CHAPTER TWELVE

 

BY THE TIME Aiden returned, I’d gone back to a seated position as my constant pacing was causing aches in my legs and back. The instant he knocked on the door, I raced to it, tearing it open only to be greeted with an extraordinarily worried look.

The serious expression sat strangely on his features, but I tried to force the concern it caused within me from my mind because he was bringing good news. He had to be. Leading him through to the living room, I prompted him to tell me everything about the rescue I was sure the fae had mounted while he was back at the court. I was beyond shocked when he said there wouldn’t be one.

“What do you mean no search and rescue?” I asked incredulously, twisting to see whether it was some sort of joke. Surely no one could be cruel enough to joke about that.

“It is simply impossible, Lynnie. Our hands are tied on this matter.”

“You do realize that it’s not just anyone that’s lost, don’t you? It’s my husband we’re talking about. Your cousin and friend. Fiona’s son. How can you just abandon him? He’s got his wedding ring with him; surely Fiona can search her magic?”

Aiden’s eyes flashed with a rare ferocity at my words. “Do you honestly dare to assume that any of us want to leave him in Alaska? Even if he was not the son of our queen, even if he and I had not become friends, even if I was completely unable to tolerate his very presence, do you honestly believe that I would allow you to suffer the pain of losing him again?” His voice was low and dangerous, so much so that I actually took a step away from him.

I shook my head, knowing that Aiden would do almost anything for me—just as I would do for him. Since his reappearance in my life six months earlier, he’d been nothing but an exemplary friend. Surprisingly—or maybe not so surprisingly given the way they’d come together for the attack on Bayview—he and Clay had quickly attained the sort of relationship only cousins could have—stronger than friends but with less arguments than brothers.

They were so close, in fact, that I felt guilty for shutting him out for so many years just because he wasn’t able to be the man I’d wanted.

Knowing what I did about him, sharing the relationship we had, gave me the strength to firmly stand my ground against him.

“Then why don’t you have guards heading there already?” I cried. “Take the ones from here if you’re short of people. I need Clay back here, alive and unhurt, more than I need any protection.”

“It is not a matter of insufficient numbers, and neither is it anywhere near as simple as what you appear to be suggesting.”

“Why not?” I challenged, my chin set in a way that I hoped showed I wasn’t willing to back down. How could they abandon him?

“Because the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a forbidden place to all fae,” he shouted back at me. “If those two gormless fools had bothered to inquire with any member of the court guard about their journey, they would have been told to send other Rain operatives; any other ones would have been a better choice than Ethan and Clay.”

His rage disarmed me, and my voice was barely more than a whisper. “Why?”

“The two of them have the blood of the fae surging through their veins. They receive some of the benefits of that, but it also causes them to be susceptible to all of our vulnerabilities. Clay most of all.”

The cries of pain that had poured from Clay when he’d encountered anti-fae protections in the Rain headquarters still haunted my dreams, so I knew exactly what Aiden meant. “I don’t understand though. Ethan knows how to break any protections, so why would you want them to avoid Alaska just because of that.”

“That valley is well known to fae-kind. Every fae child is warned away from it, along with similar places around the world. There are no fairy rings that lead there. There have not been for over one hundred years. To make one is a crime, and not something that even Fiona can do without consequence.”

I stared at him as I waited for him to elaborate.

“To our kind, it is not commonly known as the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, instead it is the Valley of Lethe.”

“That’s the name of the river Ethan mentioned,” I murmured.

Aiden focused on me, his eye narrowed and serious. “What did Ethan say about the river?”

“He said Clay was attacked near it, but I don’t understand what that means.”

He sighed as he realized he was going to have to go back to basics for me. It might have been common knowledge among the fairy courts, but it wasn’t to me.

