Chapter VI

Briana wakes in an unfamiliar guest room after losing a full day since her first training session with Erebus. As she takes stock of herself, Briana realizes she cannot remember the person who gave her the clothes she is wearing. That missing person exists only as gray mist in Briana’s mind, attached to a feeling of gratitude.

Briana searches her memories further and finds more erasures. The person Erebus took away from Northern is now only guilt; the person who chased after Briana before she left is only longing and pain. Briana remembers her mother clearly, but Briana’s father is also a blank attached to regret. Believing Erebus has mesmered her, Briana tries to break the spell through pain, but nothing changes.

Briana storms outside and confronts Erebus while Erebus is training Zoe and Elijah with hellhound constructs. Erebus denies using a mesmer or harming Briana’s friends and father, though Erebus admits he gave Briana what she needed to meet her own objectives. Erebus says the memory loss is unexpected, irreversible, and impossible for anyone to fix, then offers Briana the same agreement he has with the twins: if asked a question, what Erebus says will be true, though not necessarily complete.

Erebus encloses Briana and himself inside a black aether dome so the twins cannot hear them. Erebus forces Briana to consider how returning to her loved ones without recognizing them would hurt them, naming erased figures from Briana’s life: her father, the boy Briana last kissed, the best friend Briana sent into a coma, the Merlin boy who sacrificed his humanity for her, and the boy who wanted to keep Briana safe and close. The emotions attached to those people overwhelm Briana, then recede as Erebus frames Briana’s condition around oaths made to herself and her desire for her power and pain to belong to her.

Erebus turns the crisis into a lesson and orders Briana to forge a construct, threatening to strike Briana with lightning unless Briana protects herself. Briana reaches for her root, and instead of red power, dark purple flame ignites around Briana’s fists. With the word “Protect,” Briana creates a precise purple barrier that absorbs Erebus’s lightning and breaks the ground beneath her. Erebus declares that Briana has become untouchable, and after Briana collapses the construct with a single word, Erebus says their real work can begin.