Ikelos (The Ephemeral: Book 2)

Chapter 35

I took a few deep breaths, savoring my victory and the demise of that cruel, vicious creature. But as my gaze focused on the peeling memories around me—those fragile flakes of thought and emotion rising up and away from Will's mind space—I knew I wasn't finished here.

I may have killed the demon, but now my powers were burning through a shortened candle wick, and I had to stop absorbing his life source. Every second I stayed, a little more of him vanished, and before long, I'd overdraft the aquifer of untouched memories—the same reservoir the demon would have exhausted over the next several days, years, or decades.

"Stop," I told the void, climbing to my feet and glaring up at the brilliant sky. "Please."

But the remaining memories continued to disappear on me. Paper airplanes, paper doves.

Now that I'd satiated my hunger, this intersection of time and consciousness could not last. The bleached floor had become checkered tiles. Squares of dark nothingness replaced stolen memories, and deep, jagged fractures formed along the plane, cracking loudly like a hollowed tree splintering under external pressure.

Worst of all, I could barely feel Will's presence anymore—he was just a flicker of life now, barely a shadow of who he'd once been. Sending him back like this, completely stripped of memory and emotional achievement, would be like subjecting an infant to a world of bloodshed.

His mind would shatter, and I'd lose him all over again.

Clearly, there were only two options here: either I had to restore his memory, or I had to let him go.

And I still wasn't ready to give up on him.

My eyes swept over the fading memories, panicked and helpless. But how? How was I supposed to stop myself from killing him when I'd only ever brought devastation to those I'd touched—including my own mother? It wasn't like I could just hand his memories back to him and leave as though I'd never been here.

My lips parted, and my brow furrowed at the rule I'd made, the assumption I'd never challenged.

...Could I?

Could I actually return his memories to him? Had this channel flowed in two directions all along?

I'd only ever thought I could devour memories, just like the demons. Suck out their life history and kill the subject. But destruction wasn't all I was capable of, was it?

I held a spirit in my body, not a hollow tub of sin and hatred. That spirit had been human once, and humans shared thoughts and emotions. They shared their life histories through generational storytelling, through literature and art and photography. And maybe...maybe I was in the unique position to restore Will's timeline.

Closing my eyes, I focused on the prince's uncovered past. His mother. His family. His keystone memory. I pushed the details out of me and translated the images to Will's head like a sketch artist racing to capture a moment on paper.

When I peeked out at the void again, the ethereal memories had slowed in their ascent, and many of them hovered in place, unsure of their destination. But Will's mental pulse was still too weak, and the immaterial world continued to crumble around me.

Cursing my luck, I dove deeper, plunging into the most vulnerable stages of his development. I returned his trauma and his blood-stained childhood, because that darkness had made him who he was, those scars had made him resilient, and as much as I wanted to protect him from his past, it wasn't my right to do so. It wasn't my place to play memory keeper, not with him. And certainly not when a single memory could mean life, death, or a vegetative state.