Chapter 46
Jane
The bath was a cold plunge straight into my worries again, and unfortunately Reagan was not in it.
Cerridwen had summoned him to review pleas for the next Audience, which he told me was nothing more than code for her chiding him about Varian’s sudden involvement.
I told him to just tell her his plan already, as any sensible lord would tell his advisor, but Reagan told me we would all see soon enough.
After giving him one last idea to consider and stealing a kiss in the hallway, I left him and padded to the washroom.
Soon, my feet carried me toward the infirmary. It had become a route I walked so often that I no longer had to think about it. My thoughts were all bleak and full of dread, but I forced myself to school my face.
Separation was not the same as losing someone, although the forgetting felt awfully like it. Father would still be himself, but he would not remember who he was to us.
Joy was there, clearly having smoothed over her resentment, even if I knew it would take her time to process the lie he had fed us. She sat at the edge of his bed, reaching for his glass of water on a tray that hovered in front of him.
His complexion held more colour today. He sat straighter, chewing something he had been given as breakfast.
“It’s solid,” Father exclaimed when I approached, his silver-blond brows lifting high.
“Yes,” Joy answered with a faint smirk. She turned the glass slightly, and the water inside had turned into a block of ice, sliding across the table, the sleeve of her grey cotton sweater remaining perfectly dry.
“You need to teach me that,” I told her, taking my place on the other side of the bed. My burgundy long-sleeve shirt was far too thin for the cool air of this room. It was always kept at a lower temperature that reminded me of frigid mornings. The scent of herbs and medicine never changed either.
“That is not all,” she said.
The lines of her mana gleamed faintly across her skin as her hand hovered over the cube of ice. It shattered into several pieces that remained suspended in the air. With a level of concentration only Joy possessed, she arranged the fragments into the shape of a bird. An eagle.
“That is Jane’s familiar,” she said.
“How in the gods’ names did you do that?” I asked, openly gawking at the ice bird as its wings beat in the air.
A subtle curl of her mouth told me she found my shock amusing. “An exercise for control from Elaith. I thought it looked beautiful. Like a sculpture.”
It certainly looked like art. I could almost hear her humming as she practised.
I wondered whether I would ever hold that level of control. Her mastery over ice was flawless. But Joy—whether she was cooking or shaping ice into birds—always had a far better attention to detail.
Father watched the bird, but he watched her more, seemingly content just to see her at ease.
Hildegard’s words drifted back to me. There was nothing in Joy that needed fixing. She had a stronger access, like Reagan, and the way her mind worked might one day become her greatest strength in controlling it.
“And how is this Elaith tutor?” Father asked. “Do you like him?”
“He is competent and kind enough,” she replied, clearly more invested in the bird as it swooped over our heads and returned to the glass, melting into water once again.
I cursed under my breath, bending toward the cup as if I hadn’t seen it. Unbelievable.
“Language, Jan,” Father reprimanded.
I clicked my tongue. “She’s showing off.”
Joy grinned. “Where were you last night?”
Father reached for the glass while I gave her a look.
“I came to bed after you fell asleep,” I lied, offering her exactly two blinks.
We were far too old for this game, but it still worked. Years ago, we had invented this unspoken signal—two blinks. Since my subtle expressions usually slipped past her, this cue signalled a secret we didn’t want Father fretting about, like when I returned late from a tryst.
She recognised it now. Joy’s face went unreadable, one of the expressions she excelled at.
“You must have left before me this morning,” she said, voice even.
Her judgement though, was obvious. Joy never lied about being with a man, even when Father frowned at her and asked far too many questions.
She didn’t understand why I avoided sharing anything of my own relationships.
It just made him uncomfortable, and I had no desire to tell either of them that I had spent the night with Reagan in a study using a couch as a bed.
It was not that I turned prudish in Father’s presence. It was simply how we were.
The realisation that this wouldn’t be who we were for much longer struck me in the chest. We would become strangers to him.
“What did he say?” Father asked, pulling my focus back to him. The corners of his eyes creased, as if bracing for the answer.
