Page 150 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

Graves straightened his cuffs. “I’ll clear the room,” he said smoothly. “I’m just here for her.”

The doctor smiled up at him. “Excellent. There’s a waiting room down the hall with refreshments and a television if you head to the right out the door.”

He held up a book he’d pilfered off of her desk. “I havemy entertainment.” His gaze shifted to Kierse. “I won’t be far.”

The implication hung in the air as he exited the room. Dr. Carrión wheeled into a spot across the room from Kierse. “He’s quite charming.”

Kierse laughed. “Most people find him intimidating.”

The doctor grinned. “I could see that. Though he doesn’t appear to intimidate you.”

“Not anymore.”

“That’s good. Would you like some tea?” she asked as she poured tea into a mug.

“No, thank you,” Kierse said.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning? Tell me how this all started in your own words.”

Kierse took a deep breath and then released it. “A magical spell was put on me by a Druid when I was a child. I didn’t realize that I had magic at all until I met Graves last winter. It turned out the spell dampened my powers, and they returned to me fully once it was gone. Around the same time, I started having nightmares, which ended up being memories of my past with parents that I didn’t have any conscious memory of. All I knew—or thought I knew—at the time was that my mom died in childbirth and my dad left me.”

“But that wasn’t the case?”

“No. They fled with me to New York when their families rejected their marriage. With the help of a potion I got from the goblin market and Graves’s powers, I’ve been piecing back together what happened. But I keep going back to the night the spell was put on me, and there’s a block. I get to the room where it happened, but I can’t go inside.”

“What do you think you’ll find in this room?”

Kierse shrugged. “The person who did this to me.”

“What will it accomplish if you find them?”

“I’ll finally have answers,” she tried to explain. “Maybe the person is still alive and I can ask them why they did this to me. I mean, I know that my parents asked him to put the spell on me. To hide me from someone who was trying to harm my family. But I don’t know why they made me forget my past in the process.”

“What could be a reason that person would want you to forget your past?”

“I don’t know,” Kierse said. “The why is evading me. I need more information. Maybe the spell was just protecting me. Maybe the general memory loss is part of the spell. Like to hide my magic, I needed to forget all magic.”

“So it could be nothing more insidious than a side effect of the protection.”

Kierse bit her lip. “It could be, but something tells me that there’s more. My memories are starting to come back, butthismemory is still stubbornly stuck. And I don’t know why. So it could be that the Druid didn’t want me to see that memory, or this is some side effect from when the spell broke, or like Mafi suggested, my mind won’t let me see it.”

“And you believe your mind is shielding you from what?”

“Seeing the spell being put on me,” she guessed.

“Hmm. Do you think that was particularly traumatic for you?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t remember.”

Carrión glanced down at her tea. “But your parents died shortly after that, correct?”

“I…think so,” she whispered.

“Or at least, they abandoned you to the streets and you presumed them dead.”

“Right.”

“How does that make you feel?”

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