“Over one hundred years ago, an Unseelie court tried to raise Hades. The attempt was for no other purpose than their own petty amusement. They were very nearly successful, having actually managed to bring the hell and brimfire to the surface, as well as one of the rivers. Twenty of the most-powerful Seelies from courts all over the world banded together and were able to manage to halt the progression and return Hades to the underworld, but the waters of the existing river were tainted by the River Lethe and the resulting smoke blanketed the area for almost fifteen years. As is usually the case, the humans declared it a natural disaster and determined it to be the result of a volcanic eruption.”

“I still don’t understand,” I admitted. “I mean, I get that something bad happened there, but that was over a hundred years ago. Why does that make it dangerous to you now? And why the hell does it stop you from helping me to find Clay?”

“The river that was released, the River Lethe, was once known as the river of oblivion. In Hades, new arrivals were forced to drink from its waters to erase all of their memory and clear away all remnants of the life they left behind.”

Ethan’s words about Clay’s reaction after being in the water rang in my mind.

“It was almost like he didn’t recognize me.”

Had he forgotten his past? Had he forgotten his family?

Has he forgotten me?

I was horrified. “If that river is so dangerous, why isn’t the whole area blocked off to the public then?”

“The majority of the public will not be affected by the waters, because it runs from Hades on the ethereal plane. Its effects are felt only by those beings that exist on the higher planes of being. Primarily, that mean it affects—”

“Fae,” I cut him off.

He nodded. “Now do you see?” he asked. “Do you understand the danger? If we send search parties to Alaska in an attempt to locate Clay and even one of them was infected by just the smallest amount of water, we would have an amnesiac fae warrior on our hands. The consumption of just one single drop would be enough to damage their memory.

“Affected fae would have the magic and strength to inflict untold damage on anyone they considered to be an enemy but none of our teachings to guide them to make the right choices. If Clay went anywhere near the water . . .” He trailed off, no doubt as the consequences of that sequence of events ran though his mind.

I imagined it myself. Even though Clay had settled into a routine with me and no longer hunted every supernatural creature ruthlessly, he was nonetheless a skilled fighter and a formidable threat, especially if his memory and conscience were wiped clean. I realized Aiden needed to know exactly what had happened.

“He was pushed under the water and held in place,” I explained, each word feeling like a lead weight on my tongue. The true horror of the situation was beginning to settle over me. “Ethan thought he was going to be drowned.”

Aiden’s gaze flashed to mine, fear running rampant across his features. I’d rarely seen him so shaken and it made my own heart beat faster. My breath caught in my dry throat.

“If that is the case, then this is truly as horrendous a situation as it could possibly be,” The depth of concern in his cerulean eyes pierced straight into me and made my blood freeze in my veins.

I closed my eyes to block out the intensity of his gaze, but it was no good, I’d already seen just how dreadful his assessment of the situation was.

“Any fae affected by the water, including those who are only partially fae, will lose their memory.”

“What if we can get the cure to him?” I asked, hope bubbling in me that there might be a way to fix this. We just needed to find Clay and apply some fae magic. It had brought me back from the dead, after all.

“There is no cure,” Aiden said, his sorrow-filled gaze dropped on me like a weight. “In all of our recorded history, there is no mention of any way to restore those lost memories. Many years ago, there were rumors of a second spring in Hades that restored the memory of all past lives, but the gates to Hades are now permanently sealed. If Clay truly fell into the waters of the River Lethe then his memories, his very personality, are lost forever.”

Lost forever. The two words leapt out at me with almost enough ferocity to force me from my feet. I held my stomach tightly, reminding myself of the one reason why I should try to remain calm and not panic as I sunk back onto the sofa.

Could he really be gone?

I couldn’t believe it—I didn’t want to believe it—and yet Aiden was certain that it was Clay’s fate for falling into the water. Despite my struggle not to panic, Aiden’s words and the concern that accompanied them was too much for me to handle. Tears began to spill from my eyes, rushing down my nose and falling heavily against my stomach.

