The Ever After Read online

  Both Tove and Sunniva had said that this would go smoother without unnecessary auras, so Wendy and Finn had left us alone, rather reluctantly on Finn’s part. We’d had a brief introduction—Sunniva didn’t look much like Tove (she was a small bird of a girl with wide dark eyes and her hair pulled back into a tight braid, he a tall willow with wild hair silvering at the temples and eyes of mossy green), but they were nearly identical in mannerisms.

  Their eyes were always darting around, and they took quick, faltering steps, as if they were always changing their minds about where to go. But they stood tall, shoulders back and heads held high, so they came across as confident but distracted, giving them a strange air of being lost and arrogant.

  “Are you ready?” Tove asked, but he kept glancing back and forth between me and his sister, so I wasn’t sure who he was asking.

  “I think so,” I said uncertainly.

  Sunniva didn’t answer, and instead, she grabbed a nearby end table. It was a circle of green marble, supported by bronze legs shaped like twisting ivy, and she pushed it toward me, unmindful of the legs scraping against the parquet floor.

  I craned my head up, watching as she stopped at my feet. She climbed up onto the table, her bare feet on the emerald stone, and looked down at me.

  “Her halo is so dark,” she said, and exhaled roughly through her teeth. “Like there’s a storm just above her head.”

  Outside, thunder clapped, as if she had summoned it, and honestly, I couldn’t say for sure that she hadn’t.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Usually, your aura is lemon yellow, clear and bright,” Tove answered carefully. “Right now it’s … it’s flickering between murky gray and dark orange, with a black cloud around your head and dark particles floating around you.”

  “And that means I have my work cut out for me,” Sunniva simplified. “Lie back, stay still. You’ll feel better if you close your eyes. This shouldn’t hurt too much, but if it does, tell Tove.”

  My mouth had gone dry, but I managed to say, “Okay.”

  She pushed the sleeves of her mint-colored blouse up to her elbows, and when she held her hands toward me, her gold bangles clinked together.

  “Close your eyes,” she commanded tersely, so I did, and thunder rumbled loud enough to shake the room. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “I was in Isarna–”

  “You don’t need to say it,” she said, cutting me off. “Just hold it in your mind.”

  Riding in the carriage, pulled by Tralla horses on the island of Isarna, the museum in Öhaus with the bedazzled fox skull, kissing Pan in my hotel room, the lined face of Indu as he told me that he was my father—

  —and then it was pain cracking through my skull, and I cried out. I flinched, unable to stop myself, and the pain subsided.

  “I told you to lie still,” Sunniva said flatly.

  Tove scoffed. “Sunniva, she’s in pain.”

  “The process can hurt,” she said, sounding only slightly sympathetic. “But it’s the only way I know how to do this.”

  I opened my eyes, only for a moment, and Sunniva’s dark brown eyes were glowing silver as she scowled down at me.

  “I need you to go back to the memory, the one you were on when it started to hurt,” she commanded.

  I took a fortifying breath and pushed through the fog of my mind. Indu’s face smirking at me shifted to a young woman with his blue eyes under thick eyebrows. My sister Noomi.

  The pain flared again, a crackling expanding inside my skull, but I gritted my teeth and focused on Noomi. She was glaring at me through the iron bars, and her mouth was moving, but the words came out slightly delayed, sounding far away and warbled.

  “You will go, but you will not remember any of this,” Noomi promised me. “The inovotto muitit is absolute agony as the memories are ripped from your mind.”

  “Why do you hate me so much?” I asked her emptily.

  “I hate you because you exist,” she said coldly.

  My head felt like it was going to explode, and I groaned in pain.

  “Stay with it,” Sunniva said firmly. “I know it hurts, but I need you to stay in it.”

  Noomi’s face appeared before me again, but it was different, from another day. Bold stripes of cobalt blue across her eyes and bloodred on her narrow lips. Her hair was plaited tight to her scalp, woven with strips of leather.

  “Is it time to go?” I asked.

