Chapter 61

“You were a marvel out there love,” Aris said to Corrine, wrapping her in an embrace and dragging her into their bed.

She giggled and swatted at him as he pulled her into a smattering of kisses. When she finally caught her breath she said, “I merely held things together until you arrived. I barely did a thing. You were the one who was amazing. You took that crowd that had wanted to kill us just minutes ago and completely turned them around. You redirected the hatred to where it deserved to be in the space of less than five minutes. You were the amazing one love.”

Aris smiled. He craved her praise but he knew that he could never accept it until he told her the truth. The truth that had nearly destroyed him. A truth that he still wasn’t sure wouldn’t destroy her.

How could he tell her about a whole life she had lived that had been stolen from her? A life of remembering a hero who had sacrificed everything for her and her daughter. A life where she was able to celebrate Sephira for who she truly was, her daughter ripped from her arms and memory, only to be —cruelly or caringly, he didn’t know— introduced back into her life as a stranger, a girl she had never known. One who became her niece.

He knew he had to tell her, but it would hurt her. He had already decided to bare his soul to her about the world that Wallace and his young ward Kestrel had dragged him into…He’d also decided to tell her of the memories that Wallace had seen and he had subsequently stolen from the older man, but he was terrified that it would tear his wife apart. He had to tell her, but it would wound her deeply.

How could he tell her?

“Just say it,” Corrine interrupted his train of thought, reading the conflict on his face. “Just tell me. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for you.”

How was it that she knew him so completely? Had she known his brother Van like that like?

No, there was no room for that question. He wouldn’t allow himself to fight his long dead brother any more. He would bury that battle like he had buried the body of Van. He hadn’t known that Corrine had been his wife when he had made his vows to her. Their marriage was a separate thing.

“I’ve been keeping something from you,” Aris’ heart burned with shame as he said the words. “I’ve been keeping something that will change everything you know about the world from you.”

Corrine just nodded. That was the last thing he’d been expecting. “Yeah, I figured that part out ages ago,” she said.

He laughed in astonishment and his tensed shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. “Really?”

“I’m not an idiot, and you have to remember I’ve been married to the greatest detective in Fiell for over a decade. You really think that you could keep something like that from me? I just never figured out exactly what it was…I do know that whatever it was, it started when Wallace, your old commander appeared here with that arrow sticking from his shoulder,” she said her voice was tinged with pain.

“Do you want to become one of my Inspectors?” Aris joked. “But really. That’s amazing. I knew that you knew that something had changed, but I didn’t realize that you had dug down so deep.”

“I’m pretty amazing aren’t I?” Corrine wrapped her arms around her husband and drew him into a kiss. “Now tell me, just what is it exactly that you’ve been hiding? Is it something to do with what you called ‘dark magic’ in your speech today?”

Aris nodded his head ‘yes.’

“Is it really magic?”

Another nod.

Corrine’s head tilted in question. “What do you mean when you say ‘magic’?” she asked.

“I wish Wallace were here. He can explain it much better than I. In fact, both Kestrel and Sephira both sum it up far better than I do.”

Corrine’s eyes narrowed in…what was that? Anger? Upon hearing Sephira’s name being pulled into the middle of everything.

She’d known her niece was there deep in her heart, but it felt strange hearing it stated so plainly.

Aris sighed. They weren’t here and it needed to come from him anyways. “Magic is real,” he said. “But not in the storybook way where one can recite a spell and change the matter of things. Nothing so simple as that. No, what we call magic is something else entirely. Something that I personally find far more terrifying.”

Corrine set up in the bed, linens falling from where they’d been pulled around her shoulders. Her body stood rigid in attention. She hung onto her husband’s every word.

“You see, when you use what we call ‘magic’, you can effect the memories of others,” Aris took a deep breath and then continued. “I have this magic. I’m what Wallace calls a ‘Taker.’ We have the ability to see the memories of others. I can demonstrate for you if you want me to.”

Corrine shook her head no. The words should sound crazy to her but they didn’t. It felt like she was returning home. To what though, she didn’t know, but it felt familiar.

That chilled her bones.

“You don’t need to. I trust you,” she said to Aris, gazing deep into his eyes.

