Memories flash before my eyes. I know that they’re memories because they change too quickly to be real events that are happening right now. And because the same people keep appearing in different settings. The only problem is that I have no idea why I keep seeing these memories. They’re not mine.

In this memory, I’m standing inside a tidy but worn kitchen. There are two other people in there as well. A fae man with blond hair and eyes that are turquoise and silver. And a fae woman with long silver hair the same shade as mine, and eyes that are lavender and yellow in color. The woman appears to be searching for something, and she casts a distracted look at me while pointing towards the cabinet behind me.

“Selena, can you check the top shelf?” she says. “I’m sure I put it here.”

Selena. There is that name again. The name people keep calling me. Both in these memories, and outside of them. It’s a nice name. But it’s not mine. Because my name is…

I frown.

In the memory I’m still watching, I’m turning around and opening the cabinet before reaching towards the top shelf. But in my head, my real head, my mind is churning. Because my name is…

The answer is right there, at the edge of my mind. But I can’t grasp it. It’s like trying to catch smoke with my hands. Every time I reach for it, it slips between my fingers.

It mirrors my struggles in the memory too. Because in it, I am on my tiptoes, reaching for something on the top shelf. Then I slip. I yank my arm down to catch myself on the wooden counter, but instead, I smack my hand into the edge of the dish rack. It flips over, sending the glasses that were drying on it crashing down on the floor. I whirl around and stare down at them.

“I’m sorry,” I hear myself saying.

Because it is my voice. I sound very young, but the voice is distinctly mine. Which is strange, because the memory isn’t.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I say in a choked voice in this strange memory.

Tears are even streaming down my cheeks.

Then I look back up at that fae man and woman from before. They were also looking down at the broken glasses, but now they look up at me in surprise. Then their expressions abruptly start transforming into deep resentment.

“No, no, no, please,” I beg in that young voice. “Please, don’t hate me. I didn’t mean to… Please, I didn’t mean to⁠—”

“You always ruin everything!” the fae woman snaps.

In my own mind, I just watch her impassively. I feel like I should feel something while watching this memory. But I don’t.

The kitchen disappears and another memory takes its place. Once again, it doesn’t belong to me. But someone who looks like me is somehow still in it. I know because I catch reflections of myself in a mirror on the wall while I’m trying to defend myself against two attackers inside an elegant bedroom. The two fae men attack me relentlessly.

One of them, a muscular guy, kicks me in the ribs and then in the side of my head, leaving me dazed on the floor. The other one, a slimy-looking fellow with beady eyes, rams a knife into my thigh. Then he raises the blade as if to kill me.

Once again, I feel like I should be terrified. But since this memory has never happened to me, I feel strangely detached as I watch it.

Yet again, the scene around me changes. This time, I’m at the edge of a thorn forest. I’m fighting a fae man who has light magic. He blazes it around me, blinding me. Then he tackles me to the ground and wraps his hands around my throat while he keeps demanding that I hand over some kind of ring to him. After I manage to get him to stop strangling me, he stomps his boot down on my ankle, shattering it. He punches me in the face and then forces my hand down on the ground. I’m still holding that ring when he starts stomping his heel down on my hand.

It’s a horrible memory. But once again, it isn’t mine.

More memories flash before my eyes.

In one of them, I get a collar locked around my throat and my magic sucked out of me before I pass out. In another, I’m watching a black-haired fae woman and a fae man with curly blond hair kneel half-naked, blindfolded, and shackled with iron in the middle of a banquet hall. In the next, I’m crawling on my hands and knees and licking a pair of black boots while people laugh in that same banquet hall.

Then I’m kneeling on the rough stone ground. I’m out on some kind of mountainside and there is an ice palace a short distance away. There are three more people out here. Two dragon shifters with silver wings and one with black wings. The guy with black wings is standing facing away from me, and his massive wings are spread out to his sides.

The man with silver wings draws his arm back and flicks his wrist.

I flinch as a whip cracks against the man’s black wing.

Not the version of me in the memory. The real me. The me in the memory gasps when it happens. But the real me, I flinch.

However, the movement is stopped by the restrains that are trapping me to this chair. Before this barrage of memories began, I was shackled to a chair in some kind of dungeon. I can only see these strange memories, so I have no idea what is happening around me anymore, but I once more yank against the steel that is binding me to this chair as the whip cracks into those black wings again.

