Page 33 of Guardian of Exile

Morgen lifted his head enough to rest his chin on the palm of his hand. “I suppose not, but now a dark witch is angry with us.”

“She would have to remember us to be angry,” Evra countered.

“Why would she not—” Morgen’s gaze snapped to Nyx, and she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw there.

She jumped up. “I’m going to go look at the flyer.” She did not need to look at the flyer. Morgen had texted a picture of it to her earlier, but she wanted to get away from the table and the reminder that, when it was convenient, apparently she was just like her mother. As if to underscore the fact, her Hiding took another hit from Mary’s frustrated attempts to claw her memories back.

It isn’t the same thing, she told herself as she walked up to the billboard, her gaze landing on the flyer. She was going to undo it, once they were safely back in Earth Between. Mary Turner would regain her memories. She wouldn’t spend the rest of her life wondering about her missing time. Nyx wasn’t even certain it was a courtesy the woman deserved, given what Evra had said about the nature of the magical items she sold, but she did know she didn’t want to be the person who decided someone else deserved what they got simply because what they got was convenient for her.

She closed her eyes and gave in to the constant desire to close her hand around the black rock that rested always against the hollow of her throat. Ever since Seth had died, it felt like she’d lost her moral center. It wasn’t that Evra and Morgen wouldn’t tell her when they thought she was out of line—they could and they did—but they didn’t know her the way Seth had. When a person made friends, they showed those friends the best parts of themself. The person they wanted to be, always. It took years—decades—for them to learn the darker, not so pretty parts.

Nyx had always tried to show Evra and Morgen the best parts of her. They certainly hadn’t seen the darkest parts. The parts Seth had always known, because when Nyx had been a child, she hadn’t been able to hide them.

Now that he was gone, a selfish part of her wished she’d never regained all those memories she’d lost. Because she hadn’t ever really had to make hard choices living in Dead Earth with no memory—she hadn’t been able to interact with others long enough for it to be an issue—and when she’d found the Station, and Griff and Evra, it had felt like deciding for herself who she wanted to be. How she wanted to be. It had felt like making herself.

And then she’d found Seth and she’d had to know. Who she’d been. Who they had been. So she’d remembered, and the person she’d been making herself into had collided with the person she’d always been, and she’d had come to terms with that merging. Then Seth had died and it had ripped away so much of her identity, and she was back to asking herself who she was. But this time, she was doing it without either the hope and happiness of the version of herself that had first found somewhere to belong in the Station, or the solid steadiness of the single most constant point in her life.

Did it ever stop? She brushed her thumb across the smooth surface of the rock. Did a person ever just get to be who they were without having to ask themselves these questions? Without having to start over and rebuild themselves every time the universe decided to be cruel?

She stared at the flyer. It led to a man who had once been a boy, who had been through something terrible enough that he had broken the foundational rule of his people and had no doubt expected to die for it. She did not know what that something had been. But she did know that she was not the only person who had suffered loss.

It didn’t make her own loss hurt any less. But it did make her not feel so alone.

She typed the number on the flyer into her phone, held it to her ear and listened to it ring. After three rings, a woman answered. “Yes?”

“Hi, I saw your flyer for the birdwatching meetup.” She waited, but only silence greeted her. “There’s not a date or a time listed, and I really want to go.”

“This isn’t a group for novices,” the woman answered. “If this is your first time looking for a group, you’d be better served by a different one. I have a recommendation I can give you, if you need.”

Translation: If your problem can be solved by a doctor, go to one. “I’ve tried a lot of different groups and I haven’t learned very much. But I heard yours has someone who knows a lot about…birds.” Had it had to be a birdwatching flyer? She felt like she was trying to find a street dealer for drugs as a straitlaced person who had no idea how that sort of thing went. “I really need his help.”

“I see. In that case, I can talk with you and see if I think it would be a good fit. Where are you now?”

Nyx gave the name of the coffee shop.

“I’ll meet you there in half an hour. Put the flyer on your table.” The call ended.

Nyx shoved her phone into her pocket and took the flyer from the bulletin board. After catching the others up on her phone call, there was a brief argument over how to proceed.

“You can’t all talk to her,” Nyx objected. “It will be suspicious.”

“What if you cannot convince her?” Evra asked.

“Then he”—she pointed at Morgen—“can Siren her into it.”

“How is he to know he needs to do that if you are speaking with her alone? What if she leaves before either of you can convince her?”

“Then he”—Nyx pointed at Kaden this time—“can track her down.”

She ended the argument by moving herself to an empty table one over from her friends. Close enough they could still hear her if they paid attention. She got a coffee and watched people come and go. She watched Evra glare at her for a solid ten minutes, the Amazon’s arms crossed, until Nyx stuck her tongue out at her and Evra finally rolled her eyes and started talking to Morgen.

Nyx scrutinized every woman who came into the cafe. When a brunette white woman kept shooting her glances, Nyx gave her an encouraging smile. When the woman smiled back and approached her table, Nyx went over her rehearsed talking points in her head. She was going to go with the heart condition, since Evra had mentioned it all day, and it was something that had actually needed a Shaman to fix.

“Hi,” the woman said.

“Hi.” Nyx waited.

“I’m Amy.” The woman smiled again.