Chapter 2
MEMORIES
Iknew it. I just knew something terrible was going to happen. But in all my wildest nightmares, I hadn’t envisioned him crashing the Ball.
The Masked Metamorph looked at Kato and Conner. They looked at him. Something I couldn’t describe flashed in their eyes.
“Well?” the Masked Metamorph said, impatient. “What are you waiting for?”
He turned and ran away. Conner and Kato ran after him.
They chased him out of the ballroom. I followed, trying to match their pace, but I was so much slower than the three of them.
I kicked off my heels. That was a bit better.
But just a bit. The Masked Metamorph had magic-enhanced speed, and Kato and Conner kept mini-teleporting, jumping forward several steps at a time. When had they learned how to do that?
Maybe I could do the same. And I did. One jump. Two jumps. Three. I was gaining ground. Just a few more jumps.
The Masked Metamorph spun around and threw a bottle at the ground. It shattered, releasing purple smoke. I saw it too late. I teleported right into it—or, more like, against it. My body hit something solid and hard, and I bounced back, hitting the ground. Ow.
I pushed myself off the floor. I tapped into my Nymph magic, summoning wood, metal, glass…
anything I could find in the area, anything I could use to throw at the smoky barrier.
The barrier ate them all, but they were eating it too.
I could feel it. I could hear it. I could see it.
The barrier was splitting apart. If only it weren’t taking so long.
Finally, the barrier burst apart. I took off again, running and teleporting. I found Kato and Conner in the library. I looked around. I didn’t see the Masked Metamorph anywhere.
“Where did he go?” I asked them.
They stared at me. There was a dark look in their eyes, and it scared me.
“What happened? Where is the Masked Metamorph?”
“His name is Erador,” Kato told me.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with that information. “What did he want? Why did he come here?”
Kato looked like he would rather do anything but answer that question. “He came here for us.”
“For you?”
“This was always about us, Seven.”
“I don’t understand. What did he do to you? Did he hurt you?”
“No, he didn’t come here to attack us. He came here to talk to us.”
“To…talk? What would a deranged Metamorph possibly want to talk to you about?”
Conner gave me a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “No, you have it all wrong, Red. He’s not deranged.”
“We were wrong about him.”
“We were wrong about so many things.”
I looked into their eyes, and I looked very closely. There was nothing that screamed dazed, bespelled, or out-of-their-minds. There was only sharp intelligence…with a touch of melancholy. What had the Masked Metamorph done to them?
“What things?” I asked them.
Conner sighed.
“What did he say to you, Conner?”
“We remember, Seven.”
I frowned, shaking my head. “Remember? Remember what?”
“Everything that we forgot,” Kato told me.
Oh. They’d once told me that they had no memories of their lives before the Blending. And now…now they did.
“He gave you your memories back? How?”
“The Remembrance Orb,” Kato said.
Oh. Wow. So when I’d released the spell in the orb, it hadn’t just brought back the Lost Spirits’ memories; it had brought back Kato’s and Conner’s memories too.
“You remember your lives before the Blending?”
Kato nodded. He should have been happy. Instead, his eyes were haunted.
“That bad, huh?”
Neither of them said anything. Oh, well…crap. That did not bode well. Not at all.
“Why did it take so long for you to remember?” I asked. “The Lost Spirits remembered everything right away, as soon as I opened the Remembrance Orb.”
“It’s a different situation. The Lost Spirits’ memories were ripped away from them, so their memories came back immediately.
It took a bit longer for us because we chose to give up our memories.
They were buried under many more layers of magic.
That’s why we needed a little help to remember.
” Kato tossed me the ball, the very same one he’d refused to give up before.
“What is it?”
“Something from our past,” Kato told me. “A fond memory. Seeing it again, along with the spell, made us remember after a while.”
I looked at the ball, then at them. “Why did you give up your memories?”
Neither of them said anything.
I was almost afraid to ask the next question. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Conner let out a humorless, deflated sound so unlike his usual laugh. “No, not really. But you deserve to know. This is about you too, Red.”
“About me? How are your memories about me?”
Conner and Kato exchanged heavy looks.
“We aren’t from Gaia,” Conner said. “We come from a realm called Rise.”
“Interesting name.”
“Rise is part of an alliance of realms: the League of Destiny.”
This wasn’t getting any better.
“And what does the League of Destiny want? Why did they send you to Gaia?”
Conner opened his mouth to speak, but a voice thundered in the library, cutting him off.
“No.”
I recognized that voice. It belonged to the Masked—Erador. It belonged to Erador. Funny that I knew his name but absolutely nothing else about him. Well, except that he was powerful enough to crack open the Monolith’s defenses.
“Now is not the time,” Erador’s voice intoned.
“But—”
“Report to the Citadel immediately.”
Kato and Conner just stood there and stared at me.
“Immediately.”
Kato set his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Seven.” Then he turned and walked away.
“Wait. You can’t go. You swore an oath to the Knights.”
Conner clasped my hands in his. “We swore an oath to the League first.”
Then he hurried to catch up to Kato. They took a few steps, side-by-side, then they faded from sight.