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I have no idea what to do next.

The tendrils look too knotted and thick for me to just tear them apart with my hands, and there’s no iron here to remove. We’re not in the physical world, and so I doubt any of my usual magic will banish them…

Except the magic that’s been guiding me this whole way. I look at the lantern, the light of the naminai bond glowing within. It was strong enough to survive Interra. The darkness of the space between realms couldn’t break it. Maidar thought it could guide me to find the memories…but I can try using it to free them too.

As I imagine it, I watch the lantern change in my hand, the golden glow re-forming, becoming heavier between my fingers, until I’m clutching a glowing sword.

I give it a few experimental swings, then descend on the shadows.

Chapter 20

Icut and slash at the vines, my golden blade slicing through the shadows like butter. Each time the glow of the bond connects with the darkness, a horrible shrieking noise stabs at my eardrums. Rather than tumbling to the ground, the vines shrink back, retreating from the door like rats scurrying from the claws of a cat. They’re quick, squeezing between the cracks around the wood, slithering behind the door frame. I decide to worry about that later and keep cutting until the entire door is free from their clinging darkness.

At last I let my arm drop. I should be out of breath, sweaty and tired from the effort, but I guess mental battles don’t work that way. Instead, the twinge of tiredness lingers in my brain, like I’ve just finished reading a long, complicated passage in a book.

I briefly wonder if Ruskin has any idea what I’m doing—if he can feel any of this. I hope I’m not hurting him, but either way, it’s better I get this over with quickly. I wrap my hands around the handle and yank it open with a surge of hope. Part of me expects all Ruskin’s memories to come tumbling out at once, but instead on the other side I walk straight into…a classroom?

“That’s enough for today,” Maidar says, his leathery hands clapping to get the attention of twelve or so young fae. Maidar’s face is slightly smoother in the memory than it is now, and I search around the room for Ruskin. I feel my attention being drawn behind me, in time to see a young male with chestnut curls lean over to another with a shock of black hair.

“I can’t believe he wants us to translate the whole scroll before the end of the week,” Destan whispers furiously to Ruskin. “I’ll be working every night this week!” Even young Destan is impeccably dressed, a colorful contrast to the black-clad Ruskin beside him. I stare at this version of Ruskin. He looks the human equivalent of about twelve or thirteen, and is leaning in his chair, one hand under his chin, looking shockingly carefree. He quirks an eyebrow at Destan.

“What’s the matter? Big plans with your tailor?”

Destan sticks his tongue out at his friend. “Yes, actually.”

Ruskin grins, and I remember what Destan said about him being less intense in their childhood. It certainly looks like it, and my heart aches a little for the Ruskin who had to put away this playfulness, in favor of secrets and a brutal mask.

But the ache gives way to elation when I realize this means I’ve found the lost memories. I can only imagine that all of Ruskin’s memories from before Interra are still here, locked away by its darkness, trapped here in a buried corner of his mind.

And they’re not free yet. Shadows creep up over the door Maidar left by, the same dark tendrils blocking my access to the next memory.

I lift my blade and get to work. Once again, the shadows shriek and slither away under my slashes, and once again I push through the door, only this time, I find myself in a vast complex of interconnected chambers and archways. I can see flashes of several memories just from here—Ruskin at various ages against different backdrops. I want to view them all…but then I notice how this whole complex, up the columns and across the archways, is wrapped tightly, chokingly in the dark vines of Interra.

My heart sinks at the scale of it. I don’t think I could possibly free them all one by one. Not unless I was to spend a lifetime here.

But surely freeing even a few memories will do a bit of good? Who knows, maybe if I can return just a few key ones to Ruskin, it will be enough for him to retrieve the rest himself.

I wander through a few of the nearest chambers, fascinated by the snippets of Ruskin’s life on show, but I feel guilty too. I know I wouldn’t like every little part of my life played out for him to see, and I’m struck by the huge amount of trust he’s put in me, even if he didn’t know exactly what I’d be seeing.

I just won’t pay too close attention unless the memory feels important, I tell myself.

As I move through the chambers, I think I can judge their significance by how strong a pull I feel towards each of them. In the classroom memory, I felt nothing like the intensity of emotion I’d felt in the memory of Ruskin watching me sleep. If Ruskin’s relationship to the memory is strong, it shows in the way I can pick up on his feelings in that moment.

It takes a little while, but soon I stumble across one such memory, a wave of misery washing over me. I stop by the archway, watching Ruskin, who looks about six years old. He’s seated on a balcony in the palace, his arms wrapped around his knees, and his face is streaked with tears.

“What’s wrong, my child?”

I freeze as Evanthe steps out onto the balcony behind him. She looks her old, regal self, with no sign of the madness of Interra. In fact, as she looks down at Ruskin, she looks almost like a different person to me. There’s a love in her expression I haven’t seen before, reminding me that this Evanthe is a different person—someone I’ve never met. That fact is confirmed when she sits down on the ground beside Ruskin, despite her magnificent gown and the crown on her head, and puts her arm around him, pulling her son close.

“N-nothing,” Ruskin sniffs in answer, and if my heart ached at his expression before in the classroom, I think it breaks a little bit now.

“Come now, you can tell me,” Evanthe says soothingly, running a hand over his hair.

“Nightgale said the Unseelie aren’t real fae, not like the Seelie,” Ruskin says quietly, gazing out at the horizon. “He said that they’re just beasts who killed his uncle.”

Evanthe sighs. It’s a weary sound, and I wonder how difficult it must’ve been to hold a court together in the years after the war, when the bitterness between the Seelie and Unseelie was still so fresh.

“Young Nightgale spoke in anger and grief, I imagine, forgetting who he was talking to.”