He’s right: You are a monster. I shut my eyes and pull away.
The moment my power leaves him, Derrick’s breathing turns ragged, as if he’s trying to find his bearings. His lips tremble. He smooths the thin line of his left wing. It’s straightened slightly, healing.
I’m sorry, I almost say. But I swallow my apologies down because I don’t deserve his forgiveness. I read his thoughts without permission. I could have killed him.
I wonder if, in the heat of battle, I would have even cared.
“I’m different from the girl I was,” I say, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. She was in control of herself. She didn’t hurt you. She loved you.
Without memories, the feeling of home isn’t enough. Without them, I’ve learned nothing, been nowhere. I have no parts of myself to remind me of what I’ve lost, what I’ve overcome, who I am, who I’ve been.
An apology is on my lips again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m this shadow creature who doesn’t remember the girl you loved and lost. I’m sorry you wished for her and got me instead.
Derrick’s fear turns to anger. His power is as sharp as blades on my tongue. “How dare you?” he snaps. “I could forgive you hurting me—I know how easy it is to lose yourself in battle. But how dare you invade my mind like that? You didn’t even try to stop yourself.”
“I know.” My words are barely audible, but he hears them anyway. “I’m sorry. I am.”
“Don’t,” he grits out. “You don’t know and you’re not sorry. How the hell could you be?” He rakes me with a glare, hard and accusatory. “The friend I knew had someone break into her mind, day after day, for months. If you were her, you would never have done that to anyone. Not after what Lonnrach did.”
After what Lonnrach did.
Teeth biting me over and over. They sank in so deep that blood slid down my skin and dripped onto the floor. Drip, drip, drip. Thirty-six human teeth. Forty-six fangs that descended from his gums, pointed at their tips like a snake’s.
They left behind hundreds of scars that dotted my arms, shoulders, chest, and neck. They were a declaration: You’re mine. I own you.
But when I feel for those scars, they’re not there. They’re on that other body, the one burned on a pyre by the loch. Whoever brought me back left behind the only scar that mattered: the one that had killed me.
Those other scars held memories. They held parts of the Aileana I was and now all that’s left of her are flashes in my mind, pieces of a puzzle I can’t put back together.
Unable to stop myself, I tell Derrick again, “I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that,” he grits out. His wings buzz with agitation, as quick as a dragonfly’s. He runs his hands through his hair. “God, I can still feel you in my head.” When I don’t respond, he says, “You were empty inside. Like you’re just some thing, not her—”
“I don’t have my memory,” I snap. “You think my mind was empty? Try living it.”
We’re both breathing hard, staring at each other like two strangers. Derrick’s light has darkened to a shadowed halo around him. He looks stricken, as if he just realized what he called me.
You’re just some thing.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I tell him, my voice almost breaking. “I don’t know who I am or where I belong; I just know that when I woke up I had this power inside me that I couldn’t control. The only thing that felt right was killing them.” I gesture to the bodies at my feet. “When you called me by my name, a part of me didn’t want to remember anything else. It hurt too much.”
“Aileana.”
“Wait.” I hold back my tears. I don’t want him to see me cry. “I know I’m not the same. I injured you. I broke into your mind. You wished for someone else and got me and I’m all wrong. But the moment I saw you, I was home. I didn’t need to have memories of you to know that I trust you and I need your help.” When Derrick doesn’t respond, I whisper, “Please. Help me.”
He stares at me, unspeaking. I have the sudden urge to hold him close, to stroke my fingers down his wings as if that would help calm him. Because I can’t tell him over and over again, I am her. The only difference is that I came back broken.
You’re just some thing.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Again. A damn echo. Sorry sorry sorry. Sorry I’m a disappointment. Sorry I’m all wrong. Sorry I’m a remorseless killer. Sorry I’m a thing. Not human.
I look down at the bodies littered across the forest floor and feel a sudden sense of helplessness, a burden more overpowering than my name.
I hold my breath when I hear the flutter of Derrick’s wings. He lands on my shoulder, his touch gentle. “I didn’t think about what it was like for you.” At my surprised expression, he explains, “I wished for you, and you came back, and I’m the ungrateful bastard who couldn’t accept that you weren’t exactly the same. How could you be? Why should you be? Just because I wanted it?”
“That doesn’t justify what I did.”
“No,” Derrick agrees. “But after what you’ve been through . . .” He shakes his head.
I finally allow a tear to fall. “You’re lovely. I can see why I never murdered you.”
Derrick’s smile is small. “Oh, please. As if you ever could.” He notices my tears and sighs, murmuring, “You should know, I never can stay mad at you when you’re crying.” His wing brushes against my cheek, but he keeps his distance. He’s not angry with me, but whatever he saw in my mind scared him. When I try to catch his gaze, he turns away. “Help me bury them. If we hurry, we’ll reach Aithinne’s camp before nightfall.”
We begin to dig.
CHAPTER 6
ONCE WE leave the woods, Derrick leads me around a fissure that stretches for miles.
Waves crash against the rocks deep at the bottom, rolling against the escarpment. Each swell comes with a soft sigh of grinding stone—the steady breath of the ocean. I don’t dare stray too close to the unstable edge. Every few minutes, I see massive pieces of the rock break off and tumble into the chasm. The earth is falling apart, little by little.
The sight is unnerving; I’ve seen it somewhere before, in the missing pieces of my memories. But it wasn’t here. It was in that place I recalled by the loch, where there were forests full of demons and metal trees with branches as sharp as blades.
When I open my mouth to ask Derrick about it, he flies off and I hurry after him. I should keep my eyes ahead, but my attention is drawn back to the landscape. To the dull color of the sky and trees—even more apparent here than in the forest.