He nodded his head. He was surprised at her reaction but not as much as he thought he would be upon hearing her words. Some small part of him had expected this response. She had been his brother’s wife after-all.

“So, us Takers, Wallace, Kestrel and I, can take the memories of others by touch. Wallace says that we are the most common of the Memory Mages. Then there are those who are called Givers. They are the ones I was talking about. The Inquisitors that are spoken of like nightmares made to scare kids into behaving well are real and they have the power to share their memories with others. Evrain has them kidnapped as children and tortures them…”

Corrine’s eyes blazed with fury at the revelation. The thought of children being tortured boiled rage in her heart.

“He takes them as children, and from what I can tell, and have seen from the memories of those attacked by them, he raises them in the most brutal of tortures. They are bred into pain and violence.”

“But why would they serve the Emperor if he’s the one that’s subjecting them to such horrors?” Corrine’s face was knit with confusion.

“Because they don’t know any better,” Aris explained with a shrug. “When Sephira and Kestrel were attacked they said that the Inquisitor who slaughtered everyone else committed suicide when he found out that the one whom he thought to be his savior was actually the one who had subjected him to the torture he’d been raised in. He thought that Evrain had saved him from that life. Evrain is somehow able to convince him that he’s the one who saved them from the life of torture they grew up in rather than the one who subjected them to such a horrible existence.”

Corrine shook her head in disgusted wonder at the information. Aris say her knuckles whitening as she gripped the covers as if it were the Emperor’s neck she intended to wring. “You said that there were more than just the Takers and Givers?” She asked. Aris wasn’t sure if it was to distract herself or add more fuel to her growing rage.

“Yes. There are two more types of Memory Mages known. There were the Forgotten, not much is known about them, but they are able to remove the memories of others…”

Corrine gasped. She could feel cold clammy hands sliding down her face in twisted pleasure at the name of the Forgotten. She could feel something dear to her being ripped from her.

The Forgotten.

They had taken something from her. It felt perverted. It felt twisted and sickeningly familiar.

She had been violated by their touch.

Aris saw the shutter.

Did she remember? Could she recall the memories that had been stolen from her? Did she still have some lingering locked away recollection of the horrors inflicted on her at the touch of the Forgotten?

He would find out soon enough.

“And finally, the last is the most mysterious. Some think that it’s not real, but Wallace insists that it is and I believe him. He calls them ‘The Manipulators.’ They can add themselves into the memories of others,” Aris said.

“That’s a terrible name. The others are simple and memorable, but ‘The Manipulators?’ That’s just lazy,” Corrine said.

Aris startled her with his loud laugh. “I told him the same thing. It really is a terrible name. The others sound mysterious and ominous. Manipulators just doesn’t fit. It’s so…Boring.”

Corrine grinned. It was odd finding such levity in the middle of revelations that were shifting the world around her.

“So…Now to the truth that you’ve been so scared of sharing,” Corrine said. She knew that the new reality that her husband had opened to her was of utmost importance, but he was still holding something back from her. There was still that one thing that had started all this and terrified him more than anything. What could it be?

Aris cleared his throat.

He wrung his hands.

He stood up and paced around their bedroom.

“You,” he started and then stopped. “You,” he said again. Corrine could hear the uncertainty and fear in his voice. What could cause such terror from a man who’d seen the worst man had to offer and had faced those inhuman Wendig tribe?

What could make Aris so nervous?

“Just say it.”

“You aren’t my wife,” Aris blurted out.

Corrine, who had gotten up to look her husband in the eyes, felt her knees buckling. What could Aris mean?

“Well, you are my wife. But you weren’t only mine. I took you. I took you from my brother Van,” Aris said. His voice caught in his throat. Tears dripped from his eyes. He was crying.

Great. Just great.

When he spoke again it physically pained him and he could barely find his voice due to the knot forming in his throat. “You were married to my elder brother Van. Sephira is your daughter. You had her with Van. You loved him. He was your world, but he was taken from you. He was ripped from your mind at the hands of a Forgotten.”

Corrine sank to the ground. Her stomach twisted, liquids roiling inside it, threatening to force their way out. Her vision swam.

Aris’ words had to be a lie. They had to be. She heaved. Her sides spasmed in agony. She dry heaved again.

