“Bree?” she whispers. Her eyes focus on me. “What happened to your dress? Why are you tied to a chair? What’s going on?”
“Alice! Alice, listen to me. I’m going to get you out of here!” Isaac shifts his fingers, and she goes under again, slouching slightly against the Merlin’s chest.
“What are you doing to her?” I demand, looking back and forth between Isaac and Davis.
Davis nods to the other man, and he brings Alice up again, like a puppet being tugged awake by its strings.
This time her eyes take a while to find me, and even then, they don’t focus. I don’t think she can see me at all. I call her name again, but she frowns, disoriented. “Matty? I know you don’t have a dress for the gala thing this weekend. We should go shopping after class…”
She’d said this exact sentence to me two days ago at breakfast.… Cold horror bleeds through me when I realize what Isaac is doing.
He’s erasing her memories.
“Stop!” I strain against the ropes, tears burning my eyes. “Stop it, please!”
Isaac grins and clasps his hand tighter against her skull.
“You’ve been weird all week.”
“Stop it!”
“If it feels like it’s just the two of you, then it’s a date, no matter who else is around.”
That was two weeks ago. On the phone the day after Nick kissed me in front of the Lodge.
Isaac had just erased two entire weeks from her mind. Everything she’d learned in her classes, every idea she’d generated, every memory of laughter, of joy. Every conversation with her parents or brother. Everything we’d said to each other. Gone.
And he could do more. I know he could. He could take her from me right before my eyes, just like Nick’s mother had been taken from him.
That’s what this is. A show of power. A reminder that no matter how much I know, I don’t know enough to survive in this world. That I’m not worthy.
“Please,” I whimper, the tears running in hot streaks down my face. “Please, stop. Stop it.”
Davis signals Isaac to stop, and Alice and I both sag. He taps his fingers on his desk lightly and lets out a tired sigh. “Normally we’d simply mesmer any inconvenient Onceborns, but since you’ve proven a bit stubborn in that regard, I sent Isaac to collect Ms. Chen for some persuasion. You’ll have to forgive the dramatics. Merlins are quite showy beings, aren’t they?”
“What do you want?” I whisper, because that’s all I need to know.
Davis smiles as if I’d finally asked the right question. “You’ll leave Carolina and the program. Tell the dean you were ill-equipped to keep up with the rigor. A poor fit. I’m sure that won’t be hard for the administrators to believe, coming from you.”
My fingers curl into fists.
“You won’t speak to Nicholas or any of the other chapter members ever again. You’ll apply to another college when the time comes, out of state preferably, and forget you ever found the Legendborn world.”
I glance back up at Alice, who is swaying, eyes fully closed now. Only Isaac’s arms on her shoulder seem to keep her upright. Davis follows my gaze toward Alice.
“And if I don’t?”
“You’re a clever girl, so I’m sure you already know the answer.” He sits back in his chair and drums his fingers on the desk. I’m boring him. Even as he tortures my best friend, and through her, me. “But I suppose it’s best to make things clear. If you don’t comply, Isaac will take you to one of our institutions where his colleagues, the other Masters, will enjoy themselves finding out exactly why your brain won’t accept their illusions—whether it’s in your skull or out. And while you cannot be mesmered, please understand that we will happily find and manage other loved ones in your life who can. Like Ms. Chen here.”
I see my dad sitting in the vinyl chair at the hospital, putting on a brave face while his world crumbled. I hear his voice, warm and laughing in my ear. The texts I’ve never responded to. How he tried to help me even when I didn’t want to hear it.
Lord Davis leans forward and pins me with a pleased smile. “Now tell me, Ms. Matthews. Do you consent to this offer?”
All the frustration, all the fight, leaves my body.
“I do.”
48
ALICE MOVES AS if sleepwalking, and she falls asleep as soon as I get her upstairs and lay her on her bed. Her thin eyebrows are drawn up tight, and her stringy hair is glued to her neck and forehead. She shivers with nightmares and moans without waking up, not even stirring when I pull her into a sitting position to change the damp, clammy bedsheets. I wipe the sweat from her face and neck and sob, praying for whatever Isaac’s done to leave her system.
‘This craft is a poison.’ My grandmother’s voice is loud in my mind. ‘I’m sorry, baby.’
“Where were you?” I cry. “Where did you go?”
‘I am using all of my power to call back to the old mother, like you asked,’ she murmurs. ‘I couldn’t help you back there, and I can’t help you here.’
“There must be something I can do!”
She is silent, and I worry she’s gone again.
Then my body turns hot, and a new presence stretches beneath my skin. “Who—”
A new voice answers. ‘Jessie. A healer. Three generations back.’
“Please—” My voice cuts off in a strangle as Jessie pushes my hands over Alice’s forehead.
‘My healing and your immunity… maybe.’ A pause. ‘No herbs on this side, so you’ll have to do.’
“I’ll have to do wh—”
Red mage flame erupts from my palms and flows over Alice’s face and hair. Jessie won’t let me pull away. All I can do is watch with horror as my root, my aether, cascades down my friend’s body and soaks into her skin. Then Jessie releases me, and the flames snuff out.
The threat of fainting shudders through my frame. I’m drained. Weak.
Instead of herbs, Jessie used me, my own power and energy.
Alice’s eyes flutter open. “Bree…?”
“Alice!” My hands fall to her cheeks and smooth her damp hair away from her eyes.
She pulls at my wrist. “What happened?” she gasps, and her eyes dart back and forth. “There was a man. A man with red eyes… and fangs… and he—he took me somewhere. A house off campus—” She pushes up into a half-sitting position, trembling as the memories return. “You were there. They’d tied you up. Oh God. Oh God. He took my memories.”
She starts to hyperventilate. I kneel, nearly falling forward in the process. My blood feels sluggish in my veins, heavy and spent.
“Just breathe,” I soothe, for myself and for her. “I’m right here.”
“They knew you.” Her brow furrows; then her eyes meet mine. “And you knew them.”
It’s time. I can’t avoid this anymore. “I can explain.”
* * *
When I finish telling Alice everything, she has a dozen questions ready to go. She paces the room, hands moving while she talks, while I kneel on the floor, recovering my reserves by the minute. Then she asks a new batch of questions about the Lines and the Order while changing out of her sweat-soaked pajamas and into jeans and a tee. I answer each inquiry one by one and end with Lord Davis’s plan.