“The man known as Howard Jennings has been on the agency’s radar for longer than I’ve been alive. He is known to be in possession of a large quantity of incredibly dangerous information. By now, it is very possible he has taken – as his forebears would have – an apprentice to serve as steward of the lost research carried out by the final king of Atlantis.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Night had fallen, bringing with it a fine, chill drizzle that coated everything in a glittering layer of ice. Occasionally, it revealed the silhouettes of the dragons, curled up in the corners of the backyard. They fit well enough, in the end.

Bek eyed them a moment longer, concerned even now that they might be discovered, before looking back towards his mom and Silver. As promised, they had returned to hot food. Dinner, however, had been a quiet affair. Silver was deep in her own thoughts, and so was he. His mom had been upstairs, collecting what she required for her assessment. Silver, at least, seemed to be incredibly willing to cooperate. She and the wolf watched everything with great curiosity – they were at the kitchen table, his mom laying out chalk and ink and a series of towels that she could use to clean it all up at the end. Hopefully, she would not need any of those things.

There were three steps to an assessment like this, so far as he had seen. The first was simple discussion, trying to determine the patient’s state of being. The second was trying to detect the traces of the enchantment that had sealed or removed their memories. The third was trying to repair the enchantment if necessary, or strategically weaken it if not, in the hopes of making its unraveling easier on the victim.

“So Silver, I want to ask you a few questions to help me understand what you’re going through,” his mom said, sliding into the chair next to Silver, “Bek tells me this all started when you met the mur. Do you agree with that?”

Bek remained where he was, close enough to offer input if he had to, but far enough to give Silver some sense of privacy. She knew he was listening, of course. He felt her eyes move to him for a second before she answered.

“No.” That surprised him. “It started before that. I couldn’t tell you exactly when. I’ve had a lot of dreams…and some of them, I don’t think are dreams. Those started not long after I met the Zara.”

“Do you know of a reason the Zara might have triggered your memories?” his mom asked gently.

“We had met before,” Silver said simply. “That was the memory the mur showed me.” Bek crossed his arms slowly over his chest. That explained a lot.

“Knowing what the Zara are, that’s not surprising,” his mom said gently. “Did it worsen after the mur showed you that memory?” Silver hesitated. Bek wondered if she was trying to decide how much to say about Alti, or if there was some other reason.

“I got very sick after that,” Silver finally said, “I would say it got worse, but I wouldn’t really say I was remembering more.” She turned towards Bek again, and he was surprised by the look in her green eyes. He was not sure what it meant. “More like I had more of an awareness of things I had never noticed before. Random impulses. Random knowledge.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” his mom pulled her gaze back.

“I mean, for example, feeling like while I was learning to do something for the first time, I was remembering how to do it instead.” Silver was talking about swordcraft, he realized. About the magical sword she carried that should have killed her the moment she touched it…and she had known it would not. Bek met his mom’s gaze as Silver reached down to stroke the top of Elorian’s head.

“It might help you to talk about your memories as they come to you, Silver. It will help you fit them into your current life.”

If that was a hint that they would listen now, Silver did not take it. She just nodded, staring at the table.

“Good. Then, I want to know a little more about how these memories come to you. You mentioned dreams, which is very normal. Do they ever come to you at other times?” Again, nothing but a barely perceptible nod. “Do they disrupt your everyday life?”

Standard questions, all of them, and yet Bek had the sense Silver never would have answered him the way she did his mother.

“They do,” she agreed. “They’re too vivid. It feels like they creep up on me from nowhere, and I have no choice but to see…” Silver trailed off, her hand resting on the wolf’s head, no longer moving. “I don’t know if I’m imagining things. None of what I remember makes sense. I keep getting the feeling it’s impossible that they’re actually mine. Like there’s someone else…”

“It can feel that way. If you don’t mind, Silver, I want to see if I can detect traces of the enchantment that sealed your memories. I’m sure you still have them, since they do seem to be coming back to you. Sometimes, when memories are removed, only fragments remain behind, but since these are so vivid, I don’t think that’s the case here,” his mom said. Silver would not recognize the tension in his mom’s shoulders. She was worried.

“I would appreciate it,” Silver said a little too quickly. “I need to know what I lost.”

“Don’t think of it as what you lost,” his mom said, directing Silver to turn her chair slightly so they could face each other. Silver would remain sitting. “Think of these like you would any other memory. Something you forgot. Something that happened that wasn’t all that important. Like if you found a picture in an old album that reminded you of something. It’s okay to treasure or cherish it, but don’t fixate on it.”

Bek could not see his mom’s expression, but he could see Silver’s. That dark look said everything she did not. There was no way she could do what his mother was asking. Whatever Silver was seeing, she could not let those memories go. If his mom understood that look, she did not comment on it. She simply set her hands on either of Silver’s shoulders, standing calmly. Bek could sense the movement of her magic.

“Relax,” his mom said gently, “unlike the mur, I will not touch your mind. You’ll hardly even know I’m doing anything.” Silver simply stared up at her for a moment, and then slowly closed her eyes. They stayed like that for the better part of half an hour. Bek did not dare leave; he knew how difficult this magic was, and how intense a focus it required. It was impressive by itself that his mom could even do it.

When she finally released Silver and stepped back, his mom turned to look at him. Her eyes were shadowed.

