Page 25 of The Dark Rising
And when her Heir power touched mine… I clench my hands into fists.
A howl comes from behind me again and I can’t seem to move, can’t get my feet to lift, and turn and fight as her words run through my mind.
I was a child when they came to the lands.
That’s what she said at Wolvorn Castle.
She’s right. The rogures appeared more than twenty years ago, she would have been around seven.
“Brother,” Leo says, coming to stand in front of me. I see him, but not really. “Shit,” he curses harshly and looks toward the others. “What she said,” he trails off, and that gets me out of my frozen state.
“Fuck,” I growl, rolling my shoulder and feeling the pain through my back. I do it again, just to make it worse as I look in the direction she went.
“We have to follow her,” Damian says, already moving.
I grab his arm. “She’s gone.” He goes to open his mouth, but then he frowns, scrubbing a hand down his face.
I spin and face my men, their faces saying it all. Confusion, realization, and then worry.
“We fucked up, didn’t we?” Damian mutters, putting his hands on his hips. “I can’t believe it.” He shakes his head. “I can’t…” he trails off, not knowing what to say.
Zaide looks behind him, no doubt watching for rogures. “But you saw her in the memory crystal,” he says before looking back at me. “They cannot be altered. She could be lying, now, like she could have been at the castle.”
“She said it was wrong,” I murmur, looking down to the ground, my thoughts running rampant in my mind. “The memory crystal showed her plain as day, performing a ritual and the rogures clawing out of the ground. How can I see her do that but yet she was a child at the time? Where did that crystal even come from? Aldus gave it to me the first time, but he never mentioned how he came to have it other than it was in Eridian, and I also didn’t ask.”
“None of us asked anything,” Leo sighs.
“We knew something didn’t add up, that something wasn’t right, we just didn’t know what.” The feeling of wrongness when Charles was asking her questions, the things he said in the great hall. I just thought it was more lies, more bullshit. At the back of my mind, I did have some doubts, but now? What if what she said was true?
The pain she went through, the pain that I felt as my own, was caused for nothing.
“We didn’t know anything,” Leo agrees. “But I think now we do.”
I nod. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would Aldus give me that crystal, and why would it show Rhea?”
“She still could be lying,” Jerrod questions and I shake my head.
“She can’t lie about her age. We have all seen her.” There is no way to lie about that. “For all the lies she told me, us. That is true, she’s twenty-eight.”
We’ve all seen her dragged into the great hall, interrogated by the Highers, watched as two of her pack members were slain, the pup breaking the blood link, and… being whipped by me.
“She didn’t cause the curse,” Damian whispers aloud what I don’t dare to. What I don’t want to think about. “She didn’t do it.” His eyes are wide, shock filling them.
“Fuck,” I snarl, pacing back and forth. “Fuck!” I roar, my power slithering over my skin. Drax growls low inside of me, feeling the turmoil.
“Brother,” Leo starts, but I shake my head and continue to pace, my hands clenching with fury.
What have we done. What haveIdone?
I look down at my fists and realize Rhea was right about one thing. My own anger caused me not to ask questions, and when she tried to talk to me back at Wolvorn Castle, I refused to listen.
“The memory stone wasn’t right, how the fuck is that possible?” Leo asks, his brow pinched together in confusion.
My jaw ticks. “I don’t know.” I’m not sure I know anything anymore.
We were told memory stones couldn’t be altered, Charles and the other Highers were adamant about it, especially Aldus, who can infiltrate memories himself. He said it was impossible. Memory stones are hard to come by, they take years to charge before they can be used because once they are, they can’t be changed.
Aldus already tried to erase my memories of being an Heir, but the question is, why? And does he have the power to change a memory stone? He’s nowhere to be found though to ask these questions, too busy with the people, as Charles said. He wasn’t happy when I mentioned that Aldus was there before my memory of being an Heir was gone. I need to find him to speak with him myself.
