“Well…” The brunette spoke up again, casting a glance toward Weston. “We’re glad that you’re finally here. My name is Yas. This is Alice,” she indicated the Japanese woman, “and her pair, Takeo and Adie.”
Adie—the giant red-headed man—bared his teeth in a grin as wide as he was when his name was spoken.
“You’ve met Jack,” she pointed to the Australian man, “and his pair, Sophie and Sophia.”
I snapped my eyes to the two different women, trying to hold back my amusement at their names. The Brazilian one rolled her eyes at me.
“They call us the Sophies,” she said.
“These two gentlemen,” Yas continued, indicating the two dark-skinned men and saving me from a reply, “are Nahab and Obasi. Of course, you’ve met Jayden, we should have known that he would be the one to bring you in. He is the oldest of the test subjects, after all, and you are the youngest. I’m surprised your twin hasn’t made contact with you yet: the two of you were very close when you were younger.”
“We were?” I asked tonelessly. If anything proved that the Klovoda was naive to the messenger’s true identity, it was Yas’s casual mention of him, which meant that the messenger didn’t trust them.
Did that make them my allies? I wasn’t sure.
“You certainly were,” Yas confirmed with a smile, apparently overjoyed to know this simple fact about me. “Never went anywhere without each other. No matter how big of a room we gave him, we’d always find him in a sleeping bag on the floor beside your bed every morning. Have those memories been returned to you yet?”
She switched her attention to Jayden with that last question, but I spoke before Jayden could answer, giving a definitive “no” that echoed about the room sharply.
“Of course.” By Yas’s tone, I would assume that she was trying to soothe over my agitation, but I wouldn’t be soothed.
I stood, moving away from Jayden, away from Weston, away from Yas—who kept sneaking glances at Weston as though she needed approval for each question. The female pair melted away as I walked back to the painting, and I stared up at it, touching my fingers against the plain man. The Reader.
“Jayden was the one to take my memories?” I asked without looking away from the painting.
“Yes.” Jayden surprised me by being the one to answer. “I was only learning my powers at that age, as were you. Frankly, I’m surprised it worked.”
It worked better than it should have. Maybe that was because I wanted to believe in what he had given me. A real family; a mother and father; a house instead of wherever they had been keeping me.
“Will my memories be returned to me?” I asked, my eyes still on the painting, my tone still sharp.
“Yes, yes, of course—” Yas hastened to smooth the way again, but I quickly cut across her.
“How can I trust what he puts inside my head? I know who he is. People outside of the Klovoda call him the hypnotist—he couldn’t sound any less trustworthy if he tried. If he wanted to, he could seriously mess with my mind. I’ve seen the result of his hypnotism. It’s convincing. How can I trust him to touch my head and fill it with the truth?”
I chose not to mention that he had already returned some of my memories to me. The last thing I needed was to announce to Weston and the Klovoda that I was the Voda heir.
“I’ll order him to return the truth to you,” Weston said lazily. He seemed to be bored of the meeting already, which was odd, since he had been the one to insist on it. Hadn’t he? “That’s my power, after all.”
I rolled my eyes, glad that nobody could see my face. I wondered what Weston would do if he realised that his power didn’t work on Jayden. He seemed to trust Jayden—certainly more than he trusted his own sons. Although Jayden had proved remarkably good at collecting information and locking it away.
“Fine,” I said, turning away from the painting. “Go ahead.”
Jayden laughed, his mismatched eyes sparkling in genuine amusement. “Come here, sit. I’m sorry if there are gaps in what I can give back to you… I was so young.”
Gaps… I could only guess which parts would be blacked out, and I highly doubted that they were due to a lack of skill-refinement. I ground my teeth together, moving to sit back on the chair. Jayden turned his torso slightly, laying his hand over the top of my head, making me feel like an errant child.
“I want you to remember…” he murmured.
And I did.