He’s always been protective, yes. But still he remained distant and detached.
Only recently has he changed and it’s all because of Iris.
I look up as Xion joins me on the balcony, her finger in her mouth as she trembles, biting her nail. She shakes her head, tears streaming from her eyes.
“I couldn’t save it,” she whispers.
Nausea hits me again, and I retch over the railing.
I knew the second I saw the blood that it was too late, but Xion stayed for hours, trying to save it.
When I finish, I turn back to face Xion, leaning against the rail as I slide down, exhaustion washing over me.
I don’t know which issue to tackle first.
“What do we do now? Do we tell her?” I ask.
Xion is silent, her attention focused on the sunset.
“No,” she finally says. “She wasn’t aware of it. We take this to our graves. We tell no one, not even Remus. Ever,” she says.
I sense the fear in her voice. Remus is fiercely protective of Iris. If he knew… there’s no telling what could happen. The shattered planet in our star system is a testament to just how far Remus will go in his rage.
“And what about mother?” I ask.
Now Xion looks at me. I can see that she’s debating on telling me something, and she decides to reveal it.
“Before Remus left, he was asking questions about her…questions that I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want to believe it at the time, but I think she’s dangerous. I think this is deeper than some desire to keep control of Remus. I think it has to do with where we came from,” she says.
I shake my head in confusion. “What? What are you even saying?” I ask.
“Remus and I don’t remember our childhoods.
And I think there’s a reason for that. There are a lot of things in our lives that don’t make sense, but we never questioned them because we didn’t need to.
Remus thought getting answers would help.
He was hearing voices and having visions, and unable to control himself—”
“Iris said she was having visions too,” I say quickly.
Xion looks at me.
“For how long?” she asks.
I shake my head. “She said it in passing. She didn’t explain. She just said they felt like memories,” I say.
Xion turns away from me, placing her hands on the railing as she lowers her head.
“Fuck,” she whispers.
Discomfort twists at my insides as I imagine having to go against our mother.
She’s always been so kind and gentle to me, it never crossed my mind to question her.
But there is obviously more going on than we thought.
I just can’t imagine what could be so bad that she would act on her own like this—that she would disregard how it looks to wipe Remus’s memory and murder the woman he bonded with.
“Maybe I should go talk to her,” I say.
“No,” Xion snaps.
“You can’t trust her. She wiped Remus’s mind and took their bond.
We didn’t even know that was possible! She is not who we think she is, and there’s no telling what she would do to you if you went asking questions about things we aren’t supposed to know about.
Just look at what she did to Remus,” she says.
Guilt gnaws at me as I think of Iris’s worries before Remus came back. She said things similar, stating that I didn’t know my mother in the way I thought I did. And now, because of my negligence, we have lost more than we intended.
She shifts her attention to the glass door that leads into her home.
“For now, Iris is our top priority. We protect her until we can figure out a way to get Remus back,” she says.
I pull in a trembling breath as I imagine the trouble it could bring.
Remus almost snapped her neck in front of me.
And that’s because he was being cruel. He could have ended her life with his touch alone, but he wanted to watch her fear—watch her realize how out of place she was for speaking to him before she died.
“What if we can’t get him back? What if the Remus Iris knows is gone?” I ask, looking at Xion.
Her back remains to me as she thinks.
“That isn’t an option.” She faces me, approaching before kneeling to my height.
She gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze, offering me a smile, but I see right through it. This is going to be an uphill battle and she’s scared. We both are.
“We’re the Divine Three. If one of us is in trouble, all of us are in trouble. We’ll get him back. We have to.”