Page 83 of Ashes of Gold
A breeze howls, cutting through the broken glass in the ceiling. “I-is there any way to undo it? Some spell or something?” I hold up my gilded arms and they glint in the moonlight. “I have a lot of power left in these. If I can help—”
She pushes my arms back into my lap, her eyes smiling. “Sweet Jelani. I should be getting some sleep soon. If we end up in thesunlight, I’ll need all my strength.” She chuckles, but it turns into a hacking cough. “There is one more thing I want to leave with you.” She hesitates.
I sit up. “Go on.”
“Thereisa way to retrieve the memories you’ve forgotten, but will dwelling on the past serve?”
“There’s a way? How?”
“You are not hearing me.”
“What if there’s some spell I tried during the fight or someone I trusted that I shouldn’t have or something… any hint of what can help me win this time, I wanna know that. So I don’t make that mistake again. I can’t afford any more missteps. I need to know!” My tone spikes. “Doyouknow?”
She sighs, rubbing a temple. “I do not. But there’s a potion remedy for remembering i-if you insist.”
“I can’t pay you.”
“You don’t have to.” She nods toward Bri, who is hooking a young man’s sling in an arm.
A potion?
“But, Jelani, don’t…”
“Thank you,” I say, rushing off, wondering if there’s a remembering potion, why hadn’t Bri mentioned that before?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BEFORE WE GO UP,I need a word with Bri,” I tell Julius, and he nods.
She’s working a bit of paste onto a stick, then smooths it on someone’s arm.
“Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Sure.” She tops up the jar and I pull her out of earshot.
“How come you didn’t tell me there was a remembering potion?”
She blinks, several times. “Huh?”
“There’s a potion that can retrieve forgotten memories, right?”
She swallows. “Yeah.”
“Well? That’d be useful, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t have the ingredients, so I didn’t see the point.” She shrugs, not quite meeting my eyes.
My stomach does a flip. She wouldn’t lie… she wouldn’t…. The Seer’s warning clutches at my throat, and everywhere I look I swear there are eyes.“How do we even know what she says is true? That she did not agree to help them?”Kai’s words when we’d rescued Bri float through me. I blow out a breath. It’s like the world is a distorted picture that shifts every time I blink. How do I know what’s true?
“But, like, I didn’t even know it was an option?”
“Sorry, Rue. Yeah, I guess I could have mentioned it. I just didn’t think it was a big deal since I can’t do anything about it, you know?”
How could she think that? How could she think any of this isn’t a big deal? I shift on my feet amid the silence.
“Rue, I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear.” She reshoulders her bag. “Look, I really need to get this paste to them.”
“Yeah, alright. Catch you later.”
