Sworn to Restoration by Terah Edun

Author:Terah Edun [Edun, Terah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Terah Edun Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

16

As they talked and discussed Vana’s actions and memories leading up to her traumatic death, it became clear that Vana didn’t remember much—of anything. Probing wider, Ciardis asked her about secrets that she should know that had nothing to do with her death and, to Ciardis’s amazement, even as Vana tried to hide it, the assassin wasn’t quite clear on those memories either.

Her mother’s trial? Wiped from the assassin’s memory.

Vana’s trip into the Ameles Forest and subsequent rescue of Ciardis from a dark shadow mage and his disciples? Fuzzy at best.

It became clear that the memories that were most wedged in Vana’s memory were further back in time. Not exactly the distant past, but nothing less than half a moon ago was even sparking a recollection in her mind, let alone a stream of knowledge spouted off-hand.

As this gentle line of questioning drew a clear line of evidence, Vana would fumble and try to hide her lack of knowledge. That is…in between the hourly episodes of pain that felt like living torture to her friends who had to stand witness. Still the sessions lasted a few minutes, no longer, and Vana was determined to get up to speed on everything. She just was even more determined to hide her memory loss.

Ciardis wasn’t sure if it was because she was embarrassed or she was just too damned prideful to let anyone help her. Even the people who were best equipped to handle such a malady—a healer, the best damned one the empire had to offer on short notice, and her friends by her side. But Ciardis also knew that it could seem like the worst thing that could happen to a mage and Companion as powerful as Vana. She’d endured being stripped of parts of her identity and was handicapped at the same time. After all, an assassin and a companion’s best asset beyond their magical and physical capabilities was their mental cognizance. If Vana couldn’t remember the five branches of family members of a patron’s extensive relations, she risked committing quite the faux pas at the banquet table. If she used a poison that a victim was immune to or stabbed the wrong heart—most Midlanders had two, after all, and one was useless until needed as a backup, in effort to complete a contract—well, she’d never be hired again.

So it could have been embarrassment. It also could have been pride. Either way, her answers were becoming more elusive and vague by the minute.

“Vana,” Ciardis asked in an off-hand manner. “Did you ever figure out what was on the Kasten ship?”

Vana looked at her with narrowed eyes, not fooled in the least.

“Why?” the assassin asked as she sat still between bouts of pain.

“No reason,” Ciardis said hastily as she changed the subject.

No reason at all, she thought to herself quietly.

She wanted to ask more questions, delve deeper into what Vana could have possibly known before she died, but it was clear that in the attack that had caused her her life, she’d lost more memories than even they had first surmised.

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