If life really did flash before your eyes as you were dying then Feyla hoped it was a lot less painful than what she was feeling now.

Desden thrust her into memories and jerked her back out seconds later. Large swathes of her life flew by in mere moments. Her head ached from being flung around and her eyes burned as they tried to absorb everything playing in front of them.

The summers spent with her grandparents, her mother's scoldings, her healer training, the day she'd realized that she loved Sedgewick, the moment he'd admitted to loving her as well, everything flew by so fast that it made even pleasant memories painful.

It felt like he'd grabbed her diary and tore through it, like he'd taken a bladed comb and jerked it through the tangled mess of her memories. And the worse parts was she couldn't stop it.

Finally, after a literal lifetime, he paused on a memory. The black tendrils coiled away from her neck and eyes but remained knitted to her wrists. Feyla nearly collapsed but they forced her upright. Desden jerked her head back and forced her to take in the scene.

"Told you to let me do it the easy way. I still found what I needed." Desden released her head. The tendrils dissipated from her wrists and the memory snapped into place.

"This isn't what the spell was intended for!" Jaerick insisted again as his voice came into focus.

Feyla's throat still tingled from the presence of the tendrils. She swallowed and shifted her weight while the past came into view. She found herself leaning into Daydrel's arm and felt the ghost of that desperate hunt for affection and reassurance resurfacing. They'd had another argument that day about him wanting to push back the bonding in light of them catching Dormaeus. Feyla had felt raw and Daydrel's arm around her was an inadequate balm.

Jaerick wrung his mask between his hands, his normal care forgotten as he paced back and forth the length of the guild room. "It won't work, it won't..."

Daydrel took the dismissal in stride. "You said it would. Back up your efforts. We all think you can do it."

"I said in theory! Not in practice. Besides that, Dormaeus Carrow isn't the ideal subject. We need someone with as few connections as possible."

"We can still work with this, Jaerick. No one's seen his brother since he's been arrested. Maybe they weren't that close and Desden's just trying to save himself."

Desden shimmered like a ghost in the opposite corner of the room. He smirked at Feyla. So much for that hope.

Jaerick paused in the middle of the room. He turned toward Delia seated on a chair across from Daydrel and Feyla. The tall, pale healer held out a hand toward his wife like a supplicant looking for guidance.

Delia, in turn, cast Daydrel a glance. A prick of anxiety Feyla had almost forgotten existed revived with the memory. Delia and Daydrel had never been romantic but their ambition usually fed off of each other's and the way the two tended to be in sync had rubbed at her own insecurities.

The formally vibrant colors of the memory dimmed. Desden closed his eyes briefly in concentration. The fading stopped but no color returned.

"You can do it, Jae," Delia said with utter faith. "Think of how appreciative the guild would be if we found a way to reform wizards like Dormaeus instead of executing them."

"He would have to agree to the spell, though." Feyla's past words finally broke her silence. "And how safe would it be? Minds are delicate."

"His other option is execution. Dormaeus will have to agree," Daydrel insisted.

Jaerick turned his attention to Feyla and answered blithely. "Oh, if I screw it up utterly, we could be raising a baby in a grown man's body. Which wouldn't endear people to our cause."

"You won't." Daydrel and Delia said simultaneously.

"At best?" Feyla asked.

The corners of the room began fading away into foggy wisps. Desden's jaw tightened in concentration.

"He keeps higher functions and self-care and just...forgets."

"No more wizard." Daydrel smirked, already grasping at all the opportunities that would bring.

"That's the idea."

"I don't—I don't know about this," Feyla spoke up. She avoided Daydrel's incredulous gaze.

"What's there to be worried about? It a perfect opportunity." His arm slipped from her shoulder.

"We could avoid executions and undercut the mages," Delia added.

"We'd be taking away someone's whole life." She chewed her bottom lip. "Is that any different than killing them?" Feyla asked, just as much to herself as to her teammates.

"Hey." Daydrel tilted her chin up. His thumb brushed right below the lip she'd been gnawing. He didn't say it out loud, but she understood what his touch meant. "That's my job."

"Leave the whole soul debate to the priests," Daydrel finished teasingly. He put his arm back around her shoulder. "This is going to work."

