Page 38 of Prisoner of Darkness and Dreams (Fated to the Sun and Stars #3)

It’s there, waiting for me—the fathomless depths of the gaidonesti’s power.

I let it course through me. The magic feels as alive as a lightning bolt, striking at the memory.

A pure, white light pulses across my mind, and the memory disappears for just a moment.

When the light fades, the memory is there once more, but it feels somehow brighter and less heavy.

“Good,” Diomi says. “Now, move to the next one, Your Highness. You’re making progress.”

I can already guess the next memory that will come to me.

My throat tightens when I find myself in my room at Gallawing, Bede climbing on top of me as I suffocate.

I’ve relived this many times before in my nightmares, but the potion brings a new intensity to it.

The weight of Bede’s hands as they paw at me and the burn of the water in my airways is as real as if it were happening to me right this moment.

I know they’re not . But it’s barely a relief to think this is all happening inside my head, or to know that soon Bede will be lying dead and smoking on the bedroom floor.

The celestial power. Use it.

Once more, I let the gaidonesti’s magic run through me, obliterating the memory with light until it’s a pale imprint of what it was before.

“Keep going, Your Highness,” Diomi calls encouragingly as I plunge into the next memory.

It continues on like this. Every moment I felt like I could die, every time I watched the life drain from someone’s eyes.

I revisit all of them until they start to merge together—here’s an assassin lying dead on the floor, here now the aisthekis plunges its pincers into my shoulder.

I watch Eryx get murdered by an acolyte, and my friends from Otscold get cut down by a cleric.

I stare into the dead eyes of a young cleric, executed because of me.

I burn all the memories, searing them with celestial magic until they hold no power over me anymore. But it’s a long, grueling process, and my resolve starts to waver.

Leon cleaves a man in two in the woods. Swarms of the ruined—with torn skin and dead eyes—rampage through the streets of Hallowbane. The mortifus stalks toward me again, its skull exposed and wriggling with worms.

You’ve missed some.

The thought stops me short as I burn through the image of the mortifus. I’ve been going over the memories more or less in order, as Diomi said, but something’s absent. There’s a corner of my mind I’ve been avoiding since I lay down on this altar: what happened in the high temple.

I wait, but unlike the others, it doesn’t come to me naturally. I keep my eyes closed, trying to summon it, and Diomi’s voice reaches to me through the empty darkness.

“Try not to resist it, Your Highness.”

I frown. I didn’t think I was, but I suppose giving in doesn’t come easy after all these weeks of pushing this memory away.

I’ve gotten so good at burying it in my waking hours that it won’t come when it’s called.

Taking a deep breath, I try to relax, letting the hum of the gaidonesti’s magic soothe me as I go looking for the memory.

Once I start actively recalling the bite of the surgeon’s blades, it comes to me like a flood.

I’m writhing in pain, then I’m begging Caledon to stop.

My hands are covered in blood, and a pale face lies in my lap, all life drained away.

I’m drowning in it, unable to breathe or see or feel anything but this agony, my heart breaking over and over.

No…Kit . I want to be out of this nightmare—I want to blow this whole memory to smithereens.

I call on the celestial magic thrumming beneath my fingertips, expecting the bright light to sweep through the awful scene and burn away the pain.

But nothing happens.

“Keep trying, Your Highness,” Diomi says. “This is the key—the main trauma blocking your magic. Don’t let it conquer you. ”

I watch my hand lift the scalpel to kill Kit, again and again. Still, the celestial magic only hovers at the edges, refusing to purify the memory.

Why is this so hard to burn away compared to the others? Why was this loss, above everything else, the thing that sealed the lock on my magic?

Because you still won’t let yourself face it. You won’t even tell your best friend about it.

But I can’t do it. I can’t. If I purify this memory, if I take away even one ounce of the pain, I’ll have to move past the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I’m terrified of what that means. Do I deserve to purify this? Can I forgive myself that much?

“You can do this.”

The voice isn’t Diomi’s, but I recognize it right away. Leon’s words come to me, cutting through the vivid images, and I cling to them.

“Remember Mistwell. Remember the worst thing I ever did. I couldn’t forgive myself, but the people who love me accepted me despite it—including you.

For you, Ana, it’s different. What happened with Kit was no foolish mistake.

You helped him. The fact that you have to shoulder the burden, that the choice is so hard to live with, proves you did it for him, not yourself. ”

I let his words sink in, realizing he’s right.

It was the best thing I could’ve done for Kit, and that’s also why it was the hardest. It’s going to keep being hard, but that doesn’t mean I can just hide from it.

I don’t need to let it weigh on me like this.

My guilt doesn’t serve Kit’s memory. It’s not what he’d want.

I return to the memory, bracing myself for the onslaught.

This time, I don’t recoil as I watch Kit die, looking for a way to escape from the past. Instead, I watch it deliberately, taking in every detail and accepting every moment.

The celestial magic beneath my fingers thrums louder, until it’s almost a roar.

Then, just as I say goodbye to Kit for the last time, I release it.

The magic burns across the memory, smothering it in a bright, starry light, and when the light fades, there it is: the same memory. Only now I can look at it and feel sadness, not despair. Pain, rather than agony .

That’s it. That’s the last memory. Darkness falls again, and with nothing else coming to me, Diomi tells me to open my eyes.

I sit up and tentatively remove my hand from the stone.

“Now, Your Highness. Try to find your magic.”

For a moment, I’m worried I won’t be able to tell the difference, that my magic will respond to the stones’ presence, and I’ll be tricked into thinking it’s back for good.

But the moment I reach into myself for my power, I know it’s worked.

There waiting for me is a vast well of magic—and it’s all mine.

Familiar and warm, I revel in the sensation of it coursing through my veins as I lift my palm and conjure.

A cage of golden light appears in my hand.

“We did it,” I breathe, so alight with joy it’s like I’m one of my sun beams.

I look up, searching for Leon’s gaze, wanting to share this moment of triumph with him.

But he’s not there. Strange. I was certain Leon had entered the temple when I heard him during the ritual.

His voice was clear as a bell. Yet when I look around now, only the dryads surround me.

I must’ve imagined his voice urging me on.

Dismissing the thought, I lift my palm again to enjoy the rays of light that glow from it.

“Thank you,” I say to the dryads as tears of gratitude prick at the corners of my eye. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

The dryads beam back at me, and I see the joy they get from this work, the satisfaction of erasing a little more suffering from this world. Diomi’s expression soon grows serious, however.

“You did wonderfully, Your Highness, but be aware that the effects won’t last unless you continue to face every part of what happened to you. If you don’t, it’s possible the memories will return to their darkest forms and diminish your inner flame again.”

“I understand,” I say, already knowing what I’ll need to do. First, however, there are other duties I have to think about. I have a responsibility to prevent suffering in this world, just as the dryads do .

“You have done me a huge service, but I’m afraid I must make more requests of you,” I say, standing and addressing Diomi and the other council members. “I’ve faced the darkness, but it’s time for Agathyre to do the same. We need to talk about Caledon.”