Chapter 24
Symond
Symond’s spoon froze halfway to his mouth. The mess hall’s chatter faltered, voices dropping to whispers, then silence spreading like Thorn had just entered the room.
His spine straightened before his mind caught up. His shoulders pulled back. His hands found each other beneath the table, fingers interlocking until his knuckles whitened.
Then she was there.
Elora stepped through the doorway behind Rell. Her chin lifted, her gaze sweeping the room without flinching from the stares. Her steps didn’t hesitate. Her hands didn’t tremble. She was controlled in a way that set his nerves on edge.
She didn’t look broken.
That was the first thing that struck him, followed immediately by a sickening wave of disappointment that shocked him. Had he wanted her broken? No—Gods, no—and yet some shameful part of him had.
She moved like water while the apprentices moved like stone. It was subtle, the way her shoulders were relaxed, her stride having room to breathe. So oddly different from the rest. When she paused, the stillness wasn’t absence but potential. Like a predator deciding whether to pounce.
Heads turned. Conversations died. Spoons hovered above bowls.
Symond’s chair suddenly felt too exposed, as though someone had dragged him center stage without warning, beneath lights he couldn’t escape.
Then Violette was on her feet.
“Elora!”
Violette’s voice echoed in the mess hall.
Symond’s ribs constricted as if someone had wrapped a belt around his chest and pulled.
Violette crossed the room in three quick strides, her shoulders dropping from where they’d been hunched near her ears.
Her fingers dug into the fabric of Elora’s shirt as she pulled her close.
“You actually came.”
Symond’s mouth went dry. The air trapped in his lungs escaped in a rush that left him lightheaded.
Elora’s arms wrapped around Violette for exactly two seconds—Symond counted—before she stepped back. Her spine remained straight, her feet planted shoulder-width apart.
“You look… different,” Violette said.
The words floated past Symond, meaningless sounds. Elora had pivoted, her gaze locking onto his face across the crowded room.
His stomach dropped as if he’d missed a step in the dark. His lungs seized. His fingers froze mid-twitch on the tabletop. Her eyes—now golden, pupils contracted to pinpoints—dissected him from across the room, cataloging every detail with clinical precision.
A rabbit before a hawk. That’s what he was.
She knows, a panicked part of him thought, without knowing what it was.
Instinct kicked in before thought could follow.
He looked away.
Too fast.
The movement felt like a failure the moment he did it.
He heard a chair scrape near her. Rell shifting closer. A murmur he couldn’t quite catch.
Then Rell’s voice, low, close to her.
“Symond erased his memories.”
The words didn’t register immediately.
Erased.
Memories.
He saw it land on her face—not confusion, not curiosity. Rage. Pure, molten rage that blazed through her features like wildfire through dry brush.
She moved.
Chairs shrieked against the floor as bodies scrambled from her path. Symond’s spine snapped straight, his pulse a war drum in his throat as she halted inches from him, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating off her skin.
Up close, she was terrifying.
Not human. Not mortal.
A force of nature wearing skin that made his own feel like it might peel away from his muscles.
“How. Dare. You.”
The words weren’t shouted. They didn’t need to be.
Symond swallowed hard. “Elora, I—”
“NO.”
She stepped closer, hands slamming down on the table, leaning into his space like she’d decided to make him look at her whether he wanted to or not.
He recoiled violently.
“You don’t get to start with that.”
His eyes met hers for a heartbeat before dropping, shame burning through him like acid.
She bore down harder.
“Do you flinch every time a door opens?” she demanded. “Do you claw your way out of nightmares with your own screams in your throat?”
The words ripped something open inside him.
His body betrayed him—lungs seizing, muscles locking as if preparing for a blow.
“Because I do,” she said, voice cracking like ice in spring thaw. “Every. Single. Night.”
Symond’s fingernails cut crescents into his palms.
“I can’t sleep alone,” she continued. “I live with what you did to me. I live with it in my body. In my head.”
The room blurred at the edges.
What I did?
He didn’t remember. That was the problem. That was always the problem.
“And you just erased it?” Her laugh was sharp, broken. “What— So you could clear your conscience?”
“No,” he said hoarsely, even though she wasn’t listening.
“So, you wouldn’t have to look at what you became?”
His chest burned.
He opened his mouth again, desperate now—not to defend himself, but to understand—and she cut him off before a sound could escape.
“Or was it easier to pretend it never happened?” she pressed. “To hide your cruelty behind an empty space in your mind and call that healing?”
He looked up then.
He couldn’t help it.
Her face was blazing, eyes bright with something that made his stomach drop—not hatred, not fear.
