Page 16

“I want you to help me like you did in the Drowned Tower, when you went inside my mind and found the first fragments of my lost memories,” I say, and he’s so still I think he might not reply. He might just stand there, saying nothing, waiting for me to leave.

Instead, he turns to face me.

“I was inside more than your mind that night.” His words are packed with so much self-loathing that my stomach turns over. “I won’t put you in a position where that could happen again.”

“You won’t let it happen again,” I say, although my voice wavers, because I can’t be sure of that.

“Salvatore pushes hardest when my walls are down, and being near you is the fastest way to bring my walls down.” His eyes burn with a conviction that looks like it’s eating him alive. “That’s not me being cautious. That’s me being honest about what I am.”

“You’re not a what,” I say, the words rushing out fiercer than I intended. “You’re a person who had eight centuries of a vampire’s violence shoved into your skull. I’m a person who needs answers that are locked inside my head. And you’re the only one who can reach them.”

“Then maybe the answers don’t have to come from your head.”

I flinch back. “What?”

“Salvatore lived for eight centuries.” He releases the desk and straightens, surer of himself now. “In those eight centuries, he might have encountered these Revenants that Oliver told you about. Which means those memories might be inside my head, and I won’t have to enter yours to find them.”

8

AVERY

My fire dims in my chest.

Tobias is handing me a version of this situation where he stays behind his desk and I stay against the door, and neither of us has to touch the other. No hands on my temples. No hour of him moving through my mind.

I hate it. I wanted him in my head again. Some stupid part of me hoped that if he went back in and it went right this time, it could fix what broke between us.

“You don’t know if Salvatore knew anything about the Revenants,” I say instead, refusing to give up. “Oliver did, and he told me about them. The memory is in my head, buried under whatever someone did to hide it. That’s a certainty. Salvatore is a guess.”

“It’s a guess that doesn’t require me to touch you.”

My fire kicks hard against my ribs, and I take a deep breath to keep it banked.

“You told me that you can’t pull out Salvatore’s memories on command,” I remind him. “They rise up when they want to, and you fight them back down. How are you going to reach for memories you’ve spent three years learning to suppress?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, his thumb pressing against the iron ring in slow, deliberate circles.

“The Ember Ring amplifies weak magic. The Fury Loop amplifies emotion-driven casting,” he says, telling me what I already know. “Salvatore’s memories respond to both. If I went into either Circle with the intention of pulling his memories of the Revenants to the surface, the amplification might do what I’ve never been able to do on my own.”

“You trained in those Circles when you were a student,” I say, desperate to find any hole in his plan, which should horrify me, because it means I’m desperate for him to touch me again, despite what he did. “What happened with Salvatore when you were in them?”

“The Salvatore incident didn’t happen until after I graduated. When I was training in the Circles, I was a normal student with normal fire magic and no eight centuries of predatory memories competing for space in my skull.” He presses hard against the ring, then releases. “I haven’t been inside a Scorched Circle since then. I don’t know if this plan will work, but I’d rather walk into a Scorched Circle with my own demons than put my hands near your mind again.”

I swallow hard and nod, since how can I push any further when I’ve seen his demons with my own eyes? If this is what he wants, then it’s what he wants. I can’t change it. I shouldn’t want to change it.

“Okay,” I finally tell him. “I understand.”

The clock on his desk fills the silence, and I replay Oliver’s face in the Memory Flame, his hands gripping my shoulders.

I don’t have an emberlink partner anymore. I won’t have one ever again. But at Blaze Academy, all third years are required to emberlink. Tobias was once a student at Blaze Academy. Which means…

“You’ve never mentioned your emberlink partner,” I say, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear again. “Are they still…”

I trail off, unable to say the rest of my question.

Are they still alive?

Tobias’s body stiffens, and for a breath, I think he’s going to tell me it’s none of my business.