Destined for Greatness ✔️

Chapter 15

The day passed quietly after Alder's departure. Ryleigh wondered how long it was going to be before he came back with silver. It wasn't something she looked forward to, but what she did look forward to was showing Alder that her will was still stronger than his. He hadn't been able to break her three months ago, and he wouldn't be able now.

What she didn't expect, and found rather amusing, was that instead of silver, he came armed with Jade, Austin and Ellis. She thought it was funny he should go all in so soon. Perhaps he had hopes that, even if any one of them on their own could not persuade her, their collective powers of conviction might be effective. Little did he know that all she felt for these people was disdain.

Erasing memories was a secure business, especially when you didn't want all your memories to be gone. Wiping someone's memory clean was easy, and erasing all the recollection of an isolated person or event was rather simple as well, at least to someone as trained as Ryleigh, but to selectively erase some but not all memories of not one but several people was tricky. She'd had to sift through months of memories, finding each one that made her feel happy and manually selecting it to go, leaving only the recollections that made her feel angry and used.

She heard them before she saw them.

"Through here?" Ellis asked. She remembered his voice, as well as his face and his rank, but beyond that, she drew a blank. He was the first one to come in view. It wasn't as though he was a stranger. Not only did she remember too much not to know him, but she was also vividly aware of the memories she lacked. She hadn't replaced them with anything, so there was a gaping hole in her recollection. When Corbin had suggested the idea to her, she hadn't been sure it was a good idea. Sure, the pain she felt had made way to blood-boiling rage, but not knowing was always a risk, even if they were useless, happy memories. It meant they knew more than she did, and that put her at a disadvantage, especially now she couldn't use their memories to fill in her blanks.

Next was Jade. That had been a complicated case. She'd grown up with Jade, which meant there was over two decades of memories. Even if she'd had the time to sift through every single one of them, she wouldn't have had the patience. So she had left her memories of Jade largely untouched. After all, Jade was her biggest threat anyway, so Ryleigh couldn't afford to forget anything. The Midnight Mooners were insignificant to the overall plot of her life, so there was relatively little risk involved in discarding them like they had discarded her.

The last to enter was Austin. Up until that point, Ryleigh had been lying on the bed – it was already pretty late at night, and she'd attempted to get some rest. She was good at sleeping with one eye open. Their arrival had roused her, but she hadn't moved. She didn't want to give them that satisfaction. But when Austin appeared in her field of vision, she sat up to get a better look at him. It didn't add up.

"Huh." She cocked her head, letting her gaze rake up and down his body. She took in the mess of his light brown hair; took in his hazel eyes with those flecks of green dancing around in them, even though there was mostly sadness drifting in his gaze right then; took in his scent, reminding her of pine trees and the woods after rain. She even took in his lean muscles, and though, yes, he was attractive, she couldn't quite understand why she had thrown her life out the window for his sake. Fate truly was a funny thing.

The three of them – Jade, Austin, and Ellis – had lined up in front of her cell, while Alder remained a little off to the side. Ellis was looking at her gravely, looking far too big for the limited space. Jade had her brows drawn low over her bright eyes, almost in regret or concern – what a joke. As though it wasn't her fault Ryleigh was there in the first place. Austin had stuck his hands in his pockets and looked as uncomfortable as she vaguely remembered he usually did. What was he even doing there? He'd spit her out. Surely there was nothing he could say that would convince her. Their bond was broken. He had no hold over her.