Judgment.
Truth.
“Only a weak person erases their mistakes,” she said. “Only a coward decides they don’t want to remember the harm they caused.”
The words hit him harder than any accusation had.
Part of him wanted to scream back that she didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—what those memories had done to him.
That forgetting had been survival, not cowardice.
But another piece of him recognized her words like an echo of his own midnight thoughts.
The room had gone completely silent.
Elora straightened, pulling herself back, gaze never leaving his.
“I didn’t get that choice,” she said quietly. “So, you don’t get to walk around free of it either.”
She pivoted, her footsteps echoing—one, two, three—each one widening the distance between them.
Symond’s lungs refused to work. His fingertips tingled, gone numb against the table’s edge. The pulse in his throat hammered so violently he could see his own shirt collar trembling.
Rell’s fingers brushed Elora’s elbow as they reached the doorway, a brief touch that left no impression on her stride. The wooden door frame seemed to swallow them both, the light from the corridor beyond briefly illuminating their silhouettes before they vanished.
Symond’s gaze remained fixed on that empty doorway.
Around him, a chair leg scraped. Someone’s spoon clinked against a bowl. A whisper started, then died. The sound of his own blood rushing in his ears drowned everything else.
His anger had nowhere to go.
It didn’t flare outward. It folded in on itself, sharp and corrosive, sinking into his chest. Not rage at Elora—though part of him wanted that simplicity.
It was the anger in understanding that healing for himself—whatever that meant—wasn’t enough. It never had been. He could sit in a room and untangle fear from anger and learn all the language in the world for what had been done to him.
But it wouldn’t change what he’d done.
Accountability required memory.
Violette pulled out the chair across from him and sat, careful not to crowd him. She didn’t speak at first. Just waited, the way she always did, giving him space to decide whether he wanted to fill the silence.
“I need to know,” Symond said finally.
Violette closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. “I know you think you do.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think it. I—” His voice faltered. He forced himself to continue. “I don’t get to not know.”
Her expression softened, but her tone stayed firm. “What you’re asking for will be brutal. You erased those memories for a reason. Integration isn’t finished. You’re still—”
“Still what?” he rasped.
Still fragile, she almost said. Still raw. Still learning how not to drown.
“You don’t owe her immediacy,” Violette said instead. “Or anyone else. What Elora said— She’s angry. She has a right to be. But that doesn’t mean you have to tear yourself open before you’re ready.”
He dipped his chin once, a single sharp movement.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said, voice soft despite the tension in his shoulders. “And I’m grateful.”
“But?”
“But,” he echoed.
The space between them filled with unspoken words, heavy as stone.
Symond’s chair scraped against the floor as he stood. “Just need to breathe for a minute.”
Violette’s fingers curled and uncurled in her lap before she nodded. “I’ll wait.”
In the courtyard, sunlight slanted gold across weathered walkways that radiated heat through the soles of his boots. A wooden crack split the air as a child’s practice sword connected with another, followed by a gruff “Better! Now widen your stance!” and the bright cascade of children’s laughter.
His feet traced the perimeter path on their own, mind blank.
First came the fear—Gerard’s name like frost spreading through his veins, paralyzing him from within.
Next rose the anger, Elora’s words still scorching his skin, her judgment both earned and unbearable.
But underneath these layers something worse waited: the shadow-self he’d buried.
Neither innocent child nor redeemed man, but the version who had acted, chosen, harmed—the self he’d tried to erase along with his memories.
The path curved. Gravel bit into his boot soles. The greenhouse materialized ahead, its glass panels fracturing sunlight into kaleidoscope patterns across the walkway. Tendrils of ivy escaped through warped window frames, reaching toward freedom.
He paused at the open door. The scent hit him first—soil still damp from morning watering, crushed rosemary, something sharply citrus. His shoulders lowered an inch.
Nyla didn’t look up. Her fingers worked methodically, separating leaves from stems, the skin beneath her nails stained deep green. A streak of dirt marked her cheek where she’d absently brushed hair from her face.
“Symond.” Her voice came without surprise, without turning. “Third shelf. Small blue vial. Florence said you’d come.”
His hand trembled as he took the vial, dark liquid catching light like spilled ink. The glass was still warm from sitting in the sun.
His eyes bore into the swirling liquid, each heartbeat striking like a bell of conviction rather than fear.
The decision belonged to him alone—not extracted by Elora’s rage, not prompted by Florence’s expectations, not prevented by Violette’s protective concern.
His amnesia had carved a void where someone else’s justice should have lived.
That debt, at least, he could begin to repay.