I did this. I did this. I did this.
I despised Nura for what she had done to Max. She tortured him,
imprisoned him, crippled his power. When he had so casually mentioned being “on Nura’s table,” I had bitten my tongue so hard I tasted blood.
But the destruction of that perfect mind… that was not Nura’s fault.
That was all me.
How many times had I played out the moment in my head? The Fey king had been using Max as a conduit, leveraging his connection to the deepest levels of magic to assert his presence in Ara. My mind had reached into Max’s, and I’d seen it—all those threads wrapped around his thoughts, like a raging infection spreading. Cut it out, Max had told me.
And I had known, then, that it would be dangerous—that I could kill him. I’d felt his mind, all those precious memories, shatter like glass.
I did this.
I handled this the only way I knew how to: I turned pain into a plan into action. We would go to Zagos. We would remove the Stratagrams from Max’s skin—gods, when I saw those tattoos, the rage that I felt—and get him back his magic. And we would find a way to reclaim mine, too. I would be able to reassemble his mind. I would be able to fix what I had broken. Then I would turn my attention to Nura, and killing her as slowly and painfully as I possibly could.
I cemented these steps into certainty.
We traveled all day, and then into the night. I was eager to get to Zagos as quickly as possible, and the others seemed to share my impatience, all for our own reasons. I knew Ishqa’s priorities—the sooner we arrived at the
city, the sooner we could start using the wayfinder. Selfishly, I struggled to care about the wayfinder as long as Max’s mind was in pieces.
Sammerin and Ishqa were able to use magic to take us parts of the way, though we had to do some traveling on foot. Max’s brother—Brayan, I had learned—clearly detested magic travel, quietly excusing himself afterwards and returning to the group looking slightly green.
As we traveled, Max peppered us with questions. We told him of the war and the Fey. Ishqa told him of King Caduan and his bloodthirsty vendetta against humankind, which had Brayan cursing quietly to himself. In return, he told us of the strange circumstances of his release from Ilyzath, which none of us, not even Ishqa, knew what to make of.
Max took everything we told him shockingly in stride, but as the questions went on, they would also get slower and farther between. He would touch his temple and wince, and his teeth would grind, and soon after that, they would cease completely.
I was secretly grateful when that happened. Sammerin was, too. Certain questions simply hit on topics we did not know how to discuss. We told him about Reshaye, in the vaguest possible terms. But whenever we encroached deeper on that topic, Sammerin and I would shoot each other helpless looks of uncertainty.
Max’s truth was so hard. So complicated. Even if we did tell Max the full story—the full story—about Reshaye, we certainly couldn’t do it in front of Brayan. This excuse allowed us some precious borrowed time while we grappled with this unspoken dilemma.
It hurt to think that Max did not remember what we had built together. But it hurt even more to think about what it would feel like for him to learn the truth of Reshaye, and what it—he—had done to his family.
Maybe some part of his subconscious still knew that, too.
I watched him constantly. I drank him in like rain in the desert. I wanted to learn every part of him again, every angle of his current, leaner body, the shape and placement of every blade of hair on his chin. I was quietly obsessed with him.
And yet, when he would approach me—and he would, always, approach me—and ask me little, searching questions that were far more personal than the ones he asked Sammerin, I suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
One night, near the beginning of our journey, Max rolled over to face me in the darkness. The way the moonlight settled into the angles and
hollows of his face reminded me too much of the nights we had sat together in the garden, both too haunted by our pasts to sleep.
“What were we?” he asked.
“I was your apprentice. We told you that.”
So much had changed in our relationship, and yet, even with our history erased, he still gave me that same piercing stare, and it still dismantled my carefully constructed defenses the same way.
“Beyond that,” he said.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly thick. “We were friends.” A pause, and then, “Lovers.”
I didn’t know why that word was so hard to say. Maybe it was because in that question, it really hit me: I looked at Max and saw the love of my life, but the person who traveled with me now was a stranger. He was close enough to touch and yet farther away than he had ever been.
Even Max seemed like he didn’t quite know how to respond to this—as if my answer had confirmed something he already suspected, but still left him lost.
He wasn’t alone in that, at least. It left both of us lost.
My relationship with Max had been built slowly. Over the course of a million little moments, I learned how to trust him. To love so deeply was terrifying, even then—now, with the foundations of the safety we had built together torn to pieces, the thought of opening my heart again overwhelmed me.
I wanted him so much I couldn’t breathe whenever I looked at him. I wanted to bridge that gap between us. I wanted him back.
And yet, with each passing day, another thought crept into the back of my mine—one that hurt even more.
I often lay awake and watched Max sleep at night. I knew him so well that I know what he looked like even in rest. I knew how often his dreams would wake him. Now, I watched how long he went without waking.
For some reason, Zeryth’s voice would float through my mind then, from what felt like a lifetime ago. I had negotiated for Max’s freedom when I signed my life away, and Zeryth had simply laughed at me. A clean slate, he had said, with a wry smirk. Wouldn’t we all like one of those.
Zeryth, of course, had not gotten a clean slate. He died covered in the consequences of all his past mistakes.
But perhaps Max had gotten that gift.
Perhaps his broken mind, and all the horrible things it left shrouded in the dark, was the only thing that saved him in Ilyzath. Perhaps forgetting everything—and in doing so, forgetting me—was the only thing that saved him, even now.
That thought haunted me night, after night, after night, until we at last reached Zagos.
