Page 35 of The Last Guardian

Once alone in the room I woke in, I sat on the bed and turned the charm around my neck—the charm my mother had made for me.

By the stars, I missed her. If only she were here now… What would she make of this? It had been so long since she left us. Her laugh, what did it sound like? All the little things that made her had vanished: her smile, the way her beautiful hair fell on her shoulders, her lovely eyes. Were her eyes deep brown or light brown? I couldn’t recall.

Remember.

My heart stopped for a second.

You won’t remember, just like always, gorgeous.

Nevan had found a way to erase my memories, but how? And what if those weren’t the only memories that had been erased? Perhaps someone had erased my mother’s death from my memory?

The day I woke up in the middle of nowhere with her body in my arms, dark blood soaking into our dresses, spreading beneath us and creeping outward as if the ground were eager to claim it.

No one knew the truth about that day, how I had found her.

I knew no one would believe me if I told the truth—that I had woken up, with no memory of how the day began, no memory of where we were or how I ended up on the ground, clutching my mother’s body to me.

Eastern’s soldiers found me hours later, as I was screaming and shouting to wake her up. And when they asked me what had happened, I lied.

I said I’d gone to pick flowers in a neighboring garden while my mother stayed in the carriage to rest. And when I returned, she was lying on the ground, covered in blood, already dead.

I was afraid that they’d accuse me of it, that they wouldn’t believe me—that Father would order my execution. It wasn’t rational, but the lie stuck. I never told anyone, not my brothers, not my sisters, not Lyra.

Since the king couldn’t explain the queen’s death, he had made up a lie too: she’d died of severe pneumonia, and everyone had believed him.

I had gone to the town’s healing center when I came back, the one I trusted most. I brought up memories that had faded from my mind—without mentioning how I found my mother—and showed them the scar below my breast, simply saying that I didn’t know how it had appeared. They thought the amnesia had been a trauma reaction.

But now I wondered, what if there was no reaction at all? What if someone had been tampering with my mind? It could explain the emptiness that I carried for so long, a weightless sorrow—an aching absence in my heart. I felt a stirring in my chest, and I hesitated to label it ‘hope’.

No.

Hope was too brittle, too delicate, too easily shattered.

Yet, what if I found a way to regain my lost memories once and for all? Maybe I couldn’t grieve her loss because I didn’t remember her death.

If memories could fade, could they reemerge?

Perhaps this escape was more than survival—perhaps it was my one chance to uncover the answers I had longed for in silence.

MY HEART THUNDERED louder than the fist I’d slammed against the door. I was now on the fifth floor of the ship, knocking at the cabin above mine.

Zaidkiel’s quarters.

He’d left a note earlier in my room, asking me to meet him in the evening. The sun was shining down hard for late summer, slowly sinking into the water and spreading millions of beautiful colors across the sky.

Breathtaking. On any other day, I would have appreciated the view. If only I weren’t stuck with him on this ship.

The only reason I agreed to see Zaidkiel was to get answers. And to ask him to drop me off at the nearest land so I could begin my search for my memories. Once that was done, I needed to find a way to send Lyra a letter warning her about my escape, so she could also let my brothers know I was still alive.

The door creaked open, and I leaped.

“On edge, I see,” Zaidkiel joked, leaning against the wooden frame.

I glared at him in response. Without waiting for him to say anything else, I walked into the room, moving past him and nudging him with my shoulder.

Of course, that made him laugh.

I stepped into the large room—just one big space—and glanced around. I saw his desk flanked by shelves stuffed with books that reached all the way to the ceiling, some even hanging from the walls like vines. A sofa and an armchair were near the office, too.