Elide was trying to keep everything straight in her head. Without the ability to write or read like Ghislaine, she was unable to scribble down her thoughts and keep track of which memories belonged to whom or where the memories belonged in their life. Aelin's memories were the easiest memories to keep track of because she was only a little over a year older than Elide, so she could approximate times based on Aelin's apparent age. Asterin was the next easiest because the witch could tell her the approximate year of everything and Elide could calculate the dates of Manon's memories based on her similar age to Asterin; even though Manon refused to speak about Elide's power beyond assessing it's threats and uses.
Lorcan's memory was extremely difficult for Elide to grapple with though. His childhood was difficult for her to watch and it was all jumbled, likely due to how far away he was from her as opposed to Asterin or Manon. She knew basic facts about him. He was born in a country called Lunaria to a people that the fae ultimately destroyed. He had many half-siblings who were full human and a twin sister who was obviously demi-fae like he was. His mother was a wicked creature who hated him in particular (presumably for his magic but Elide thought there must be more). He was sold by his own mother at the age of four or five to a travelling fight-ring caravan where he was thrown into fights with older boys or men four times his size or wild animals for sport. His fae heritage made him an exotic attraction to many humans and he made his master a decent coin.
At some point in his early teens he must have escaped because the memories she had of him as an adolescent were of him working long hours in a crop field of some sort for scraps before he would walk several miles home where he lived alone with his twin sister Veradis who had run away from their birth family to find him.
Elide shouldn't have been surprised that he never mentioned he had a twin. She didn't really know anything about him. Still it made something in her ache with the knowledge that he had someone so precious and all he had ever shared with her had been about Maeve. Was he keeping Veradis to himself because she was too precious to share with anyone -especially a human witchling he'd only known for a series of months? Or was he really so foolish as to love the wicked creature Maeve even more than his own flesh and blood?
As much as she hated Lorcan in the moment, Elide hated to think it was the latter.
Although she kept her distance from Fenrys after he nearly took her arm off in the marshes, she knew enough about him to know that he too had a twin and that his twin was the most beloved person he had. It was another one of those mysterious bonds that Fae had that made them so deeply attached to one another.
The third option, which Elide thought most likely, even though it physically hurt to think about, was that Veradis had died somehow or never settled in the first place, and Lorcan simply did not speak of her. To anyone.
Elide tried to follow the memories, but they simply stopped after he was fifteen and skipped to his service of Maeve. She tried to restrain herself and not dig too deep into his history which she had no right to… but the temptation was excruciating and she guiltily admitted that she had been justifying herself with his betrayal. He handed Aelin over to Maeve, so Elide had a right to root around his past.
She knew it was wrong. But she did it anyway.
She had also begun to learn how to See memories while conscious and spent the long hours flying with Manon retracing threads of memory .
It was hard to keep track of yes, but she found the task strangely addicting.
"How recent do your memories go?" Asterin asked her one night as they ate.
Elide reached for the memory of Asterin cornering her in the woods and pulled it out easily to show Asterin.
"Gods, I'm gorgeous aren't I?" Asterin teased. Then she seriously asked. "Have you tried looking for your fae recently?"
Elide's face reddened and snapped over to glare at Asterin. "Why are you so curious about him and why do you insist on calling him my fae?"
Asterin blinked and Elide half expected her to spin another joke. Slowly, the witch tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear and glanced away.
"I have only ever loved one person, Elide," she explained softly. "I've been attracted to plenty, but I have only ever loved one. And you know?" she said, still avoiding Elide's gaze. "I don't care if it's none of my business. That fae loves you, Elide, in that desperate, possessive way I loved my hunter. And I think you love him too, despite the fact that he's betrayed you." Asterin's blue eyes were sharp as she met Elide's gaze. "I just don't understand why you would throw that kind of love away. I've lived over a century and only experienced it once. If I ever got a taste of it again I wouldn't let it go."
Elide glared into the fire. "You're right," she said. "Its none of your business."
Asterin shook her head in disgust. "And if he dies trying to get Aelin back from that fae Queen? Will you want him back then?"
Elide grit her teeth but didn't say anything. Lorcan would be fine. He was the most capable person she knew.
"Will you?" Asterin pushed meanly.
"He's not going to die, Asterin. You don't know him like I do. He'll be fine. And I'm not going to spend energy worrying about him when I'm already worrying about Aelin and all the awful things she's having to endure because of him."
"You just seem to have a remarkably short life span to be thinking that you have all the time in the world to let him come crawling back to you."
The image of Lorcan crawling after Maeve on the beach set Elide's teeth on edge.
"I don't want him to come crawling back to me," Elide spat, standing up. "I don't want him alive or dead or anywhere near me. Stop bringing him up Asterin, you don't know anything about it."
Asterin gave her a tired look that said she was envious of Elide's naivete. Elide stalked back to Agraxos seething.
"I don't care," Elide informed the wyvern as she settled against his side. "I don't care if he does die, it's the least he could do."
Lorcan's face flickered across her vision, pale and gaunt. He'd lost weight since she saw him last. He looked like death.