“What will we do without him?” I asked my bump. Logically, I knew I was strong enough to survive even without Clay by my side—I could certainly raise our daughter the same way my Dad had raised me—but emotionally, I couldn’t get past the fact that I might never again be pulled from my nightmares by Clay’s whispered assurances. That I might never see his smile, feel his touch. That he might never again know who I was or what I meant to him.

Or worse, that I might not ever see him again.

Maybe Ethan was wrong about where Clay fell? Maybe it was a different river?

Hope bubbled within me as I grew convinced that Ethan was wrong. He had to be. It was all just a coincidence. There wasn’t any guarantee that the waters Clay had been forced into flowed from the River Lethe in Hades. Clay was probably just dazed because he was held under the water; it was nothing more sinister than that. I was certain that if I could just see him, we would be able to sort it out quickly and he’d be back with me in no time.

“I want to go there,” I said.

“No. I simply will not allow it,” Aiden said. “And I know with absolute certainty that Ethan will agree with me if you try to make the same request to him. Without a doubt Clay would want you out of harm’s way as well.” His eyes finished his sentence for him, “if he still had his memories.”

“I might be able to help.”

“You might be able to get yourself killed,” he snapped.

I shook my head. “There’s no way you can know that.”

“Just pause for a moment and think seriously about your request, Lynnie. If what you have said is true, Clay is effectively a blank slate at present, but all of his natural instincts are driven by the Rain. His lineage is one of executioners, an elite family of murderers, each generation more dedicated than the last regarding the eradication of non-humans. He went against that instinct to spare your life once. Whilst I think that is terrific and extraordinarily commendable, and whilst it goes a long way toward telling us about the sort of man he was, there are zero guarantees that he would willingly release you from harm again. If he was to discover what you once were and deemed yourself or your child to be a threat because of it, do you honestly believe you would be able to defend yourself against him?”

“I did a good enough job when he was training me,” I said defensively.

Aiden rolled his eyes. “That was practice, it is much easier to defend yourself under those conditions. Not to mention that you have lost your special abilities since then. Any advantage that you might have once had, that could have given you some small chance against him, is now lost.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he continued on.

“Then there is the simple fact of your constantly expanding waistline. Right now it appears as though you have consumed a watermelon whole. Despite any arguments you might have to the contrary, you are not in an optimal, agile fighting condition. You cannot honestly believe that you would stand a chance in a battle against a hunter with a strong natural instinct and no memory of your shared history.”

His statement earned him my best bitch brow, but I didn’t have an actual argument against it. Even if I didn’t want to admit it, he was right.

“Imagine this for a moment,” Aiden continued. “Suppose he saw you as an imminent threat and attacked you, could you halt his assault even if it meant ending his life? Could you slay him to ensure your continued survival? Or could you sacrifice his existence for that of your daughter’s?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to,” I said as I forced the images his words had created from my mind—pictures of the hunter that two years ago I was certain pursued me relentlessly. “You said he’d be a blank canvas, right? He’d have the muscle memory but not the knowledge. Maybe he wouldn’t see me as a threat. Maybe I’d be able to talk to him and prove that I’m not dangerous.”

Aiden sighed. “There might be some truth in that, Lynnie. After all, you have made him pause once before. However, I am unwilling to allow you to put additional lives in jeopardy to test the theory, and I am positive that every single member of my family and yours would agree. You should not be so willing to throw away the life of your fledgling. If you cannot stay in New York for yourself, or for your fledgling, then consider doing it for Fiona. She has just lost her son. Please do not make her suffer the loss of her daughter-in-law and first grandchild as well.”

Aiden spoke with such certainty, his words making it sound as if Clay had died rather than just sustained an injury in the field—albeit a serious one. I tried to block out the pain his beliefs caused me. I had to keep hope, because hope was the only thing keeping me upright and operational.

