Bewitched (Bewitched, #1)(99)

He points to a doodle I scribbled in the corner. “Do you see this?” he asks me.

What he’s referring to looks like nothing more than the crests of a wave, except on top of each crest blooms a three-petaled flower. It’s a strange design, clearly something I drew while I was zoning out.

Memnon lifts the sleeve of his shirt and points to one of his tattoos. “Those are the horns of a saiga on my arm.”

I take a step forward, momentarily transfixed. My drawing does look eerily similar to the artwork on his arm.

“This page is from three months ago,” he says. “You drew this before you ever saw me.”

My heart seems to stop at that. I can deny Memnon’s ravings but not my own records.

Could I really be this other woman?

Roxilana?

“I can show you more examples from your books if you’d like more proof,” he adds.

I narrow my gaze at him. “Just how many of my journals have you gone through?”

Those are private.

“You’re trying to change the subject, Roxi,” he says, snapping the notebook shut. “What I am telling you is that your memories have not been destroyed. They still exis;, they’re simply locked away. But, if you had the key to that lock, you could retrieve them all.”

My blood pounds between my ears.

Memnon glances at the journal he holds again. “These notebooks are so meticulous, so thorough. How important they must be,” he says, running his thumb over the dark blue cover, where I scribbled in gold Sharpie the dates when I used this journal. This one is from June and July of this year.

The sorcerer’s eyes flick to the book bag at my feet, and the air thickens with his magic. The flap of my satchel flicks open, and my latest notebook slides out, lifting into the air.

“What are you doing?” I grab for it, but it slips like butter through my fingers.

Memnon catches my planner in his free hand, and now panic rises in me.

“Seriously, Memnon, I need that back.” The Politia’s coming later today to look at these very journals.

I don’t want anyone pawing at them in the meantime—especially not Memnon.

Ignoring me, he sets my journal from the summer on my desk and opens my latest notebook before flipping through it.

“Oh, there’s a Samhain Witch’s Ball happening at the end of the week.” He reads the reminder like it’s a diary entry. “Sounds like fun.”

I fold my arms and force myself to chill out. “Are you done?” I ask. Whatever rise he wants to get out of me, he won’t get it.

“I can give you your memory back,” he says, not looking up from my notebook.

My breath catches at his words. It’s one thing to tell me that my lost memories exist; it’s another to tell me I can retrieve them.

“No one can give me that,” I finally say. I don’t even let myself ponder what life would be like with them back.

Now Memnon looks up from my journal, his smoky-amber eyes glinting. “My queen, I can.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“But don’t you? Aren’t you tired of not remembering? How much easier would life be if you didn’t always forget?”

He’s the devil in my ear, offering me the one thing I’m supposed to want. The thing I used to have, before my magic Awoke.

My memory.

I shake my head. “What you’re saying is impossible.”

“It’s actually quite simple. Your power is bound up in a curse—the one you placed on us both when you locked me in that tomb.”

I frown at him, not liking where this conversation is going. Nero must not either because he slinks over to the window and leaps out onto the bough of the tree outside, then prowls out of sight.

Memnon continues. “The Romans called it damnatio memoriae—to condemn from memory. To cast into oblivion. It was one of the worst fates you could inflict on a person of power.”

And this is where Memnon’s true purpose is coming into focus.

“If the curse is lifted, it’s not just my memory that returns, is it? You’ll be remembered too, won’t you?”

His eyes are alight with the first true stirrings of his power. “Yes,” he agrees. “My name and my kingdom will return to the historical record. I want the world to remember me. But”—and now he switches into Sarmatian—“my queen, more than even that, I want you to remember me. To remember us and our life. I cannot be the sole bearer of our past. That is…” He shakes his head slowly, his smoky eyes burning. “Unendurable.”

My heart aches at what he’s saying.

Assuming I am, by some strange magic and twist of fate, this Roxilana, then—

“Have you ever considered that I may better off not knowing the past?” I ask. “Perhaps some things are best left buried.”

Memnon holds my gaze, his own still glowing with his power. “I told you, Selene. Whatever made you curse me, we can work it out. We will work it out.”

I shake my head. “You say that like I’ve agreed to any of this.”

“You are under a curse, mate. One made by your own hand. Of course we will remove it—for my sake and yours. And then you will get your memories back, and we can resolve whatever came between us.”

I feel my ire stir, and for some reason, tears prick at my eyes. Why must everything come back to my memory loss? Why must others think fixing it is what I want most? Or that the loss of my memories is the sum of my identity? Why must they make me feel as though I am not enough as I am? Why can’t they see that my ambition, my heart, my fucking optimism—all the best parts of me—have been borne and shaped by my memory loss?