Thankfully, the scene ends before the guy’s wings can be whipped further. I don’t even know why that particular memory affected me. I don’t even know who that dragon shifter with black wings is.

The memories keep coming. One after the other. In one, I’m lying on my stomach on a table while some doctor yanks a shard of ice from my spine before telling me that I will never walk again and that I’m also going to freeze to death in a few hours. In another, I’m fighting a massive guy in white fighting leathers one-on-one in the middle of a crowded arena. Then another fae in white fighting leathers is screaming at me that I ruined everything while she tries to kill me inside some kind of strange colorful forest.

Then that dragon shifter with black wings is back again. He is fighting some fae-like being in bronze armor before he ends up on his back on the ground. A boulder is about to slam right down on him, which will definitely kill him. In the memory, I shove some kind of magic at him and then throw myself through a portal. We all end up on the sands of an arena, and when that guy looks at me again, world-ending hatred burns in his golden eyes.

I flinch again. The real me. Not just the me in the memory.

More memories bombard me. That dragon shifter with black wings is telling me that the world would be better off without me, that I ruined everything, that I always ruin everything. In one of them, he almost drops me when we fly to some kind of floating island.

Gritting my teeth, I yank against my restraints again as he says, “It would be so much easier if I just let you fall. Everything would be so much better if you weren’t here. Because you ruin everything. You always ruin everything.”

Then he’s back again in another memory. In this one, he is kneeling on the floor before that female dragon shifter with silver wings. His own black wings are chained together with iron manacles, and he is beaten and bloody.

In the real world, I clench my fists, but I remain trapped in that chair.

The memory continues moving, and the shifter with silver wings suddenly brings out those two fae from the earlier memories. The ones in that kitchen with the broken glasses. I watch as the dragon shifter makes them kneel in front of her before she summons shards of ice that she presses against their throats.

I turn my head because I suddenly don’t want to watch this. But the me in the memory keeps looking at them, so my vision doesn’t change. I suck in a sharp breath and jerk against my restraints as the dragon shifter slits the throats of those two fae. But I can’t hear that short gasp, because in the memory, I am screaming my lungs out.

Abruptly, the memories stop flashing before my eyes.

The sudden change is so disorienting that I have to blink several times and shake my head to try to get my bearings back. Once my mind has caught up with what just happened, I find myself in that dungeon that I was in before all the memories began.

“Draven and your parents,” a voice says from a short distance in front of me. “I figured as much.”

Giving my head one more shake to clear it, I shift my gaze to the source of the voice.

An extraordinarily beautiful fae man is leaning against the closed door of the dungeon. His gorgeous features are somehow sharp and delicate at the same time, almost to the point of looking slightly feminine, and his long dark blue hair has been draped over his shoulders and rests smoothly on the fancy shirt he’s wearing. But despite his beauty, there is a ruthlessness and a distinct air of danger around him. There is no remorse, no hesitation, in his black and silver eyes as he holds my gaze.

“I’m glad it was you,” he says. And it sounds like he truly means it.

I have no idea what he is talking about, but it doesn’t matter, because right now, I need to…

That strange confusion drifts through me again, and I frown as I try to recall what I need to be doing. In fact, what was I even doing before this? How did I end up shackled to a chair here? And where is here?

“This is going to be painful,” that beautiful fae man says. His spiky black crown glints in the faint illumination from the faelight gems as he cocks his head slightly. “Hopefully.”

Then his eyes begin to glow.

Panic pulses through me, and I yank against my restraints again. I need to fight him. I don’t know who he is or why he’s doing this to me, but I know that I need to fight him. Otherwise, he will shove me back into those weird memories that don’t belong to me.

I wiggle furiously, but my forearms are locked to the armrests with thick metal bands, and my legs are similarly trapped against the legs of the chair. Panicked, I try to summon my magic. I know that I have magic. I can feel it inside me. But it doesn’t respond because… Well, because I have no idea how to use it. I frown. Why can’t I remember how to use my own magic?

Yet again, I reach for answers that slip through my fingers right before I can grab them.

The ruthless fae man before me, however, doesn’t seem to have any problems remembering how to use his magic.

Because he just shoves me straight back into those horrible memories that don’t belong to me.

Some content on the website is uploaded by users. If it infringes on your rights, please contact us.