“Besides, how exactly would you propose to travel to Alaska? I have already explained there are no fairy rings. You will find no one willing or able to create one. You would not exactly be comfortable on a commercial airliner in your condition and certainly not on a float plane.”

“Stop,” I murmured, unwilling to hear his reasoning any longer. I couldn’t stand silently by as he gave up on Clay, but as much as I wanted to shout at Aiden for his immediate despair, I couldn’t. I didn’t have the energy because there was a piece of me missing and it would remain that way until I knew that Clay was safe. Images of him, lost and alone in the wilderness, stole my usual fire. “There has to be hope, Aiden. There has to be! I cannot survive this without some hope.”

His whole stance softened and he reached out to place his hand on my shoulder. “I understand that need, please believe that I do. However, I also require you to attempt to comprehend just how absolutely dire this situation is.”

I stepped closer to his arm, allowing him to wrap it around my shoulders in comfort. “I just can’t stand to think of the fact that he might be out there, lonely and scared, with no memories to console him.” My own years of loneliness came back to haunt me; some of it had been spent unthinking and uncaring, but even then I’d had the ability to draw on my memories on a particularly bad day and they’d kept me company at night—even when I hadn’t wanted them to.

What would I have done if I had nothing to keep me moving?

The answer was too terrible to consider. There were enough times that I was ready to give up, even with the promise of brighter tomorrows and memories of happier yesterdays.

Would Clay just give up?

“I understand,” Aiden said. “You will have to put your faith in Ethan. He has proven himself to be a remarkable tracker and I am certain he will find Clay before too much time has elapsed.”

“But then what?” I asked. “You said Clay will never get his memories back. Will he even be the same man?” Is the man I loved dead? The way Aiden spoke, it was easy to believe that he was. The hope I was holding tightly to slipped through my grasp.

Aiden didn’t have an answer, which started a fresh round of tears. I twisted my fingers around the plain gold band that adorned my hand—the symbol of our promises to each other just a few short months ago.

“I can’t lose him,” I said quietly.

“Maybe he is not completely lost,” Aiden said and, even though the lack of confidence in his voice told me he was lying, I accepted the platitude without argument. He accused me of not accepting the reality of the situation, but when it came down to the wire, he didn’t want to force me to endure the agony it caused either. His thoughtfulness, more than his actual words, gave me a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dark world.

After sitting side by side with Aiden for almost an hour, lost in my own thoughts, I finally realized there was someone else that needed the information he’d given me. I picked up the phone and called the number in Alaska that Ethan had left with me. He wasn’t available, but I left a message with Terry just as Ethan had requested.

Eventually the weight of it all became too much and I needed to get some sleep. Before he left, Aiden promised he’d assign himself as a regular guard around the house so that I would have someone to talk to if I needed to.

 

A FEW hours of fitful, broken sleep later, I woke to the sound of the phone ringing. Hopeful that all of the terrible things I’d been told were just a bad dream, I rushed to answer it.

“Clay?” I breathed into the mouthpiece with a desperation that seemed to seep from my very soul.

“Sorry, Evie, it’s just me,” Ethan said. “What did you find out from Aiden? Weren’t you going to call me?”

“I did,” I said. “I left a message just like you asked.”

“That’s strange, I didn’t get it . . .” he trailed off. “Anyway, what do you know?”

“That you need to coordinate better with the resources you have at hand,” I snapped. “That whole area is off-limits to fae. You shouldn’t have been there, Eth, you shouldn’t have taken him there!” I hadn’t even realized that the volume of my voice was steadily rising until I was shouting by the end of the sentence.

Staccato breathing came down the line and I regretted taking my anger out on Ethan. Clay was only there because of him, but Ethan couldn’t have known that there were areas that even the fae dared not tread. They didn’t consult the fae on every case; there was little need to. It was a lesson for the next time.

If there was a next time.

If that lesson cost me Clay though, it wasn’t worth the price.

“I’m sorry, Evie,” Ethan whispered.