Why couldn’t she vomit? She could feel it wanting to come out. Why couldn’t she vomit?

“Those bastards took my brother from you. They took Van and Sephira from you. They took everything. Every memory of him they could find in your mind was stolen from you,” Aris’ voice dropped to a whisper. “And they searched everything. I saw it all.”

“No, that’s impossible,” tears flowed Corrine’s eyes and snot drippled over her lips but she didn’t care.

She said it was impossible, but she knew it to be true. Everything nebulous fear that floated in her mind for ages, every bit of anger and every moment of frustration at not knowing and the hole in her memory that she didn’t know she had fell into place.

She knew.

She knew deep in her soul that what Aris was saying was true. She knew that the past that had always seemed foggy to her wasn’t natural. She knew that the magic was real. It was true. Everything was true.

It was all true, but it was terrible.

“It has to be impossible. It has to be. It has to be…” Corrine’s voice dropped to below a whisper. Tears choked her voice. She opened up her mouth to speak again, but nothing came out. Her words had been stolen from her just as her past life had been.

Aris wrapped his arms around his wife. She collapsed into him. Sobs wracked her body, draining her of every ounce of her strength. How could she stand when her whole world had been ripped from under her feet?

She squeezed Aris tighter. She noticed the top of her head was wet. She wasn’t the only one sobbing.

They fell to their knees. The skies that were painted a violent red had faded into the dark blue that welcomed the beginning of the night by the time either of them found their voice.

“I’m so sorry,” Aris said, pulling away from his wife to hold her shoulders and stare into her eyes. “I’m so, so, sorry.”

She wiped at the trail of tears with the back of her hand then ran it under her nose to clean away the snot. She looked for a place to wipe away the mess on the back of her hand but couldn’t find anywhere. She started panicking but Aris reached down and grabbed her hand and wiped it across his pristine military uniform.

It was a tiny act of selflessness but loved him for it. She had gained the world when she’d married him.

But she had lost her world too. It had been ripped from her. Her mind raped by the touch of a Forgotten.

She had lost the world that she once had. Her husband, Van, had been stolen from her. Executed by the monster that called himself the Emperor.

She had been married to Van.

That meant that Sephira was her daughter. What monster deprived a mother of her daughter and a daughter of her mother only to bring them back together as strangers? She hated Evrain in that moment. Fury boiled in her heart and only her grief tempered it.

“I understand if you want to break things off. If you don’t want the constant reminder of what was taken from you,” Aris’ voice was barely a whisper.

Corrine grabbed him fiercely and she hissed at him violently, “I already had one husband taken from me. You’re an idiot if you think I’d abandon you now just because my past is more complicated than we could’ve imagined. I made a vow to you! I made a vow before God! A vow before man. I had two children with you! Your brother Van may have been my first love. My first husband. But that doesn’t negate our life together. YOU ARE MY HUSBAND! You will be until the day I die! You’re the biggest fool in the world if you think that I’ll abandon you now, when you need me more than ever!”

Aris’ filled with tears again. Those words lanced the boil that had been growing on his heart from the moment he had learned of the life-altering news.

He loved Corrine more than anything in the world, but if he truly loved her, he needed to trust her. He had convinced himself that letting her go might be the only option.

His whole body felt lighter. Corrine was his no matter her past. She was his and he would protect her with his life. He would never lose her.

She wrapped him in her arms, heart filling with a fierce protective love as she did so. She had vowed herself to this man. Nothing in the past could change her ongoing commitment in the present. She was his wife. She would stand by him through the fiercest storm. She would stand by him even if the whole weight of Vealand or even the world tried to grind their bones to dust.

She knew that Aris would fight. He would take a stand against Evrain just as her first husband, Van had done. She knew that he would try to tear down the system that kidnapped children and tortured them only to warp their memories to serve a dark savior. A savior that subjected them to the torture that warped them in the first place.

She knew Aris would risk everything to bring that demon down, and she would be right there by his side. She wouldn’t let anyone else she loved die.

She would do what, somewhere deep in her heart, she had known she’d been too cowardly to do before.

he would fight alongside her husband to save those they loved.

“So, what are we going to do now?” she asked.

“I think we need to talk to Wallace. That is after we fulfill our marital duties,” Aris said with a wink as he pulled her into their bed.