53. Chapter 52
A week passed since she received the letter on her pillow, and she hadn’t been left alone once.
She loved her friends. She lov—cared about Ezra.
But God, if she could not get a moment alone soon, she would scream.
She was in the library, trying to find answers about whatever was in the vial she had taken from Abbott’s lab.
She could barely concentrate with Maeve lingering around the corners, pretending to stock the same books over and over.
“You don’t have to do that,” Ivy said, standing from her chair. She needed to go find more books somewhere in the botany section on the third floor. “We’re in the same room, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Maeve sighed, tapping her fingers against the banister. “We agreed t—”
Ivy’s head fell back, and she groaned. “I promise I’ll scream if someone tries to attack.”
Maeve stared at her for a moment, contemplating whether to extend a little freedom. But she gave in and faltered toward the library desk. “Fine, I got a lot of returns from last semester to go through, anyway. I’ll come check on you every once in a while.”
Ivy smiled and made her way upstairs. She wasn’t entirely sure what else was in this potion other than the rose extract and sweet enfantium.
So she grabbed a few books that included the last ingredient she was sure of.
Over the next hour, she scoured book after book until she finally came across a passage about special interactions the syrup had with other plants.
When combined with the powdered form of hallucinogenic bolete mushrooms, such as the roseoflavium or the malumorium, the concoction will become iridescent.
Malumorium. Where had she heard that name before? She racked her brain until she finally came across the memory. It was the name of the mushroom she fell on by the lake. Something pricked at the back of her neck, and her magic ran cold. She looked just in time to see Rhea approaching her.
Her cropped black hair was tangled, and the normal shade of purple in the corners of her eyes was darker. Even her cheeks had hollowed slightly. Was she not sleeping at all?
“What are you doing here?” Ivy asked quietly as Rhea sat next to her.
She wasn’t sure what else to say. It was the first time she’d seen her since the mirrors.
Was she still mad? She wasn’t sure. Her mind was more like a tangled web of red string pinned across a corkboard than a functioning part of her body.
“I get you don’t want to talk to me,” she muttered, playing with the ends of her sweatshirt sleeves poking out from her jacket, which she was wearing for once. It was as if the environment got the memo that Ivy’s situation was dire and made the temperature match the mood.
“I don—”
“They’re watching you, right now,” Rhea whispered.
She tilted her head a fraction in the direction of the other side of the third floor.
Ivy stole a glance, and her breath hitched when a porcelain-masked figure in all black lingered at the edge of the shadows between the stacks.
Her magic tingled again, and the person faded into the darkness.
She turned back to Rhea. “I know.” The tremor in her voice betrayed her confidence. She assumed she was being watched. But not so close.
Rhea scoffed, clearly not buying into the lie. “Sure.” Then she shifted in her seat, turning away from the darkened figure. “If you want to leave, I’ll walk back with you to make sure you’re not alone.”
“And why would I want you to do that?”
“Because if you weren’t at least curious about what I have to say, you would’ve gone back to the second floor with Maeve when I first sat down.”
She snapped her gaze away from her back to the book, chewing at her bottom lip as if she were digesting Rhea’s observation.
The thing was… she wasn’t wrong. The anger that had boiled over when they last saw each other was now barely a simmer, leaving only confusion and longing for answers in its midst. Why did Briar treat Rhea the way she did—if she did—and why didn’t she treat Ivy the same?
Or could Ivy not remember, like she couldn’t remember most of the blood ritual?
Ivy shut the book gently, stacking it on top of the others she’d taken. “Fine.” After putting the books back on the shelves and receiving a questioning look from Maeve, they left the library to go to Embry.
Several questions flooded her mind at once, her mouth opening and closing again as she parsed through them. “So”—she exhaled, glancing at Rhea—“if she treated you so terribly, why hide her? Why go through the trouble of helping her?”
Rhea took a deep breath, her dark eyes searching the sky as if she were trying to find the words to say, before meeting Ivy’s stare.
“Guilt. Just because someone treats you like shit doesn’t mean you should do it in return.
I guess I learned that lesson the hard way this time.
What’s happening may be bigger than me, than what I’ve done, but I’ll have to live with the fact I had a role to play in what comes next. ”
“And why would she do such a thing to you?” Ivy swallowed roughly as her breaths shallowed. She knew what Rhea implied. As much as Ezra wanted to deny it, the truth of their situation was becoming clearer day by day.
Rhea shrugged. “Not sure. My guess is some form of childhood trauma. I never found out the real reason. Nobody did.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Rhea sighed as they neared Embry. “There were a few others she would bully. Start rumors, set them up for trouble, then she’d…
erase herself from those memories. Like she was never a part of it to begin with.
Sometimes they’d forget the whole thing, and everyone would call them a liar on top of whatever they were being accused of. ”
Ivy screeched to a halt. Her breath shallowed.
Rhea turned around, and her brows knitted together. “Ivy?”
“How do you know she did that?” she asked frantically. It couldn’t be true. Briar couldn’t have done such a thing, especially memory spells like that at such a young age. She stepped closer to Rhea, her hands coming to her shoulders and squeezing. “How?”
Rhea sniffled as she gaped at Ivy. The cold had turned her small nose bright pink.
“She did it to me. When she left my school, she wiped herself from my memory, so I didn’t know who started the constant harassment.
I nearly drove myself mad trying to figure it out, and it wasn’t until after graduation that I found another arcane who was willing to help me. ”
Ivy’s hands dropped from Rhea’s shoulders, and her stare fell to the ground.
All she could do was stand still, as if the freezing temperatures had encased her in ice.
But the wind threatened to topple her any second, shattering her and her world into pieces.
If she didn’t remember the ritual, what else of her mind was lost?
Every memory of her best friend she’d had in her mind for twelve years—the laughter, the tears, the secrets shared—was all another lie.