Page 62 of Pet: Torment

“That is only temporary. We will—”

I release a bitter chuckle. “Will what? Wait? You all have this problem. You all underestimate how smart I am. You arebothas powerless as I am. You won’t even question his reality because you are afraid of him and what he can do. You are the same as your mother,” I say.

Xion’s gaze darkens.

“I am nothing like her,” she snaps. “I’ve seen what barreling in and challenging Remus can do. We have to be smart now, or else it will cost us another life—” Xion trails off, letting the silence grow loud between us.

She takes a deep breath, reining in her anger.

“Remus used his last bit of energy to tell us to protect you. I will no matter what happens—whether he comes back or not,” she says.

Her words trigger my tears, but I blink them rapidly back.

“I felt him. He was scared…Remus is never scared,” I say, looking at the hairpin he gave me. I twist it in my fingers, my thumb rubbing over the top of the jewel.

It radiates a small amount of heat.

“How can she have just wiped me out of his mind like that? There’s literally physical proof of my existence,” I say, looking at her.

Xion’s expression softens.

“The way the manipulation works is difficult to explain. It’s like if you went your whole life seeing flowers as one color. You would never bother thinking it was even possible for them to be a different color because that is your reality. There’s no question about it…it just is. It isn’t until someone asks you what color the flowers are, and all you can say is ‘the color a flower is’, but you can’t specify pink or blue. You just know it’s always been the color a flower is,” she says.

My heart breaks at her explanation. She speaks with familiarity.

“So, you’ve been manipulated, too,” I say.

She doesn’t respond. But her silence is all I need.

“What’s stopping her from going further and taking your memories of me? Or even Ezra’s? If she can take Remus’s sense of self, within two minutes, what’s stopping her from going after all of you?” I ask.

“It’s not that complicated, Iris. She doesn’t need to. Whatever her reasons, it has less to do with you and more to do with Remus himself. She thinks you’re dead, and Remus is his old self again. She has removed herself from the equation so that we can go back to doing what we do best—conquering. Remus is no longer a threat,” Xion says.

I clutch the pin in my hand harder when I realize my fingers are shaking from her response.

“How are you going to fix this when you don’t even know why she did all this?” I ask.

Xion is quiet for a moment, thinking before she speaks.

“Ezra said you were having visions before Remus left. Have you had any since?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No.”

“And what were the visions?” she asks.

I pull in a deep breath as I recall the visions. “They were somewhere foreign. Someone was calling for Remus constantly,” I say.

“Remus was having visions too—memories of when he was a child in a different world. I think it has something to do with where we came from. I think our mother is hiding from someone here,” Xion says.

I slowly look away from the hairpin to her as I try to decipher what that means.

“Our mother has always cautioned us against bonding with someone weaker than us. It is why I’ve never bonded. But Remus did, and not only did bad things begin to happen, but the memories he didn’t recall living were returning. I think it had something to do with his essence being in a weak host. Someone was reaching out to him, or rather you, trying to find him,” she says.

Chills form as she explains what she thinks is happening. If it’s true, then there is much more to fear than Remus. Possibly someone his own mother would wipe his memory to hide from.

I close my eyes as my head slowly throbs, my mind shifting to Remus. My anger comes to the surface as I think of the emotionless machine she’s manipulated for the sake of her own cowardice.

“Then we have to save him. You have to let me try to talk to him. If his memories could be returned from us bonding, maybe we just need to bond again,” I say.