I gasped and snapped my head around to the water.
“They were soul mates, Elex. Bonded soul mates. He would never have been able to live without her. That’s why he went after her. He didn’t care if he lived or died, just as long as he followed her. And when the… ropes…nets came and pulled me off the boat...
“I saw my mother dead on the bottom.”
Elex barely had time to get the bag over to me before I vomited.
My mother’s dead body was caught in a fishing net, and she floated in the kelp there.
“My father swam over to me and used every ounce of his magic and energy to get me out of the nets. He swam me back to the boat and shoved me up out of the water and onto the dive platform on the back of the boat.”
I smeared the tears off my own face.
“He never came back up. Why didn’t I remember this? Why was all of this missing from my mind? Someone murdered my parents!”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see for the tears that were crowding my vision.
Someone had murdered my parents.
Why?
I didn’t know what happened in the next few moments, but somehow we were on the platform for the train, and I could smell the fresh ocean air tinged with salt.
“Breathe, Kimber. Breathe,” Elex whispered
“I’m trying.”
I was, desperately.
It wasn’t easy, though, after thinking for forty-five years that my parents had died in a boat accident, and they hadn’t.
Elex had me tucked into his side on the bench and just waited for my hysteria to clear.
It did, eventually. Only took about three more hysterical outbursts.
“And you were never able to remember that until now?” Elex’s voice was low and kind.
“Not until we just got here.”
“Someone suppressed the memories and left this area as a trigger if you ever came back.” He smoothed my hair carefully.
“Why? Why did they kill them?”
“We don’t have to figure that out right now.”
“They were only twenty-five years older than I am. They were young. They were so lucky…”
“Please breathe, Kimber.”
It hit me that he was horribly worried about me, and I sucked in a few deep, slow breaths to steady myself.
“Back to the city, Elex. Take me back. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be near this place.”
Nodding, he helped me stand, then we walked toward the train, and he helped me on. We ambled to the seats.
“I didn’t remember my parents’ death.”
This was a nightmare.
Dorian ran a hand through his hair.
Danai offered me another cup of tea. “Are you feeling a little more collected?”
“I am.” I accepted the cup.
Elex hadn’t left my side in nearly twelve hours, and he looked just as frazzled as I felt.
We both needed to sleep.
Tymon walked back into the room holding a folder with dozens of papers inside that he paged through.
“The police dug up the reports for me, as quickly as they could,” he said, sitting down next to me. “They had archived them, so that’s why it took so long.”
“Anything interesting?” Lunella asked.
“Curiously, it’s obvious in these reports they were murdered. There’s no question about what happened.”
I dropped my face into my hands. “They messed with my mind.”
“I’m afraid so.” Tymon flopped the folder onto the table. “So the question then would be who had access to you immediately after their deaths?”
“And what was their motivation to keep those memories oppressed?” Danai asked.
I didn’t know how to feel or what to think. Someone had been in my brain, as a grown woman, and messed with my memories.
“Would you like one of the doctors to come and give you something to calm down?” Lunella considered me.
“If I need that, I’ll have a drink, instead,” I answered.
“Let me just take her back to her apartments.” Elex’s eyes had a pleading in them, and I knew he was worried about me.
Dorian’s finger waved a ‘no’ in the air between all of us. “All he’s going to do is take her home for a romp.”
“For your information, Master Dorian, this poor woman needs a long nap, and I’m the only one here who seems to actually care that she’s exhausted. She won’t be vertical much longer.”
Nodding, I curled into him. “Yes. He’s right. I need to sleep. Please. This has been open for forty-five years. It can wait another day or two.”
After a long pause, Dorian nodded to the others.
“Yes, it’s fine. We’ll deal with this later.”
“Thank you.” Elex stood and offered his hand to me so I could stand more easily.
I didn’t know what happened in the few seconds between his hand reaching out for me and the next time I opened my eyes to see the sky above me filled with billowing dust and the smell of rancid fire.
Coughing and trying to sit up, I discovered that I couldn’t hear much more than ringing in my ears.
Slowly, carefully, I turned my head to scan the area.
My neck was stiff, but nothing seemed to be broken in any way.
I could see parts of buildings still standing, and other parts collapsed into themselves. There were a few fires around here and there, and the bushes on fire were the source of the stink in the area.
Everything came together in the next moment.
The building had been bombed.
I was sitting in the rubble and breathing in the dust of the collapse.
“Elex!” His name was the first one off my lips. “Elex!”
“Kimber!”
The voice, not Elex’s, came from my right and under some bricks. I scrambled over some of the rubble and started throwing bricks off the piles Just a few dozen bricks revealed Tymon’s face, cut and bloodied, but alive and relieved.
“Thank you,” he gasped.
Pulling more bricks back, I freed his arm, and with that, he was able to help me start to free him as well.
“What happened?”
Tymon tried to shrug. “Building was bombed. We’ll have to figure out by who.”
The next brick I pulled off revealed a very distinct lock of hair.
I froze.
Tymon rose from the brick tomb he was in and saw me standing with the brick in my hand. He looked down and nearly leapt to his feet, yanking me away.
“Go find Elex. Go.”
I wasn’t about to disobey. Not when I was almost sure that Danai was lying there dead below the remains of the Rotunda.
Picking my way carefully but quickly over the rubble, I kept calling for Elex.
Fear gripped me as I did.
I didn’t want to find him in the same position as I had just seen Danai.
I needed him in my life.
I wanted him there.
He might not have been my soul mate, but I loved him.
I loved Elex.
“Elex!”
I saw a little firework of magic pop above a brick, and I rubbed my eyes. I had to be hallucinating.
Another one popped up.
“Elex?”
Another.
My feet carried me to the source of the magical pops. I fell to my knees on the rough cement in the area. I dug through, heaving pieces of concrete and plaster out of the way, physically and with my magic.
Elex’s face appeared in the rubble.
I saw his face clearly for just a second before the tears crowded in.
“Don’t cry, gorgeous,” he whispered.
“It’s the dust, asshole. It’s in my eyes.”