Page 152

“It’s not possible?” he repeats, lifting his brows. “If it weren’t possible, you wouldn’t be able to speak Latin or Sarmatian. You wouldn’t be able to read Greek or Aramaic or Demotic.”

What the hell is Demotic?

Memnon grabs my journal from my desk, and immediately, I tense. My mind and life are laid bare in those pages.

He flips to a particular page and turns the notebook to me. It’s full of writing crammed together in various colors, some of the text highlighted, some crossed out.

He points to a doodle I scribbled in the corner. “Do you see this?” he asks me.

What he’s referring to looks like nothing more than the crests of a wave, except on top of each crest blooms a three-petaled flower. It’s a strange design, clearly something I drew while I was zoning out.

Memnon lifts the sleeve of his shirt and points to one of his tattoos. “Those are the horns of a saiga on my arm.”

I take a step forward, momentarily transfixed. My drawingdoeslook eerily similar to the artwork on his arm.

“This page is from three months ago,” he says. “You drew this before you ever saw me.”

My heart seems to stop at that. I can deny Memnon’s ravings but not my own records.

Could I really be this other woman?

Roxilana?

“I can show you more examples from your books if you’d like more proof,” he adds.

I narrow my gaze at him. “Just how many of my journalshaveyou gone through?”

Those are private.

“You’re trying to change the subject,Roxi,” he says, snapping the notebook shut. “What I am telling you is that your memories have not been destroyed. They still exis;, they’re simply locked away. But, if you had the key to that lock, you could retrieve themall.”

My blood pounds between my ears.

Memnon glances at the journal he holds again. “These notebooks are so meticulous, so thorough. How important they must be,” he says, running his thumb over the dark blue cover, where I scribbled in gold Sharpie the dates when I used this journal. This one is from June and July of this year.

The sorcerer’s eyes flick to the book bag at my feet, and the air thickens with his magic. The flap of my satchel flicks open, and my latest notebook slides out, lifting into the air.

“What are you doing?” I grab for it, but it slips like butter through my fingers.

Memnon catches my planner in his free hand, and now panic rises in me.

“Seriously, Memnon, I need that back.” The Politia’s coming later today to look at these very journals.

I don’t want anyone pawing at them in the meantime—especially not Memnon.

Ignoring me, he sets my journal from the summer on my desk and opens my latest notebook before flipping through it.

“Oh, there’s a Samhain Witch’s Ball happening at the end of the week.” He reads the reminder like it’s a diary entry. “Sounds likefun.”

I fold my arms and force myself to chill out. “Are you done?” I ask. Whatever rise he wants to get out of me, he won’t get it.

“I can give you your memory back,” he says, not looking up from my notebook.

My breath catches at his words. It’s one thing to tell me that my lost memories exist; it’s another to tell me I can retrieve them.

“No one can give me that,” I finally say. I don’t even let myself ponder what life would be like with them back.

Now Memnon looks up from my journal, his smoky-amber eyes glinting. “My queen,I can.”