I flip the page. And flip again. And flip again. “There must be dozens of pages here. At least one entry every week for the first year, then once a month after graduation… They kept tabs on her for years.”
“Witness protection,” he murmurs. “Sort of.” He clears his throat and takes the stack from me, thumbing to the very back. “Let’s see what the last entry says.”
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “Okay.”
Sel pauses, his finger resting on the final slip of paper in the back, and dips his head to catch my eye. “This is the last page,” he says, but I hear the meaning behind the words. I know what he’s really asking me: Are you ready?
My heart pounds in my chest, and blood rushes in my ears like an ocean. Am I ready? I’d started this whole mission worried about finding the truth and convinced that nothing could be worse than not knowing. But now?
Sel’s eyes are patient but wary, and no wonder; he’d just learned his own horrible truth.
“Read it.”
“ ‘May 13, 2020. 9:18 a.m. Bentonville County Hospital, Bentonville, North Carolina. Ms. Carter was killed in a hit-and-run near her home at 8:47 p.m. last night, May twelfth. I was alerted to her death by a Vassal working in the local police department. In order to confirm Ms. Carter’s death, I assumed the identity of an officer. She leaves behind a husband, Edwin Matthews, and a teenage daughter. As recorded in the enclosed logs, Ms. Carter has never shown any evidence of her memory returning or knowledge of the incidents. As such, she has not, in the past or currently, given cause to pursue containment steps. This is the final entry in Witness Eleven’s file.’ ”
Sel passes me the paper, but I wave it away. I can’t touch it.
I can’t breathe.
“Is this the Merlin you saw?”
I drag my eyes back to a small photo clipped to the back of the file. In a single rushing moment, I’m back at the hospital with new details filling in the blanks. Thin mouth, bushy brows, blue eyes. His badge flickering in the light.
Everything inside me pinches and recoils, twists and tightens, until it feels like my entire body is a knot made of lead, heavy and poisonous. A low, pained whine escapes me, ending in a choking sob. I can only nod in answer.
Sel reaches for me, but I squeeze my eyes shut. After that, he doesn’t try to touch me again. “I’m sorry, Bree.”
“That’s it,” I say wearily, a strange numbness flooding my body. A humorless laugh leaves me in a low huff, and I open my eyes. “Now I know.”
I thought that once I had the truth, it would get better. That things would feel right. But they don’t. Everything’s just as wrong, all over again.
I stand and start toward the door.
“Bree, wait.” Sel follows me. “You can sense aether, you can see it, feel it, but you also resist illusion. If mesmer doesn’t work on you, maybe it didn’t work on your mother, either.”
“Yeah.” My throat is tight. “Already thought of that.”
“And?”
“And?” I whip around, fighting back tears. “Don’t you get it? She did the smart thing. The thing I should have done in the first place. She hid. She hid every time one of those Scions or Squires pretended to be her friend and ‘tested’ her. She hid what she knew from everyone for twenty-five years, so this medieval boys’ club, this feudalist fever dream, this whole… fucked-up world of yours could never find her!”
Sel looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. Good. Nothing he could say could make this moment better.
My chest feels like it’s imploding. “She hid it from me. Or she tried to. But it didn’t work, because I’m a selfish daughter and I had to come here and dig.”
“Bree, you’re not—” Sel starts, but I don’t let him finish.
The words spill out of my mouth in an angry, sobbing rush. “She didn’t want me to find the Order”—I turn, snarling at Sel—“because she didn’t want me to become your target, but I did anyway.” He flinches, but I don’t care. I tug my shirt down to the still-healing purple bruise on my collarbone from tonight’s trial. “Didn’t want me to get hurt, but I did anyway. I had to barge in with the barest shadow of a plan and no clue what I was doing—” My voice breaks off.
I see words of comfort and repair hovering uselessly on his lips. He wants to help me, but he doesn’t know how.
I do.
The idea unfurls in my mind like a matted, frayed rope thrown down a well. I know, logically, that climbing that rope is a mistake, but in this moment, anything is better than staying here. Anything.
The words fall from my mouth in a desperate whisper. “Take her away.”
Sel looks bewildered. “Who?”
I step toward him. “I don’t want this anymore.” I take another. “I don’t want to feel this anymore.”
Understanding floods his features, and after it a pained, sickened expression. “Bree, no.”
I plead with him, “You can do it. Please. I won’t break the mesmer. I’ll—I’ll let it happen.”
When I reach him, his lips curl in something like disgust. “Don’t ask me that.”
“If I can’t have her, I don’t want to remember her.”
“You don’t mean that,” he hisses.
“Yes, I do!” My eyes swim with tears.
He takes a deep breath, holds his ground. “Even if I wanted to—” He shakes his head. “I’m not powerful enough. The older or more traumatic the memory, the stronger the replacement has to be. Like for like. ‘Memories of equal weight.’ ”
Memories of equal weight. There are no memories that could equal this weight. And the last hour has just made them heavier.
I break then. Snap. The tears run hot down my cheeks, and my breathing comes in ragged sobs. Sel watches me with a sad, helpless expression. Almost like he’s worried for me, hurting for me… but if that’s true, it’s another truth I can’t handle.
I open the door and run into the hallway, letting the door slam shut behind me.
Sel lets me go at first. I make it all the way to the foyer and front door before he catches up. I can feel his gaze along the back of my neck. “Leave me alone, Sel.”
He grasps my left shoulder. “You aren’t in any shape to walk home alone.”
I jerk back, but we both know the only reason he lets me go is because he chooses to.
He stands there in the grand foyer, a shadow with searching eyes, and suddenly it all becomes so clear. He was born to this world, for better or for worse. And Nick and the Scions and the Squires and the Pages… they grew up living inside the Order’s legends. Suddenly, all I can see is the hundreds of years of history that don’t belong to me. A war that doesn’t belong to me.
“I never should have come here.”
“Bree—” He reaches for me again right as I open the front door—and come face-to-face with Nick.
40
IT ONLY TAKES a second for Nick’s eyes to take in my tearstained face, Sel’s hand on my shoulder, and Sel standing behind me. Russ and Felicity peer around Nick with wary expressions just as Sel’s hand falls away.