“No, I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I know you didn’t mean for him to be hurt, and I know you couldn’t have done anything more to help him, but I need him back, Eth.”

“I know,” he said with a shaky voice. “I do too.”

A quiet sob passed my lips. I felt like a woman in mourning. I was doing exactly what I’d been angry at Aiden for—giving up on Clay before we really knew his fate.

“Did Aiden tell you why the area was off limits?” Ethan asked, no doubt eager to know more about what I’d learned—and possibly also to ease his own guilt.

“The river, the one you said Clay fell into, it springs from Hades.”

“You mean it’s really the River Lethe?” he asked suddenly. “I thought the name was just a coincidence.”

“You know about the River Lethe?”

“Think about what I do for a living, Evie. It’s my job to know mythology and to decipher the real from the imagined.” He paused for a moment. “Guess I didn’t do too fantastic a job this time.”

I choked down the “you think” that sprung to my lips. There would be time to be angry with him later, sometime after Clay had been found and we’d done everything we could to restore his memory. Aiden’s beliefs be damned, I would try anything to bring back my Clay. I had to believe it was possible—otherwise what was the point?

“It’s just so strange,” Ethan murmured, voicing some thought in his head out loud.

“What is?”

“The púca was acting odd, even by their standard I mean. It was almost as if it was jumpy and nervous. Like something else was controlling it. Then there’s the fact that there haven’t been any attacks or sightings since Clay disappeared.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I wonder if someone harnessed the púca and set it up so that Clay and I wouldn’t be able to resist coming to hunt it. I just don’t understand why? Most people wouldn’t know that the River Lethe is real. And even if they did, what would anyone gain by stripping away our memories?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured as I ran through a list of the potential suspects in my head. I knew so little about their life with the Rain that I couldn’t possibly know all the threats to Ethan and Clay. There was only one person I knew of that might have held a grudge against what Ethan and Clay had become, but I couldn’t see him doing anything to harm his own children. Although look at what he did to Louise . . . “Do you think it could have been your father?”

“After Bayview, who the hell would know?” Ethan’s voice was thoughtful. “But it’s more likely to be one of the factions. This is exactly the sort of thing they’ve been trying to warn everyone about—a compromised mission because of Clay’s nature. It’s quite likely that we’ve been set up for failure.”

“Did you go into the water?”

“I did, but it didn’t affect me. I guess I should be glad those fae genes missed me after all.”

I knew it was his attempt at a joke, but I couldn’t find laughter anywhere within me. “Do you think he’s okay?” I asked to try to begin to unravel the knot residing in my stomach.

“I’m positive he is,” Ethan reassured me.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because even if he doesn’t have his memories, he’s got a natural survival instinct that he won’t have lost. The long days and warmer weather here at the moment won’t hurt his chances either.”

We talked around in circles for another couple of minutes, trying to decipher meaning in every small event since our attack on Bayview to see if we could find answers about who could have led Ethan and Clay out there and why. In the end though, we couldn’t be certain there even was a grand plan. For all we knew, it was just a tragic accident. By the time we hung up, we were no closer to answers than when we’d started, but I felt a thousand times worse about everything.

I walked to the sofa and sat staring at the blank, oddly reflective surface of the lifeless TV screen. My original intention had been to turn it on to distract myself from my thoughts, but even the small effort of having to find something to watch was overwhelming.

Clay, where are you?

I remained motionless on the sofa until I eventually couldn’t stay awake any longer and I curled into a ball to try to get some sleep. While I slept, I was plagued by my usual visions; smoke and ash curled around my body while voices shouted to me about being a freak. Only now, Clay stood in the middle of the fire staring at me and in his blank, lifeless eyes I could see the reflections of everything we’d lost.

Tumbling off the sofa and onto the floor, I woke with a scream on my tongue. The nightmares were back, and worse than ever. Only now, there was no one to comfort me.

And maybe there never will be again.