"You know I'm right," he was saying, "Let this be how I try to repay my wrong. It's not enough, but it's all I have. Leave me behind, find your mate, and slaughter that freak, Cairn."
"If you're dying…" Rowan said-
"Stop!" Elide pulled herself out of the vision. She pressed herself into Abraxos's side and rubbed her eyes. Was she making this vision up? Was this her fear Asterin unearthed? But Elide had never fabricated one of these memories before… she'd tried to change them but was never successful. Heart slamming in her rib cage she peered over to the campfire where Asterin still sat, Manon coming over to join her. When Elide was sure Asterin wasn't looking she crawled around behind Abraxos to take the witch's advice and look for Lorcan's memories from the past few days.
Rowan stepped out of the trees, blade drawn.
"Step away from him."
Elide spun away from Rowan to see Lorcan sprawled out on the ground, arm obviously broken and bleeding from the head as a man with a black collar crouched over him. One of the collared man's pale hands pressed to the side of Lorcan's head and the other was resting on Lorcan's belly. Elide felt her jaw groan under the pressure of her instant terror and fury.
"Don't touch him," she felt herself whispering furiously. "Get your hands off him."
Lorcan's dark eyes were wide and unseeing. He looked dead already.
"Don't worry, little princling," the Valg grinned at Rowan with bloodied teeth. "I'll finish you off as soon as I'm done with him."
Rowan drew a dagger in his other hand and took another step menacingly, "I said-"
"You know?" The Valg tilted his head to the side as though considering the aftertaste of a fine wine. "I've always had a preference for Demi-fae. You pure-breds are too sweet. Too simple. Humans are too bitter. But a half-breed?" The Valg closed his eyes blissfully. "The perfect balance."
Elide schooled her fury and knelt in front of Lorcan, touching his shoulder even though she passed right through him. She didn't need to watch this. She closed her eyes and skipped forward a few hours.
"His skull should heal," Gavriel was saying to Rowan. Elide was still kneeling beside Lorcan and she was relieved (Asterin be damned) to find he was still breathing. Gavriel continued, "but he's been injured since Maeve broke the bond…"
"You seem fine." Rowan frowned.
"She did something different to him." Gavriel was shaking his head. "I should have forced him to tell me what was wrong when he passed out on the beach. I knew something was wrong but I was just so angry that I didn't… I didn't… And then after the episode in the woods I didn't try harder to get it out of him."
"Get what out of him? What did Maeve do to him?"
Gavriel reached for the hem of Lorcan's shirt and pulled it up, exposing his abdomen. Elide grit her teeth and felt heat rise up her neck when she realized she was feeling possessive. Rowan stopped breathing and Elide's gaze fell to the Lorcan's exposed skin.
The smooth color of Lorcan's stomach was stained with black tendrils of infection, weaving their way like a tattoo beneath the surface of his skin. It had swollen and split down the center, something dark oozing from the mouth of the wound. Both fae males gagged as though the smell was insufferable but Elide's gaze was frozen to the spot. The same spot Maeve had cut him while severing the bond.
-"I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering." -
Elide brought a trembling hand to the wound as Gavriel and Rowan discussed whether or not it would kill Lorcan. Her fingers rested where Maeve had touched him and she whispered to the current of her power,
"Does it kill him?"
She was snapped forward a few days and found Rowan and Lorcan arguing in the woods. She could sense this had happened only minutes ago, although she was unsure why she knew it with such certainty.
"I am dying," Lorcan said bluntly to Rowan. "Gavriel is going to want to try and save me by slowing down, but it won't help. Maeve didn't deal me this wound so I could recover and become a problem. This was intended to be fatal and it will be. I will only continue to slow down until I'm dead and you can't afford to waste that kind of time."
"Lorcan we're not-" Rowan started.
"Rowan!" Lorcan snapped,"You know just as well as I do what Cairn is capable of."
Rowan snarled a warning.
"You know what he does to his victims, you know he enjoys it, and you know no matter how fierce your mate may be, she will break under that kind of pressure. Everyone does."
Rowan lashed out, pinning Lorcan to a tree a dagger to the throat, "Shut up."
"Stop!" Elide was muttering to Rowan. "Stop, he's leading you on…"
"Every second we waste is another second in which he can do whatever he wants to her," Lorcan insisted.
Rowan punched Lorcan in the gut with a bellow and Lorcan collapsed, coughing up blood.
"No. No. No." If Elide said it enough times it would not be true. "Don't you dare leave him out there," she whispered to Rowan.
In the end Elide could see the truth in Rowan's already guilt struck eyes. He had already decided he would.
"Thank you," Lorcan said with a sad smile.
"No!" Elide stepped in front of Lorcan as though to stop him and he stumbled right through her. He could barely walk; he was in so much pain. She looked at Rowan. "No. No, you won't leave him out there wounded. You won't leave him."
Rowan, unhearing of her pleas, slowly bowed his head as though asking the gods for forgiveness of the sin he was about to commit before following Lorcan.
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-D.