Chapter 17 You Don’t Remember It But I Remember You
You Don’t Remember It
But I Remember You
Lucian
D
esdemona’s limbs are bound to the chair, the shackles forged from Irisan ash holding her in place.
They should keep her magic dormant. Though it’s taking longer than I expected for her to wake, perhaps because of the ash.
If she never wakes again, that would work in my favor—an easy way to defeat an Arcane. That’s unlikely to be the case.
Her head drapes to the side, unable to hold itself up. Perhaps she’s already come back to life, silently waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I have no idea what she knows or what she’s planning, so I don’t dare look away from her face.
My gaze drops as flames spark at her feet. The fire travels up her legs, twisting around her torso like living tendrils. In seconds, her body is consumed, transformed into fire itself. Yet she doesn’t make a sound. She breathes beneath the flames.
I watch, more entranced than I was moments ago. I’ve never witnessed immortality, yet somehow it feels hauntingly familiar.
The curtains beside her catch fire, and I hold back, reaching for the little red knife at my waist in case I need the extra power to quench the flames.
I never have to. The fire dies on its own, smoke curling through the room.
In the chair where Desdemona once sat, there’s now a body of ash, shaped unmistakably like her.
Her elbow pokes out, as though she’s a butterfly escaping its cocoon.
Her hands follow, reborn. She claws at the ash around her face, and the moment her mouth is free, she spits.
With a sigh, Desdemona looks up at me. Her eyes are only brown, human, though I can tell there’s something between me and the true her. I reach out, unraveling the puzzle of her glamour to see the truth of her.
It’s a blink-and-miss kind of magic, but for the moment I hold back the glamour, her eyes are the red of blood and death. I tear my gaze away before hers consumes me.
Desdemona reaches for her chest, barely able to with the shackles holding her in place. Her expression remains calm, revealing nothing as she surveys my room. Her mouth falls into a frown, her eyes following. For a moment, she looks sad. Not menacing or deadly.
“Aibek,” she says.
I need to kill her, to kill all of them, to find out how to reach The Void. But her voice—it’s...
Haunting.
Desdemona glances down at her chest where I stabbed her. Ash coats her like clothes, each subtle movement sending another flake cascading to the floor.
“Do you have something to say?” she asks. “Or did you just kill me to stare longer?”
Ah, she’s annoyed now. I prefer it to her melancholy.
“And what if I did?” I say—taunting her. “Gods know you deserve it.”
Her upper lip twitches as she glares at the shackles. “What do you want?”
I clear my throat. “Show me how to get to The Void, and I won’t finish the job.”
Desdemona chuckles, though no humor reaches her eyes. “I don’t know what you think just happened,” she says, glancing down at her body covered in ash, “but I’m unkillable.” Her whisper washes over me, settling along my bones like a muscle that belongs there.
At once, I look away. “On the contrary,” I remark, “I have a soul-sucker.”
Desdemona inhales shakily, but not the nervous kind of shaking—the amused kind. “Do your worst, Prince.”
“Do you enjoy making things harder than they have to be?”
“You wouldn’t be the first to accuse me of that.”
The door to my room creaks open. Desdemona glances over her shoulder, a blend of shock and hope on her face—upturned lips, crinkled eyebrows. With my shadows, I slam the door shut before anyone can step inside.
“It’s me,” Wendy whispers through the crack in the door.
“Another time.”
For a moment, it’s silent—Desdemona watches the entrance intently—until Wendy says, “It happened again.”
I stifle a sigh, staring at the Arcane. Wendy and I are aligned enough that she won’t be shocked to see one tied to my chair, though she might not recognize it’s an Arcane.
“Where’s your glamour?” I ask.
“Bite me,” Desdemona spits.
“Gladly.” I rise, placing my hands on her shoulders. Her skin is warm through the fabric, and her power rushes through me. It culminates in my brain, making me dizzy, yet unable to let her go.
Slowly, my fingers trail upward, brushing the side of her throat. Her pulse flutters beneath my touch. I stop at her cheek, my thumb grazing the curve of it. Something solid rests just above, covering her eyes. I reach for it, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her.
She doesn’t flinch, nor does she pull away. That angers me more than if she had.
“You know,” Desdemona whispers, “the last time your hands were on me, it was in a caress.”
I freeze at her words, my hand lingering on her face.
A crooked smirk tugs at her lips. “It was right before you kissed me,” she finishes.
A lie. I would never kiss an Arcane. And yet, if her journal was truthful, we were something.
It couldn’t have been.
Quickly, I grab the object concealing her eyes and step away. Twisting the metal in my hands, I realize they’re Cynthia’s glasses. She’s helping an Arcane infiltrate the academy.
As Wendy enters, her eyes immediately divert to Desdemona, as expected. But I don’t expect her to whisper, “I know you.”
Desdemona’s eyes flicker, shifting from narrow and annoyed to wide and hopeful. “You do?” she asks, her voice soft—much too soft for an Arcane. I want to scrub her voice from my brain.
Wendy stares, shaking her head before answering, “I can feel you.”
