Golden, like a burning sunset. Golden like his eyes. She scrunched up her nose, her mind bending and falling with the thoughts, her heart picking up its beat. The world around her flashed. Leaves dropped off the trees, and ice raced along the trunks and branches. In the distance, screams and howls mixed into a haunting melody, and she was frozen. Golden, like his smile. She swallowed hard, unable to catch her breath as the smell of smoke filled her senses. Like his heart. The wind howled, blustering around her, sounding like a pack of wolves baying at the moon. Her hair stood on end, but she wasn’t afraid.
“Em.” It was that voice, familiar yet unknown. Smooth and entrancing. Dark and enchanting. She slowly looked over her shoulder at the icy landscape encasing around her. A figure stood in the shadows, his features blurry. A sword glinted in his hand, and behind him smoke oozed around him like gas, dancing toward her. “You will come for me.” She couldn’t react, couldn’t move, as that darkness roared toward her, a green light cutting through like a beacon, the man watching as it overtook her, biting and lacing into her, and his dark voice commanded, “And you will be mine.” She bowed to it, to him, as she drowned.
She woke up screaming—blood curdling, heartwrenching screams. Strange tubes were in her nostrils, draping down her body, and taped to her arm. A persistent beeping sounded beside her. The room was small, drapes cornering her in on the bed, shielding her from the world, or the world from her. Sweat clung to her aching body as the dream quickly faded from her mind. She tried to grasp, to hold on, to remember. But as the room came into focus around her, it left, leaving her breathless.
“Oh, good. You’re awake. Sweetie, how do you feel?” A woman appeared, holding papers on a board, looking at the instruments around her, her analyzing eyes roaming over her as she took notes.
Emory tilted her head and regarded the woman, taking in her loose brown hair and kind eyes, her white shirt and blue pants giving no indication of where she was. “I feel... sleepy,” her voice rasped in a gravelly tone.
“That would be the sedation wearing off.” She flipped the page. “Emory Reia Fae, is it? That’s a beautiful name. Can you tell me your age? Or where your home is?”
She swallowed, her throat contracting. “Thank you. And, um...” She closed her eyes, trying to fight off the burning panic rising in her. “I’m fifteen years old. Turning sixteen at the end of November.” The woman nodding, smiling softly. “I don’t know where my home is. I don’t... remember anything else.”
The corner of the woman’s mouth twisted down. “That’s okay, sweetie. Emory, you’re lucky to be alive. You have been in the hospital for a week and were in a coma. It’s not abnormal when your body has gone through... well, extreme circumstances, and your MRI was showing a lot of stress to your brain so, it’s not abnormal to experience amnesia. Or memory loss.” Emory blinked, the words falling around her, not making any sense. The woman continued, “I’m your nurse, but we need to take it slow. The police have released a missing person report with your information, so your family will know where you are. Let’s just get you feeling better, okay?”
Tears slipped from her eyes, and all she could do was stare at the nurse, her mind scrambling. “What are these things around me? What’s a hospital?”
The nurse tensed, tilting her head. “Darling, what do you mean?”
Her voice climbed. “I don’t know what these things are! A nurse, a hospital! Where am I?” She was yelling as she succumbed to the panic.
The nurse pressed a button, and coolness spread through her veins and the world tilted once more. “Emory, breathe, you are going to be okay. Everything will be okay.” Everything started to dissolve and bleed away, becoming blurry. It was her fading whispers that filled her.
“I don’t know where I am... I don’t know...” Her words carried her to a place where nothing was focused, and she drifted, lost amongst the current.
22
Emory
Two Months Later
“Emory, you will need to talk to us for this to work.”
She stared down at her hands, memorizing each detailed line and crinkle of her skin, not wanting to look up at the woman posted across the desk from her. Her hair was tightly bound in a perfect bun, her black wardrobe too stuffy and too crisp. The folder laid open on the table, the sheets rustling against one another with each turn of the fan.
Two months had passed since she had been found. Each day she fell deeper into her pain, and not knowing anything about where she came from or who she was dug her deeper and deeper into this insanity. Nurses. Social workers. Therapists. They all looked at her like she either had two heads or with such a dark pity it made her want to throw up. Or punch something. And the more Emory learned about this world, she dreamt that she had lived a fantasy, that maybe, just maybe, she was destined not to fit here. Any
