Memorybound

Chapter 21

Delilah picked back up the scrap of black cloth. It wasn't a handkerchief as she had originally assumed. She clutched it in her hand. It was frayed and threadbare and it had been torn off of something. Her dress. She had torn it off and wiped off the mirror. She tucked it into the pocket of her slivery gown. It would remind her and she needed to remember.

Something had happened. The castle had changed and memories were coursing through her, just barely out of reach. She could sense them, but try as she might, she couldn't grasp at them, couldn't remember what it was that she was reaching for.

She pulled the square of dusty fabric back out of her pocket and wound it around one of her fingers, focusing on what she was doing, not the memories that would not come to her. She remembered then. She was a child and she had a brother. What was his name? He was older than she was and he bossed her around. He had a reason for that, too. It wasn't a good one but he thought it was and so he told her what to do and she didn't do anything that he said.

He called her something and she could remember days of laughing and climbing trees and people were following them, telling not to do that and not to hurt themselves. There was a swing, and someone had pushed her in it and she was laughing. "Bb, it's my turn. I've pushed you for long enough." He had called her Bb. It was a name that she knew. He had been little when she was born and her parents thought it was a good nickname for her. He was too young to say her full name and so he called her Bb, and then everyone else did the same.

Tears streamed down her face. She had parents. She had forgotten them, forgotten so much. She wondered where her brother was. Maybe he had died and that's why she was the queen, but that didn't seem right.

The memory had been overwhelming and that was only one of the ones that had she had been reaching, trying to remember. Bb, she thought. Only a child would name someone that. She hadn't stayed with her parents. She had...

Another memory surfaced. This one was full of pain and fire. People were stabbing at her and she was fighting them, breathing fire. She blinked, trying to see the memory instead of her bright bedroom. How had she been breathing fire? It didn't seem possible. There were mages, two of them with the bright blue swords of magic that had cut at her. She had killed one of them, breathing fire on him until he died.

Why had she done that? It all seemed so confusing and then she remembered seeing herself, her own reflection as she had been on her way to tear apart the castle. She was a dragon and someone had taken something from her and she was angry. She knew she couldn't get it back, but she wanted to punish them. She saw the little mage with the white hair standing alone against her, against a dragon with nothing but her magic to protect her. But the mage had taken something from her. That's why she had attacked in the first place. She had taken one of her scales.

Delilah gasped. She wondered if she had killed the young girl, but she didn't think so. It seemed a battle that would have killed one of them, though. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't been the dragon of her own free will. She had been trapped and had done the bidding of someone. She couldn't remember who, but someone had come to her and told her what she needed to do, who she needed to attack. Why was she following anyone else's orders. She was the queen, wasn't she? There had been so much burning and fire and blood. It made her shiver to think of it and it made her stomach clench. She pushed the memories of being a dragon away. She wouldn't focus on that now.

She stood and hurried out onto the courtyard near her bedroom. She did not want to talk to Mathias. She was certain that of everything in the castle, he was real and she didn't have answers to give him about why she had stood and run away from him. She had nothing to say.

The plants outside were all dead, but that was normal. Everything died in the fall, but the plants had not had time to wither completely. They would be covered in snow any day now. Something about the cold brought forth another memory. She held a child close to her chest, nothing more than an infant. She had never seen anything so beautiful and the emotion that flooded through her chest every time she looked at the child was so strong, it almost hurt. She had a daughter and somewhere in the wide world and she knew that her daughter still lived. She could feel it in her bones.