  “There’s been a change of plans,” she said with a wicked smile.

  “You can’t just take her!” Dagny said, and despite her conviction, her words were soft and far away, like they were being carried on the wind.

  But then cuffs were on my wrists, made of a strange oxidized metal that left it more jade than copper. They were heavy, far heavier than they’d looked in Noomi’s hands, and the metal burned my skin.

  “Where are you taking her?” That was Pan in the prison cell across from mine, his face pressed against the bars, an arm outstretched through the narrow gap between them.

  Noomi didn’t answer him and instead led me down the long narrow hall, out of the dungeon and into the darkness.

  And then a doorway appeared, glowing a pale orange, and Noomi pulled on my shackles, dragging me along. Through the door was a small, sparse room with a large apothecary table by the far wall. Half-melted marigold candle pillars burned dimly on top of that, the wax pooling on the warped wood.

  In the center of the room, four men were standing around an empty bed.

  And then another memory overlapped it—Pan lying on the same bed, his blood pooling on the floor around him.

  I must’ve been squirming because I heard Sunniva tell Tove to keep me still, and I was only dimly aware of an ambient pressure around my body, pressing me to the floor.

  But I was barely cognizant of that, and even the burning pain inside my skull didn’t affect me much. It hurt like hell, but it was more like it was happening to someone else, in another room.

  I was in the medica as Noomi led me to the narrow cot surrounded by four men. Indu Mattison stood at the head. To his left was a hunched-over older man, hidden by the hood of his crimson robe. He was the häxdoktor, and his name—Lemak Axelson—appeared in my mind.

  The two men to my father’s left were young—the older of the two was maybe my age, but the other had a doughy face and looked fifteen or sixteen. They wore gray kaftans, plain compared to Indu’s with the runic designs.

  “What do you want with me?” I asked as Lemak, the häxdoktor, began unwinding a long rubbery tube.

  “Everything will be okay, Violetta.” Indu’s voice was like syrup as he used the name my mother had given me, and he patted the cot with his meaty hand. “Lie down and it will be over soon.”

  I told him I didn’t want to but then I was on the cot anyway, and the younger men were holding me down. Indu held my left arm away from my body, his fingers digging painfully into the soft flesh of my forearm.

  “It will only hurt for a moment, Violetta,” Indu tried to assure me as the häxdoktor screwed a long metal syringe needle onto the end of the tube.

  “My name is Ulla,” I said through gritted teeth, and I felt the burning stab as Lemak jabbed the needle into my arm.

  From the corner of my eye, I could see the blood, dark and red, as it flowed through the semi-opaque tubing.

  “Why are you taking my blood?” I asked.

  As I turned my head to get a better look, a dozen images flashed before my eyes. In the same place, the pale skin of my inner arm facing up toward the pale orange light.

  My unmarred skin flashed to swollen, bloody track marks to the needle into my arm to an inky black spider crawling down my elbow. And then, for a split second, the cuff was gone, replaced by a friendship bracelet made with bright string and plastic beads.

  Somewhere, far away, my body was on fire, the flames eating through my skull, and I faintly heard Sunniva telling me to hang on just a bit longer. But I
couldn’t do it. It all hurt too much.

  I opened my eyes, and I was staring at the dark stone bricks of my prison cell. The wood bunk was hard and cold against my back, and Dagny wiped a cold rag against my face.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her weakly. “Why are you doing that?”

  “You’re sick, Ulla,” she said, but her voice cut out. Dagny’s mouth was moving, but it was Sunniva’s voice that came through. “I don’t think you can take much more of this.”

  I tried to shake my head, but it wouldn’t move. “I can’t stop.”

  “Is she awake?” Pan asked, shouting from across the way. But I could hardly hear him, his voice was fading away.

  “I’m losing you,” I whispered as I closed my eyes.

  “Ulla, you need to come out of it.” Tove was shouting, but I could hardly hear him over the crackling flames burning through the fog in my brain.

