Page 75 of Dark Flame

I look at Mom’s card. Violet Hartman.

Those are not my parents’ names. Not even close. Not the first, and especially not the last.

Heart thumping, I rest them to the side and reach deeper into the box, grabbing the next thing. It’s a sheet of paper in Mom’s handwriting. A letter—no, a journal entry I read over and over until the words make sense.

Harlow had a dream last night about being handcuffed to a wall. She woke up crying, saying her magick would no longer work. I calmed her down, explaining it was a bad dream, but I think her memories are returning. Arthur will wipe her mind again later tonight, and hopefully the memories remain trapped for longer. Feels less and less time passes between each wipe, and I’m growing worried one day, erasing her mind won’t be possible.

The paper flutters from my hand, my gaze dropping to the scars on my wrists. Handcuffs—exactly what Alec guessed. Exactly what my mind was trying to recall this whole time in those little flashes.

The feeling of aloneness, fear, of the walls caving in while my arms are chained to the wall behind me, and I’m unable to get free. No matter how many times I yell for Mommy and Daddy, no one’s coming. The days are endless, the nights forever.

“Oh my Goddess…”

This whole time, Mom and Dad were wiping my memories. I glance towards the other IDs—the other names, the fact oh so obvious but unsaid within my mind. Unaccepted beneath my grief and horror.

I reach into the box for the next item, pulling out a set of birth certificates, both with the same names as the IDs, only Violet’s has a different surname; her maiden name, presumably.

No Sinclair to be found.

The next thing is another note, again in Mom’s handwriting, this one dated months prior from the last.

We fucked up. It was never supposed to go this far. And now, Harlow will be raised as ours for the time being. My mistakes are ones I need to live with. The coven’s hunting for Arthur and me, but I think my plan will get them to stop trailing us. We’ll disappear and raise Harlow as our own. It’ll be fine. Sloane is angry, but instructed us to do what we must.

Sloane? Who the hell is that?

Another note, this one dated between the two others.

Harlow’s magick is manifesting as strong as we always guessed it’d be. She’s untrained and unpredictable. She needs her coven, but we can’t take her back. Arthur has an idea to help control her, and I hope it works.

On and on they go, small flashes of my life, of memories returning only to be stolen by Mom and Dad.

No—notMom and Dad.

Strangers. A Violet and Arthur who’ve been parading as my parents.

It’s the last note that breaks me for good, this one dated earlier than all the others. Found at the very bottom of the box, the first written in this miniseries of my life’s tormenting past.

Emily and John Sinclair are dead. We had to.

My breaths are heavy, mingled with disbelief. Shock. Anger. Fear. Confusion. Every feeling blends into a turbulent storm until my hands are shaking, my body quivering, heat shifting into a pain that’s quickly eased as well. Heat that burns but warms. That destroys and protects.

But it’s more than heat.

It’s a chill. It slithers alongside that very warmth, coating me. It’s a pleasant sting that wakes me in ways I’ve never felt before. It constricts around my arms, my chest, my thighs, tightening and loosening over and over like a hug. Black tendrils are in the same places, gliding over my skin like silk. My old, familiar shadows hover above me, bathing the room in night until they move abruptly, joining the wisps around my body.

And then a voice, one new, not Alec’s from all those months ago:We’ve been waiting.

Beneath me, the castle vibrates. I barely register the sensation as everything settles into place. Truths that were right in front of me this entire time, locked behind memory-wiping charms and an evil I’ve never known to exist.

The people who raised me were not my parents. In another case, that might have been fine—adoption and foster homes—but this wasn’t the same. I wasn’t given up by my birth parents. They weremurdered, and I was taken from them, trapped within my own body. My memories, my magick, all for whatever sick games these people were playing.

They killed my real parents, then lied to me for a decade. Igrievedthem—grieved people who never deserved my love, my affection, my fuckinganything. I wept in the home I shared with them—another lie—after my powers accidentally took them out, when I should have been killing them this entire time. As a kid, I was horrified by the thought our coven didn’t want us, when theykeptme from my real home. Friends, family, all of whom I have zero recollection of.

My entire life shouldn’t have happened like this.

I was lied to. Deceived. Mocked. Forced to play dress-up into whatever they designed me as.

Everything pours out of me then.