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“Why?” Dearen asked. “Did she know what you had done?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“Why don’t you ask her?” Fiona suggested.
“I will,” I replied.
Why? I asked within me. The girl was always there, listening or at least aware of me in some sense. I was expecting her to become visible in my mind and respond.
She did not. Her disappearance was how I discovered where she had been all this time. Where she had been previously, there was now a vast emptiness. It felt dark when I tried to push in where she should have been.
There was a wall. It blocked me from the part of me that she always stayed in. I could not reach it, no matter how much I tried.
“She’s not here,” I replied.
My insides twitched with fear. The girl had said that she was staying with me to ensure that I did not change into a monster. And now that she was not here, how could I trust that I would not turn into a monster and kill all my friends in bloodlust?
“Can’t you reach her?” Fiona asked.
“Perhaps there are no monsters nearby,” Dearen suggested.
I nodded. That was not the reason, but Dearen’s words made me remember something. Something significant that I wanted to share with my friends and could not before because she had stopped me.
I am slowly turning into a monster.
I had meant to say that out loud. I could not. The girl was not inside my mind to stop me, but no matter how much I tried, I could not say the words.
Had she done that? I did not know.
But now, I had more important concerns.
“Ask her when she comes back,” Fiona said.
“I will,” I replied, but I was not paying any attention to what the others were focused on. I had long forgotten the question I had planned to ask the dark-eyed girl.
As we kept riding our horses, I turned inward. The connection that the girl had established between us would have to go both ways. If I were to find out where she was, I needed to find the connection.
I searched within to find something. Anything that felt unfamiliar could have been left behind by her to find her way back to me.
I could not. I felt no connection, no touch by a stranger, as I dug deep and searched inside my mind.
What would Orla tell me to do? Search within? I had done that already, and there was nothing.
How would I have done it myself if I was the one trying to establish a permanent connection with someone? Access their thoughts and memories and make sure I stayed there?
The answer was a flicker inside my mind. Of course.
We were always in someone else’s mind as long as they remembered us. Memories. That would be the answer.
The dark-eyed girl had given me the taint of the monster to keep our connection. And for that, she had used the queen’s weapon to force me into the worst memory I had. The queen used her weapon to create the monsters, and for that, she used their own memories against them.
She would be in my memories. That was the way they knew how to enter someone’s mind.
I decided to try.
As I tightened my fingers around my mare's reins and ensured I would not fall, I turned my gaze inward. Searching through my memories was a weird thing; I had done it before with others, but with myself, there were feelings that I could not ignore.
The memory of Kalyden standing over me brought fear with it. Feremir watched us from the other side of the room, ducking behind a chair that was tall enough to hide his tiny body. Guilt came with that. I had left him behind where his mother could easily harm him.