  I was moving—not consciously, but I felt the ground pull away from me, and the wind moving over my skin only fanned the burning pain. Someone was shouting but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  And then, abruptly, cold water washed over me, and I sat up, gasping for breath in a porcelain tub in the gilded palace bathroom.

  “Are you okay?” Tove asked as I wiped the water from my eyes.

  My heart raced, my head throbbed, and my skin felt sunburnt all over. But I was breathing, and I was alive, so I nodded.

  6

  Recovery

  Four hours later, I still couldn’t fully shake the heat. Finn and Mia had set up an air mattress for me in the twins’ room, and I sat on it with a fan on me while I sipped iced tea.

  I had on a tank top, and I kept checking my left arm for the infected needle marks I’d seen. But my arms were fine. There were a few faint pink dots, like fading scars, and a purplish bruise on my wrist. But nothing like what I’d remembered with Sunniva.

  Sunniva had apologized, when I’d still been in the Queen’s bathroom, with the showerhead raining cold water down on me. She’d stood in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest, and her tone was impassive when she said, “Whatever is blocking your memories is stronger than anything I’ve encountered.”

  “But I did remember something,” I said. “And I need to remember the rest of it.”

  Sunniva exchanged a look with Tove, and the worry in her dark eyes belied her aloof exterior. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Tove reached behind me and turned off the showerhead. “Let’s get you back to feeling normal before we worry about what to do next.”

  If I hadn’t felt so exhausted and achy all over, I would’ve pushed it more, but the truth was that I did need a bit of time to recover, even if I didn’t want to. So I let him help me out of the tub and wrap me in a plush towel.

  Finn took me home—after chastising Tove for letting things go too far, even with me insisting that I was okay. Once I got to Finn and Mia’s house, I changed out of my wet clothes into cool, dry pajamas, and they wrangled the kids away from me so I could crash for a long, dreamless nap.

  When I woke up, I was still warm, despite all my efforts to cool off, but I didn’t feel quite so run-down anymore. Mia had brought me an iced tea and offered to keep the kids at bay for a little longer, although she warned me that eventually Niko or Hanna would sneak through.

  I wanted to make the most of my solitude, and I pulled out my phone. This morning, I’d tried calling Pan and Dagny, both her cell and the landline at our apartment, but there’d been no answer. Though it had given me time to wonder dourly if it was still “our” apartment, since I didn’t know if I’d ever be allowed back to Merellä.

  But this was the first time I’d checked my phone in hours and I had a slew of text messages, all from Pan.

  Are you okay? Where are you?

  Call me when you can.

  I don’t know what’s going on, but I just wanted you to know that I’m with Dagny & Elof. I can’t wait to hear from you.

  And then finally, a long multi-text essay:

  I’m back in Merellä and the reception is spotty, so I don’t know when we’ll talk. I’m in Dagny’s room using the signal booster. We just got back from a meeting with Amalie and half a dozen Mästares. Dagny thinks they were the Information Styrelse, even though they specifically denied it.

  Amalie told us about the negotiations, and that the Vittra exchanged some weird flower for us. They said that they’d decided to end your internship. It technically ended while we were gone, I guess, and Sylvi and Calder thought it would be better if you waited until things were more sorted out before you tried coming back.

  They told me they sent you back to stay with Hanna’s family in Förening. I hope that’s true, and Dagny thinks it is, but it’s hard to feel reassured when I can’t remember the past month. Can you remember anything?

  For me, it’s like a terrifying black hole where my memory should be.

  One of the last things I remember clearly is kissing you in Isarna. And I hate that I don’t know if we kissed again, or if it was the last time, or if I did anything stupid to mess things up.

  I don’t know if I should’ve said that. I don’t know if you even remember that. I hope you do.

  The meeting with the Mästares turned into an interrogation, which all got very frustrating, very fast. I don’t think Amalie believed us that we couldn’t remember anything. Someone finally had to tell her to knock it off after she asked me if I could remember anything about Áibmoráigi for the ninth time in a row.

