Page 124 of Children of Fallen Gods

{But now I see. To miss is to mourn. And I know that I mourn. But the greatest tragedy of it is that I cannot remember why. I just know that once I was whole, and now I am a collection of missing pieces.}

The plains dissolved. I felt Reshaye’s pain, dull and aching, spread through my bones.

{Sometimes, though, I catch the edge of it, like a snag at the end of a fraying thread. I think that I remember the sun.}

The comforting heat of the sun fell over my face, sweat dotting my cheeks.

{Perhaps I once knew the smell of rain.}

As quickly as it had come, the sun was replaced by a steamy rush of rain, the damp scent of earth rising.

{Once, I may have even known the touch of another soul.}

The rain was gone. The sensation was replaced by only one other, the feeling of a hand in mine, the warmth of skin, the throb of a pulse.

{But even these things are a shadow of a shadow. Perhaps they are not my memories. Perhaps they belong to another.}

The warm touch was gone. Suddenly there was pain. A flash of white, white, white. A fragment of golden hair. A glance of mossy green.

And someone watching. Someone calling. Someone searching. And I had felt Reshaye recoil from terrible memories, but above all, this — this tenderness — is the thing that scared it most.

Why?I asked. I didn’t understand.Why do you fear the thing you want most?

{My fear is not the fear of danger.}

Then what?

{Perhaps I am too far from what I once was.}Its voice was quiet. Childlike.{Perhaps I do not wish to be found.}

I felt a breath, a name I could not understand, a hand reaching. I felt it closer than ever, so close it raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

I turned, and—

—And then I woke.

* * *

Somethingwarm and wet was dripping down the side of my face. Blood? Everything hurt. I could see nothing. I heard voices, but the words ran together. It took concentrated effort to orient myself. My thoughts were sludge.

I tried to touch my wound, only to find that my shoulders ached because my arms were wrenched out to either side, my wrists bound. Blindfolded. I was blindfolded. I felt Reshaye lingering, half-dazed, in the back of my mind.

My memories came back to me in pieces. The old woman and her granddaughter. My visit. The soup. The hands on my throat. And—

I would do anything for them. Anything.

They had poisoned me. They had given me up.

The realization slid into me like a knife, and betrayal spilled through me. Reshaye clung to it.

{After everything that you have done for them? After everything that you have given for them? They betrayed us.}

No.I had to choke back my own hurt, my own anger.No, that isn’t what’s important now.

But Reshaye unraveled everything I tried so hard to conceal.

{You can not lie to me,}it whispered.

There were people here. How many? I reached out a tendril of my mind into the air around me, feeling for a thought, a presence. But my magic had gone eerily silent, like a wall separated it from the world around me, dampening it to a numb ringing inside my skull.

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