Chapter 7: The Forgetting Place
1071 Words
The Brothel at World’s End
The room smelled of cheap perfume and cheaper whiskey.
Eva pressed her ear to the door, listening as the brothel’s nightshift stumbled home in the grey dawn light. A woman laughed—sharp as broken glass—followed by the wet thud of a body hitting the alleyway mud.
Behind her, Thorn moaned into the sweat-damp pillow.
She turned just in time to see his back arch off the mattress, tendons standing out like bowstrings beneath his skin. The relic’s poison was doing something to him—something worse than pain.
When the fit passed, he blinked up at the water-stained ceiling with the dazed expression of a man who’d forgotten his own name.
Eva crouched beside the bed. “Tell me about Option Three.”
His pupils contracted. For a heartbeat, she thought he might actually answer. Then his mouth twisted into that familiar smirk.
“Darling, I don’t even know what day it is.”
She threw the sketchbook onto his chest. “You wrote this. ‘The only way out is through.’ What does it mean?”
Thorn flipped through the pages with sluggish fingers. When he reached the final drawing—the two figures with their split heart—his breath hitched.
“Ah.” His voice was too light. “That.”
The brothel’s floorboards creaked. Someone was climbing the stairs.
Eva reached for her dagger—
—but Thorn caught her wrist, his thumb pressing into the thistle scar. The contact sent a jolt through them both.
Vision: A stone archway wreathed in black roses. A woman’s voice whispering, “Remember the price.”
The knock came just as the vision shattered.
Three staccato raps. A pause. Two more.
Margaret’s old code.
Eva wrenched free and yanked the door open—
—to find a child holding a teacup.
---
The Messenger
The girl couldn’t have been older than eight, her braids tied with fraying red ribbons. She thrust the cup at Eva without a word. Inside sloshed a viscous black liquid that smelled of funeral lilies and wet earth.
Thorn sat up so fast the bedframe groaned. “Where did you get that?”
The child pointed east, toward the ruins of Calton Gaol. Then she opened her mouth—
—revealing a hollow cavity where her tongue should have been.
Eva recoiled. The girl’s teeth had been filed to points.
Thorn was suddenly beside them, his fever-hot hand on the child’s shoulder. “Who sent you?”
The girl smiled. And kept smiling. Until her lips split at the corners, blood dripping onto her pinafore.
From the ruin of her mouth came a voice that was not a child’s:
“You’re running out of time, brother.”
Then she collapsed like a cut marionette.
---
The Poison and the Cure
Thorn drained the cup in one swallow.
Eva barely caught him as his knees buckled. “Are you mad? That could be—”
“Mine.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “My blood. Stolen and distilled.”
Already, the hellfire veins were fading. Color returned to his cheeks. But his eyes—
Eva shuddered. His pupils had become vertical slits, like a cat’s.
“Better?” she asked tightly.
He flexed his fingers, watching the claws extend and retract. “Different.”
The child’s body was gone. In its place lay a scrap of parchment with an address in the Old Town. And a single word:
Remember.
---
The House of Forgetting
The building leaned like a drunkard, its windows boarded shut with planks carved with warding sigils. The door swung open before Eva could knock.
Inside, the air hummed with the scent of dried herbs and something darker—the metallic tang of fresh blood.
A woman emerged from the shadows, her face hidden behind a porcelain mask. Not Eleanor’s work; this one was cracked down the middle, the smile lopsided.
“You’re late,” she said.
Eva’s dagger was out in an instant. “Who are you?”
The woman ignored the blade and turned to Thorn. “You promised me a story, prince. Or don’t you remember that either?”
Thorn went rigid. “Lyssa.”
The mask tilted. “Ah. So it is you. I thought perhaps Leviathan had finally eaten your mind.”
Eva stepped between them. “Explain. Now.”
Lyssa sighed and removed the mask.
Eva’s breath caught. The woman’s face was a patchwork of scars, the flesh stitched together with golden thread. But her eyes—
—her eyes were Thorn’s.
Same blue. Same cunning.
“My sister,” Thorn said hoarsely. “The one I didn’t betray.”
Lyssa snorted. “Debatable.” She gestured to a table littered with surgical tools. “Sit. Before you lose another century.”
---
The Remembering
The procedure was not gentle.
Lyssa made an incision at Thorn’s hairline, then pressed a silver spoon to the wound. The metal came away black with tainted memory.
Eva forced herself to watch as Lyssa deposited each spoonful into a waiting jar. The liquid inside swirled with phantom images:
- Thorn standing over a crib (Eva’s?)
- Margaret Thorne handing him a vial of inky liquid
- A contract written in light upon his skin
By the fifth spoonful, Thorn was shaking. By the tenth, he’d begun to whisper in a language that made the candles gutter.
Lyssa paused. “You’re sure you want to see the rest?”
Eva answered for him. “Do it.”
The next memory emerged thick as tar:
Thorn on his knees before Leviathan, begging for—
No. Not begging.
Bargaining.
“Take my memories instead,” the Thorn in the jar rasped. “Leave hers intact.”
Leviathan’s laughter shook the vision apart.
Lyssa corked the jar. “There. Now you know.”
Eva’s voice was barely audible. “Know what?”
“The price he paid.” Lyssa wiped her hands on a stained apron. “Every time your mother altered your past, he carried the weight of what you forgot.”
Thorn’s claws dug into the armrests. “Enough.”
But Eva was already reaching for the final jar—the one Lyssa had tried to hide.
Inside floated a single, horrifying image:
Herself, lying dead on a stone altar, her chest split open to cradle a crown of thorns.
- Writer