  Elof started pressing about the Ögonen, and he was talking to Dagny about some charm or concoction they can work up in the lab. He’s determined to recover our memories.

  He’s been running all kinds of tests. He took so much blood from me I nearly passed out. He believes that the Älvolk did something to us, that they must’ve wanted something from us to hold us for so long.

  Did they tell you the Älvolk were the ones that held us hostage? That your father, Indu, was the one behind it? I’m sorry if they didn’t.

  I’m sorry if they did. This must be so tough for you.

  I know you want answers, but I don’t think you should try to contact Indu. They’re calling him a terrorist, and he’s banned from all five kingdoms. If he returns to Isarna, he’ll be arrested on sight. He’s not somebody you want to be involved with.

  I wish I could talk to you. I have to head out to get Brueger from the dog sitter, and Dagny is heading back to the Mimirin to work on something with Elof. I’ll be in and out for a while, but I’d still like if you could call me when you have the chance.

  I called him, and then Dagny. When neither of them answered, I decided to try any number I could remember. Fortunately, I’d called Dagny down at the lab enough that I knew the number by heart.

  “Troglecology Department, Docent Elof Dómari’s lab, this is Dagny Kasten speaking,” she answered in her formal, clipped way.

  “Dag, it’s me, Ulla.”

  “Oh, Ulla, it’s so good to hear your voice,” she said. “I have no idea how long it’s been since I talked to you. I’d swear it was yesterday, but it also feels like it’s been ages.”

  “Yeah, I know exactly how you feel,” I agreed.

  “Are you in Förening? Are you safe?” she asked.

  I filled her in on the situation as I understood it, but I just barely touched on Sunniva’s recovery attempts—“Finn’s put me in touch with an aura healer to try to restore memories”—and Dagny explained that Elof hoped for something similar with the Ögonen.

  As I suspected, she didn’t remember anything at all, and she wasn’t surprised by my vague recollection of a prison cell.

  “And I think they were stealing my blood,” I confessed.

  “Stealing your blood?” she echoed. “Like vampires?”

  “No, they weren’t drinking it.” I paused, thinking. “I don’t know what they’re doing with it. Maybe drinking it, I guess. But they took it with a syringe. I don’t know if they took yours or not,
but I have some scars on my left forearm.”

  “I had no new marks on my arms, but I did have a three-quarter-inch scar on my right temple, a two-day-old bruise on my ribs, and a three-inch diagonal healing cut across my lower back,” she replied matter-of-factly.

  “You sound awfully certain,” I commented.

  “Elof and I did full-body exams for any new marks. It was the only way we could discern any abuse or violations.”

  “And you didn’t see anything that could be a needle mark?” I asked.

  “No, and we specifically checked for that. But Elof did find a pair of odd dots he thought might be from a psionic stun gun’s prong.”

  “Sorry you guys went through that,” I said.

  “You went through it too,” Dagny reminded me gently. “I’ll talk to Elof and see if he has theories about why they wanted your blood. I’m sure he’ll have questions. Is it okay if he calls you later?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Dagny asked. “Are you staying in Förening?”

  “For the immediate future, I think so.”

  Truth was that I didn’t know where else to go. With my internship gone, I was out of work, and I didn’t have a place to live. Most of my possessions—other than the boxes stored in the Holmes’s basement and what I still had in my duffel bag—were in the apartment. I’d have to go to Merellä to get my things soon, not just because I wanted my stuff but to free up the space so Dagny could find a new flatmate.

  I told her as much, and I promised to square up the back rent as soon as I could.

  “No need,” Dagny said. “Amalie and the board took care of it. Our apartment is paid through the end of September. She said we shouldn’t be punished for a crime committed against us.”

  “That was very generous of them,” I said.

  “Amalie has been quite magnanimous,” Dagny admitted. “Far more than other Mästares.”

  “Why do you think she’s being so nice?”

  “She wants to find out what she can about the First City. The other Mästares seemed more concerned with following the rules.” She sighed then. “So it goes.”