“I need you to come here and start preparing a circle, Bek. The diagram is on the table. Silver,” she began, turning back to the young woman in front of her, “I expected to find traces of a spell. That’s not what I sense here. Are you familiar with the term seloriat?” Silver’s eyes narrowed, but she was shaking her head. Bek had half-risen from his chair when he froze. “It’s a kind of curse with varied consequences for its bearer. In your case, I believe it was given a dual purpose; to seal your memories, and also to seal your magic.”

“What?” Silver sounded incredulous, even angry. Bek could hardly believe what he was hearing.

“I need to look at it, Silver. It may be that the best thing we can do is leave it as it is, but it’s also possible that we need to do something about this right now. Casting this kind of curse on someone…the strain on your body has to be tremendous. If things continue as they are, your life might be in danger.”

Silver started to rise, and the wolf growled something. They looked at each other for a long moment before she slowly sat back down. Bek’s mom was already picking up the ink, holding it in front of her as her magic went to work. The ink rose from the bottle as Silver looked on, her expression equal parts wonder and suspicion. Bek knelt as the diagram slid through the air, coming to rest on the floor in front of him. Calling on his power, he pictured the perfect, concentric circles, connected by lines and braces and a series of words that were meaningless to him but not his mother, in his head. He saw them appear on the linoleum, a golden blaze of light, before the chalk leapt from the table and began to follow the lines.

His work was done quickly, and so was his mom’s. There was ink on the top of each of Silver’s hands, each a tiny circle filled with Latin words. His mom was a fan of Latin. He preferred Altian.

“I don’t have anything to act as pillars, Bek,” his mom said then, “I’m going to need your help with this.”

The spell circuit his mom had selected had been refined for years and years by numerous researchers and magic users, so there was little they needed to do but feed their magic into the spell to see it work. It was not hard, per say, simply draining. They were forcefully revealing something that should have been hidden, after all.

“Of course,” he said, eyes meeting Silver’s for a moment. She looked weirdly calm. Of course, why should she be otherwise? This was the only way for her to uncover her memories.

“Begin,” his mom said.

Bek raised his eyes as the magic swelled around them all, filling the circle so that the chalk lines gleamed with an eerie gold-green light. Once more, his gaze met Silver’s. For a second, they stared at one another.

Then that crimson light flashed in her eyes.

It was so fast, he could have imagined it. So abrupt, before she was squeezing them closed, her hand rising to her head as if she were in pain. He glanced at his mother – that should not be happening. His mom was speaking softly, slowly, trying to keep the spell going correctly. Interrupting it now would be dangerous. She most likely knew that as well. Silver grabbed the seat of the chair with her other hand, gripping it so tight Bek could see the white of her knuckles.

But he could see something else now as well. Dark lines, ink that seeped from her wrists to disappear into her sleeves. It encircled her throat, feathery black constraints that he recognized all too well.

He was staring so hard he barely noticed when the magic faded. His mom stood before Silver, blinking slowly, her expression calm but sad. So sad. She reached slowly for Silver’s hand, pulling it gently from her forehead. There were more markings there, disappearing into her hairline. Silver was still gripping the base of the chair, but at least she looked unharmed.

“Come here, Bek,” his mom said softly. He went. The wolf had stood, its head resting on Silver’s lap as it watched him come to stand beside her. “I’ve never seen anything remotely similar, but I can tell you…it should have never been done.”

He looked at her sideways. “Tell us what it is,” Bek suggested.

“I did. It’s a curse, cleverly used. If it hadn’t started to weaken, you never would have used magic, Silver. Never. Whoever did this must have known it had a fatal flaw. They wanted to seal your magic and your memories, but two curses like this would have killed you. So, they used only one, to do both, and the result was that if you ever managed to use your power, it would begin to unravel. I’m amazed that you still managed to use magic like this,” his mom explained.

That explained why Silver had appeared to manifest late. It explained the spike of power Ryan had described in her assessments, as if her magic simply manifested and then faded, without build up or fade. It was pushing through the cracks of a curse, leaking through…

“Are you saying they meant for the spell to fail eventually?” Silver asked, staring at her wrist. His mom still held her hand, and released it slowly.

“No, Silver. I’m saying they were so confident in what they had done that even that flaw hardly seemed important.”

“What are our options?” Bek asked simply. Silver stopped staring at the markings on her wrist to look at the two of them.

“There are no options.” His mom bit her lip.

“Can we leave it as it is?” Bek asked.

“This will fade, sweetheart,” his mom said, brushing the black lines on Silver’s face with her fingertips, “give them about half an hour. But there’s nothing I can do with this. If I could recognize the school these markings had come from, maybe we could identify the person who would know the key to releasing it. But I’ve never seen anything like this. It sounds like it’s becoming increasingly unstable, and you can see that the marks are faded in places. We call those scars. The spell has been damaged too many times. If I try to fix it, it would be the equivalent of re-sealing her magic, which at this point, could be fatal. The memories will come. At this point, I’d almost call them a side-effect. I think the best think you can do, Silver, is to not use your power for a while. Let things settle.”

Bek was watching Silver again, wondering what her reaction would be to what his mother had said. She simply nodded slowly, looking paler than she had an hour before. But there was a dangerous light in her eyes. He knew that look.

Betrayal.

The eyes of someone who could not so easily forgive what had been done to them. Someone who would not stop…he looked up, meeting his mom’s gaze as she picked up one of the towels. After a moment, she shook her head slowly. There was no more she could do, and yet more needed to be done. That was clear.

But what it would mean for them…

Bek was not yet sure.