We both knew this was a fool’s errand, and that sooner or later, his body would collapse from the mental strain, but neither of us wanted to stop yet. We wanted answers. We wanted Myrcedes to come home and stay, and this was all we could think of to help.
Daath walked over to the fae, crumpled on the ground, and grabbed a fistful of his hair, lifting his head to look at me. He shouted, begging me to stop, but I ignored these cries as I pressed on. In his memory, we had managed to find Myrcedes’ full name, though we hadn’t introduced her using it. After some probing, we were able to confirm that it was the Unseelie Queen’s voice he first heard say the name Myrcedes Kardia, but that was all. We weren’t able to unlock the full memory surrounding it, so we couldn’t determine why Minerva had told him about Myrcedes. Though just like Oli, this man had a memory of being threatened by the late fae ruler, and she had handed him a dagger to kill himself if he was ever to be questioned regarding the information we now sought.
I dove into his mind once again. I pulled up the memory of Myrcedes’ name and focused on that, peering through emptiness. That was the most frustrating thing to find because no one’s memory was ever truly empty. If it was, it was because someone had stolen things from him, and at some point, it was too late to get it back.
I sensed Daath in his mind, as well.
Daath, I warned. Stop.
His presence remained. I could feel him digging as I had been, trying to tear through things that just, unfortunately, didn’t exist at the moment.
You know what this will do to him.
As Daath continued, Leonne’s screams filled the small concrete room. I sensed a hint of blood pumping too hard within the Seelie’s brain. I swore at my brother in my mind and pulled away mentally. Two people pushing and pushing in one mind was too much, especially a mind we had already torn apart. It put his brain under too much pressure, and if I hadn’t jumped out when I did, it might have killed him.
Finally, Daath gave up, dropping the man’s head and shouting in frustration. I watched him march around the small room. Since we had used it for nothing else, the room had begun to stink of a faint coppery scent of blood and stale sweat. We’d never used the basement of the House of Stars for anything before, and we certainly didn’t intend for it to be some sort of dungeon or torture chamber, but what we were doing needed infinitely more secrecy than we could get in the Moonstone Castle. There were too many eyes in the castle, and while we trusted everyone, we didn’t like the idea of anyone knowing we were kidnapping the highest-ranked people in the fae realm one at a time.
Leonne began to beg for mercy, and I sighed, slamming my fist into the stone wall. The orange-haired Seelie cowered in the corner, begging us to leave him alone. We’d been interrogating him for three days while Myrcedes was on Earth.
Leonne was the fourth council member we’d brought in for questioning. Myrcedes had been there for Oli and for the next two, but she didn’t have time to keep jumping back and forth between saving the Earth, worrying about the fae realm, and interrogating prisoners.
It had been a few days since I’d spoken to Myrcedes. Daath reached out to her at least once a day. He missed her terribly. Of course, I did too. For some reason, however, I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her. I’d hardly spoken to Daath either unless we were speaking of strategy. I’d pulled away from both of them the past week or so.
“I need a break,” I said to Daath. He looked surprised but nodded before turning to the oldest Seelie alive now that Minerva was dead.
“You’re in luck. We’ll be back.”
“Think hard, Leonne,” I added. “It’s in your best interest.”
The Seelie quietly sobbed as we ascended the stairs out of the makeshift dungeon.
“There’s a chance he could die before we get what we need,” Daath admitted. I nodded. I knew he was right, as much as I didn’t want to admit it. “She must have repressed these memories so long ago they’ve all but actually been erased.”
“That means the prophecy happened long ago,” I pointed out. That seemed significant, but knowing that didn’t help us at all. We knew there was something missing because his memories seemed to stop at a very sudden point. After a lot of digging on behalf of us both, we had been able to pull some more memories out regarding Minerva, likely from the day she blocked what we were failing to find. Before discovering that, we’d found clear memories of conversations with her about Myrcedes in the past two years and where she was living at the time, plans to enlist the help of Daath’s own reapers, and even sending spies into the Moonstone Castle. That was the easy stuff to get to. If there was something that was hard to find, that meant it was even more important.
“Perhaps there’s another member of the council who will remember it better,” Daath began. “Darce is next, but she might be too young…”
At some point, I stopped listening to him. I wasn’t trying to ignore my brother, but it didn’t take much to set my mind wandering these days. Ever since I’d watched Myrcedes come out of the Floor of Dreams, something in me was unsettled. She had still seemed confused when she came out, but sure in a way. She knew something about herself she didn’t know before, understood her purpose in a way
