The next moment he was in between me and my clothes. He had transferred and managed to get completely dressed and dry in the time it took me to get out of the water.
“Do you know there is a glamour on your back?”
His question and look of concern on his face, such a change from the look he was giving me moments ago, had caught me off guard so much that I had forgotten how mad I should’ve been at him.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
He spun me around and placed his cool hand on my back. I turned my head as far as I could to see his shadows covering my back. A faint pulling sensation brought tingles to my back. They were removing the spell that I had no idea someone had put there.
The shadows retreated back into Sebastian’s hand just as he said, “What the fuck.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
I turned back around to see his dusty-blue eyes were completely black, and the sky was darker than it was moments ago. The starlight was gone.
“There . . . there are scars all over your back,” he said as he seemed to stare through me.
“Scars? How are there scars on my back?” I asked.
“Did Calum do this to you?” Shadows began radiating from Sebastian.
“No! Of course not!”
“Then who did this to you?” he asked as the shadows continued to spread farther from him.
“I . . .” I realized then that I had no idea when it even happened. “I don’t remember.”
“If you don’t tell me who did this, I will kill everyone in the fucking Mountain Realm so I will know they are dead,” he yelled, anger seething in his words, and I knew he wasn’t bluffing.
“I don’t know who did this. I don’t even remember it happening.”
Sebastian grabbed my head with both of his hands and said, “Drop your walls.”
I let him in without a second thought and waited as he searched my mind for the thing I couldn’t remember.
“There’s a spell in your mind. It’s altering your memories.”
“Well, get rid of it!” I said.
“It’s going to hurt.”
“I don’t care. I have to know what happened.” I wrapped my arms around my body, realizing that I was still naked. I felt so vulnerable in this moment.
Sebastian was still in my mind, and he heard what I was thinking. He placed his hand on my shoulder and suddenly my dress was back on, and I was completely dry.
He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. When he opened his eyes, they were back to blue, not the usual dusty blue, but a dark blue and the stars were back in the sky. He knew I was scared, and he was trying to keep his composure.
He placed his hands back on my head and looked into my eyes. “I’m sorry, love.”
“Wh—” I heard the loudest shrill inside my mind and a sharp stabbing pain radiated through my head. It was like he was standing in my mind and with a dagger was tearing through the spell that was blocking the memory of what happened to me.
I screamed out in pain as the stabbing continued, but the pain of that was nothing compared to the pain of the truth.
I remembered what really happened.
Removing the spell took me back to the weeks after Calum left the Mountain Realm.
29