“But you don’t know me?” Desdemona whispers.
Wendy shakes her head.
“You can feel her?” I ask, facing Wendy. “Her emotions?”
“It’s more than emotion,” she mutters, stepping a little closer to Desdemona.
“What is it telling you?”
Wendy’s voice is a distant breath as she says, “She’s fighting in a world that keeps trying to destroy her.”
Desdemona’s eyebrows furrow as she looks away, but I can’t stop looking at her. I wait for her to meet my gaze again, unsure why I wish for it.
Then Wendy whispers, “Don’t say that,” the color draining from her face.
Desdemona leans back, though she’s unable to move far with the shackles. “Don’t say what?” she asks slowly.
Tears well in Wendy’s eyes, and Desdemona glances at me briefly before Wendy lunges at her, knocking the chair to the floor. She claws at Desdemona’s face, breaking the skin, and blood trickles to the floor.
“Take these fucking shackles off!” Desdemona screams, searching for me. Two long scratches run from her forehead to her lips, one slicing through her eye.
“Aibek! This hurts like a bitch,” she says, blood gushing over her closed eye.
Desdemona deserves this—I’m sure of it. An Arcane always does. Yet I push into Wendy’s subconscious, wading through what feels like cobwebs—millions of them clinging to my limbs. Wendy doesn’t resist. Maybe the hallucination has her too deeply submerged to notice me slipping in.
I try to orient myself within her subconscious. I glance toward Desdemona, though the image is wrong. Through Wendy’s eyes, I see her. A warped reflection. Wendy looking at Wendy.
The reflection smiles. A cruel, twisted smirk as the image of Wendy shifts into the shadow of a boy. Wendy attacks—clawing at Desdemona’s body, thinking it’s the shadow.
I command Wendy to still, and she fights. The cobwebs in her mind writhe to life, choking me, forcing their way into my mouth, dry and sticky as they crawl down my throat.
Her subconscious lashes out, though I don’t relent.
I clamp down on her limbs, first stealing her hands to stop her attack.
I move to her legs, then reach for her mind, coaxing it to silence.
Cradling her like a child, softening her instead of fighting her, she lulls to sleep, collapsing to the floor.
I take a breath, trying to re-acclimate myself as I open my eyes, back in my body.
The little red knife sits sheathed at my waist, and I reach for it.
It hums with power, gifting some to me. It takes moments for me to recuperate.
Crawling into someone’s subconscious is one of the most taxing forms of magic.
Yet, I stand, hardly winded as my hand clutches the hilt.
I could use many more of these, indeed.
Wendy lies unconscious on the ground, and my attention turns to Desdemona. She’s tied to the chair, tipped over on the floor.
For a reason beyond me, I step forward. Desdemona watches each movement intently as I release the shackles, my fingers brushing over her skin. The first time, it’s an accident, but as I move on to the shackles at her wrists, I purposely touch her fingers.
Power hums beneath them, similar to the red knife.
Desdemona makes no move against me when she’s free. All she does is rub her raw wrists, then touch the scratch on her face, her hands trembling. The wound sizzles, closing—cauterizing, I realize—though her eye still doesn’t open. The blood is gone; the scar remains.
She touches a finger to her eye. “It’ll probably take a few days to heal.” Her voice is soft, unlike the disgusting Arcane that claimed to be my father. This must be planned. To persuade me to let my guard down. Did I last time? Did I know she was Arcane before?
Did I truly kiss her?
I have so many questions that only she can answer, yet I’d never trust what she says.
Desdemona’s lone eye looks at Wendy as she asks, “What happened?”
Despite not trusting her, it feels pointless to lie after what she’s seen. “She’s been hallucinating.”
Desdemona’s head snaps in my direction. “Hallucinating how?”
“She was looking at herself when she was looking at you.”
Without a word, Desdemona raises an eyebrow. I wait for her to challenge me, but she barely moves. A sorrow spirals in her gaze, and I wonder if the journals were true. Or perhaps she’s just a good liar.
When Desdemona rises at last, I summon my shadows, ready for a fight. She does nothing more than turn toward the door. Before she reaches it, my shadows tangle around her legs.
“You’re gonna trap two girls in your room?” She frowns.
I tip my head to the other girl. “Wendy’s free to go.”
“But not me?”
She already knows the answer, but she wants me to say it, to hear the knife twist in my voice. I don’t say anything.
“What happened to you?” she whispers. “All I see is your hatred.”
“And what do you have?” I ask, making a point to look at her the way she’s looking at me. To observe. “If not hatred?”
Desdemona shakes her head. “I don’t have anything.”
Because we forgot her? The thought unsettles me.
All those things in the journal—the words I couldn’t help but read over and over—were they truly hers?
I’m staring at this girl, and I can’t tell if I already know her mind or if I’ve filled it with the words she left for me to find.
Perhaps that’s the trick, compelling me to see something more than what’s there.
I’m not sure what inspires me to release the shadows from her legs and use them to open the door, letting her go.
She grabs her glasses and doesn’t look back.