“ISHQA!” I screamed. “You cannot leave me here!”
They were dragging me back, dragging me against the floor. I saw only Ishqa’s gold eyes staring back at me, his face stone.
“You cannot do this to me!”
I thought of the House of Reeds, and those monsters.
Would I become a monster too?
My consciousness waned, my vision going white and blurry. I was being dragged farther and farther from Ishqa.
ISHQA!
I do not know if I screamed it aloud.
The last thing I saw was him turning away, his golden hair flying back in a sudden burst of wind.
And then my vision was consumed by white and white and white.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Tisaanah
I couldn’t move.
The familiarity was buried deep, somewhere far beneath conscious thought. But the sight of that man’s face, the sight of his bright gold eyes, yanked something visceral to the surface.
Ishqa. Ishqa. How did I know that name?
Max, who had planted himself firmly between the me and the golden-haired man, peered at me over his shoulder, asking a silent question.
Nothing but white and white and white, for so many days.
The voice floated through the back of my mind.
How many times had I heard that? Seen that? Felt it?
You were betrayed by someone that you thought cared for you.
And with that hurt, it was always the same: white and white and white… and a flash of long, golden hair. A man turning away.
This man.
“You knew Reshaye,” I forced out. And Max’s eyes went wide.
Ishqa’s stare darkened.
“Reshaye?” he said, quietly. “That’s what she calls herself?”
“She?” Max said.
“Does it mean something?” I murmured.
A wince flickered across the man’s face.
“It means, ‘No one.’”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Aefe
{Reshaye}
There is much I do not remember.
I remember the pain. My body is opened and closed and opened again, my organs rearranged, blood removed and returned to me. The humans are monstrous and cruel and vicious.
To them I am not a living thing. To them I am a tool to be used, or created, or harvested.
There is no past or future. There is only this.
The first time they link me to another, it is through the melding of our veins, yanked out of my wrist and dangling and dripping between us.
The humans keep dying. I know because I feel their deaths. I know because their deaths are mine. I do not see the bodies. I see nothing but white.
They take pieces of me. I do not know what they do with them, or why they take them. First fingers. Then my hands. Then my arms. Slowly, they carve me away, piece by piece. Perhaps one day I will not have a body at all.
For a long time, I think of Ishqa, and how much I hate him. I tell myself that my hate is important because it keeps me alive. But the terrible truth is that I have no choice but to live, even though I wish I could die.
I hate Ishqa so much that I sear my hate into my soul. I hold onto it even when everything else fades away. One day, I realize that I cannot remember my home. I know it was beautiful and safe and that when I was there, I felt connected to a thousand other souls. Now, I wonder what that feels like. To be connected to others. To be safe.
Faces and memories slip through my fingers like I’m trying to cradle fistfuls of sand. First it is the peripheral ones, Ashraia’s, Shadya’s, people who wove in and out of my life for brief moments at a time. And then friends. One day I cannot remember the shade of Caduan’s eyes, or the way that Siobhan’s proud smile made me feel. I clutch Ishqa’s face, suspend it in the amber of my hatred. But soon, I remember only the sharpest of fragments — his hair flying out behind him as he turned away from me. As he left me here.
I hate my father, too, for his lies, and my mother for allowing him to be such a monster. But my hate is not enough to keep their faces, either, and soon they too are gone.
I cling the most to Orscheid. I try to etch her features into whatever is left of me — her beautiful smile, her bright eyes, the way she smelled when she wrapped me in an embrace. Long after everything else fades away, my love for Orscheid remains. I try to remind myself of it every night. I recite the angles of her face to myself, and I tell myself, There is still someone out there who loves you.
But one day, I cannot recall her name. Soon, her features blur, one by one. I lose the tilt of her eyes, the cadence of her voice, the path her smile tread across her face. And one day, I cannot remember what love is at all.
The humans carve pieces of me away. Chunks of flesh fall away, and so do chunks of whatever lies beneath.
I try so hard to remember my name.
Sometimes I hear the human’s voices. They ask me, Who are you? And I tell them, I am Aefe, Teirness of the House of Obsidian.
I am Aefe. I am Aefe. I am Aefe.
But the time rolls by.
And when I have lost everything else that makes me who I am, what does a name mean, anyway?
One day there is nothing left of my body. I am nothing but raw energy, and they force me into bodies and minds, they trap me in rooms of white and white and white. I am nothing but loss and anger and the overwhelming feeling that perhaps, long ago, I was something else.
When I meet another human, and their gaze turns to me and asks, Who are you? Now I say, I am no one.
And it is true.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Tisaanah
“You know… Reshaye?” Max’s brow creased, and he eyed Ishqa with abject suspicion. He still stood partially in front of
