“Wolfe.” I say the name, but it’s so quiet it barely makes it past my lips. It’s so foreign to me.
“Wolfe,” I say again, this time stronger. The name slides out like a perfect melody, and I think maybe it isn’t so foreign after all.
I sit down on the rocks. They’re cold and wet, but I don’t mind. I have no idea how long this is supposed to take or if it will even work. It feels absurd, saying a name on the beach at midnight, but if everything Ivy told me is true, if I loved him even a fraction of the amount I’ve been led to believe, then I have to meet him. I have to see his face and hear his voice.
“Mortana?”
I look up and see the boy from the shore standing in the water. No boat, no raft. It’s as if he just appeared, and I wonder if his magic can do that. I slowly get to my feet, wiping my palms on my dress. He pauses where he stands.
“Wolfe?” I ask, walking closer to the water, trying to get a better look at this person who captured so much of me.
He rushes toward me, water splashing around him as he drags himself from the ocean. It doesn’t look like he’ll stop running until he crashes into me. I take a step back, and he abruptly stops moving.
“You’re Wolfe?” I ask again, and I see it on his face, the hurt and pain as he realizes I don’t know him. I still don’t know him.
His eyes are raging. Something inside me breaks when I notice they are rimmed in red, reflecting the moonlight, shimmering like the surface of the sea. He sniffs and clears his throat, looks away from me. His jaw is clenched so tight I can see it from here.
He looks broken.
“I am,” he finally says. “And you’re Mortana.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
I study him in the moonlight, the hard line of his mouth and his dark, messy hair. His skin looks silver in this light, like he is magic personified. But he’s angry and closed off, carrying so much tension I’m worried he might snap in half right in front of me.
He’s heartbreakingly beautiful.
“You’re staring at me,” he says.
Heat crawls up my neck, but I don’t look away. I can’t. “I was told that I love you.”
“You never said it, but you didn’t need to. I know you did.”
I watch him in the moonlight, his every move, every rise of his chest and squeeze of his fist. “Did you love me, too?”
His eyes meet mine, focusing on me with an intensity that sends a shiver down my spine. “Yes.”
“Do you still?”
He doesn’t pause, doesn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”
I take a tentative step closer. “Then will you tell me what happened between us? Everything?”
He shoves his hand in his pockets and looks at the ground. “What do you remember?”
“Nothing.” The word slides through the air like a knife, and I watch as it enters his chest. A fresh rush of tears wells in his eyes, but he blinks them away quickly. He turns his back to me, his shoulders rising and falling rapidly. When his breathing slows, he faces me once more.
“Okay,” he finally says.
“Wolfe?” I say, the sound of his name feeling familiar now.
He looks at me, and his eyes are so pleading, so devastated, I’m amazed he doesn’t shatter into a million pieces, forever lost on this shore.
“Please don’t lie to me,” I say.
“I won’t.” He turns away, and I think that’s all he’s going to say, but then he speaks again. “I will tell you every single detail until you’re convinced that this is something worth fighting for.”
I consider him. He’s raw and rough, sharp around the edges and angry, but he’s willing to share everything with me, knowing it won’t make me remember. He’s willing to be hurt all over again as he shares details of his life that mean nothing to me and everything to him.
“That’s why I’m here,” I say, my words quiet and unsteady. “To fight for something I once believed in more than anything else.”
“Okay,” he says, walking up the shore to a stretch of grass. He sits down, and I sit next to him, watching him as he decides how to start. We’re so close, mere inches between us, and I see the way his body tenses at my nearness.
“Can dark magic undo a memory eraser?” I ask quietly, barely a whisper. He has helped me before; maybe he can help me again.
He exhales, and it sounds defeated. “I talked to my dad about it. We spent hours going through grimoires, but the mind is a delicate thing. Any spell we tried would have to interact with the memory eraser in the exact right way, but we don’t know what all went into it, which would make crafting a spell to undo it exceedingly difficult. If we got it wrong, it could erase your memory altogether or even create memories that never happened. There would be no way for us to test it beforehand. It’s too risky.”