Frowning, I shook my head.
His shoulders sagged, his breath leaving him in a weary sigh. “There was always this possibility.”
Joy’s posture had gone rigid.
“It won’t be today,” I told them, settling into the chair beside the bed. “We have one or two days more.”
And then we would need to say goodbye.
I braced for their outrage. I expected curses, refusals. Yet both of them were resigned. Their acceptance made my throat tighten, as if they hadn’t been that hopeful before. It made me want to refuse the court again, to find some forbidden way to let him keep even a sliver of us.
But the consequences of allowing him to remember, the punishments Joy and I would face for willingly letting a human keep knowledge of the mageborn, was discouragement enough.
Reagan had told me what happened to others who had parted from their families, people who had surrendered their memories so the tenuous peace after an old war could be achieved. None of it had been an idle choice.
Father pretended that all was well, smiling as he spoke with Joy, but anguish swam in his eyes.
The morning stretched into the afternoon. We stayed in the infirmary, just the three of us, sharing whatever meals were being prepared in the kitchens.
Father kept jesting that he would not miss the men who approached either one of us. Joy retorted that she would not miss the messes he made or him constantly forgetting to handle our taxes on time.
He asked about our abilities and how we were faring. I told them I had wielded yesterday.
He was proud, wistful. He spoke more than I had ever heard him speak about the past. Our father had never been a nostalgic man, yet today he sifted through every memory he could think of, recounting them as though…
As though he wanted to feel them again before they vanished.
It made me clench my hands into fists when I understood.
So, Joy and I followed his lead. We listened as he remembered my nerves before starting at Pember & Quill.
Joy’s first attempt at a noodle dish she deemed disgusting even after he insisted she make it again.
First bike rides. First falls. All our firsts until his eyes glimmered and I felt both full and hollowed.
The next day, I decided he should have something to take with him. I had asked Niamh, the lead runesmith in the city, to meld our nullifying rings into a wristlet. She carved a protective sigil and two curved J’s in it.
Father put it on immediately. His throat bobbed as he looked at it.
I couldn’t carve any true memory into it, since memories of us would be forbidden.
So, I asked Reagan to weave in the scent of baking dough and old book pages.
Perhaps some part of our father would recognise the comfort, even if the memories behind it were gone.
◆◆◆
When the court day arrived, the hollow inside me was deep. I had braced for this moment and still found the reality far more difficult to withstand.
In a procedure room in the 79th court, an official healer asked Father to lie down on a bed. He did, his brown eyes bright as they met mine across the room. I forced myself to smile, swallowing the lump in my throat. Beside me, Joy’s shoulder rose and took way too long to fall again.
The healer stepped back from his elevated bed. “Is there anything you would like to say before we start?”
I glanced between her and Father, unsure if I even could speak.
Father beat me to it. “Be careful and stay together. Be each other’s family.” His gazed bounced between my sister and me. “I don’t care what they do. I will always remember my daughters.”
Heat stung behind my eyes. “We love you. “We’ll remember you.”
“I forgive you,” Joy whispered.
Father’s lips curled, and then he nodded at the healer.
She came to stand near his head and placed her fingers on his temples. He was unconscious within minutes.
I reached for Joy’s hands and clutched it tight. The unbidden tears just…streamed down my face.
Something cleaved inside me as we watched his memories being taken, being erased, being altered into a whole different reality. We watched as the family he built, that he protected, was taken away from him.
All because he dared to love a mageborn woman.
Once it was done, we were allowed to bring him home.
We left him sleeping. The caretaker from Ehrfurt, an older nurse dismissed from the town clinic, would tend to him.
His account would hold retirement funds and his late wife’s inheritance.
To the neighbours, he would be the widowed merchant with no daughters.
I would still look after him through trips with Gwin and Joy, using the train stations to reach human territory. I would watch over him.
And I told Joy that, as long as we remembered our family, as long as we guarded the truth of who we had been, our family would not be forgotten.