Feyla would have swallowed if she hadn't been trapped in her blushing-but-irritated past self's body. The next thing Daydrel would ask would be how close the spell was to being done. Jaerick would pull out the rune disc he'd been constructing and unlike the original moment, there was now someone in the room who would understand more than his short explanation.

The room flicked away faster now. Bits of color drifted from the edges of the memory and the gray left behind followed immediately after. Daydrel's voice beside her echoed like they were in a tunnel when he asked to see the rune disc. Desden gasped from the corner, his face haggard and his hands shaking. The spell wouldn't last much longer.

But he doesn't need it to, Feyla realized. A few more seconds and the guild's secrets would be laid bare.

Not if I can help it. Feyla braced herself and pushed against the memory, her head throbbing from the effort. It did nothing. Her past self kept her trapped. Desden growled at her from the corner, but it was all he could do to keep the spell stable. Those tendrils weren't something she needed to fear now.

Feyla's arms ached like she'd been lifting boulders all day but they refused to yield to her control. What was she doing wrong? There had to be a way to regain control.

We're in your head, healer... Desden's taunting words surfaced again. She was thinking about this wrong. This wasn't real. It was magic and memories. That was how she had to fight it. With memories. Her memories.

Feyla stopped trying to move her body and started trying to move her mind. She picked one she knew intimately, one that she had already relived in her head a thousand times, one that had driven her to this place and lingered still.

The room around them darkened. Jaerick's voice grew faint, his words about the spell fading away like the memory. Desden's lips curled as he realized what she was attempting. He moved to make one last push to put the moment into focus. "You can't fight me!" Desden snarled. "This is my spell."

"It's my...my head," Feyla gasped, focusing all her efforts on reviving that moment. Just keep remembering...

"You're my child, Feyla Everbloom..." Her mother's threats and her refusal of Feyla's engagement briefly resurface.

Desden jerked them back to the guild memory.

"I set the practice rune disc right here..."

Feyla gritted her teeth and responded the same.

"I won't have a daughter bonded to a mage..."

"If you look at this section I made..."

Each moment shifted and reformed and shifted and reformed inside her head. For a second, Desden wavered and they lingered on the memory of her mother's rejection of her engagement. Hope fluttered in Feyla's chest. Desden's magic was spent. It had to be.

It wasn't.

Desden flung his arms forward. Tendrils shot off of them again. He let out a pained cry and dragged them back to Jaerick.

Feyla reached out to grasp the crumbling image of her mother but her hand went straight through. A sob escaped her throat. It sucked the last bit of strength out of her, leaving her trembling and defenseless.

Her ears craned to hear the reemergence of Jaerick's voice that would signify her loss. Desden's exhausted gasp came instead.

The dream around them cracked and Feyla jerked awake.

She shot up immediately but Desden recovered faster. His arm lurched forward and dragged her back to the ground by her ankle. "Wait, wait!"

Feyla fought against him anyway. She landed a solid kick to his face but he sank his nails into her ankle and dragged her back anyway. "Need... I need this Jaerick."

The gleam of the blade from Desden's staff caught her eye at the same time it did Desden's. Feyla lunged for it. Her fingers grazed the cool metal, but his arms were longer. Desden snatched it up and held it to her throat once again. "You don't—you still don't get it."

Forced to catch a breath, the truth of Feyla's situation sunk in. Daydrel and Delia were trapped in a cycle of entering and forgetting downstairs. Reiden was nowhere to be seen. Desden had a blade to her throat and a desperate look in his eyes. The only reason he'd opted for the blade instead of a burning ball of magic was probably that his hands were still shaking from holding the memory spell too long. If she hesitated, he'd recover enough to dig through her head again.

The cool metal of Sedgewick's betrothal necklace pressed against her sweaty chest. No, not just a necklace. A way to call for help. Could he get here in time? Could she even trigger it without Desden noticing?

"You should want to help me, you should get it," Desden's voice cracked at his final words. Liquid shone in his eyes. If it had been any other lost-looking young man, she would have reached out and comforted him. The blade at her throat made that difficult. "I've seen your life. We're the same."

Rage blotted out compassion. "You dug through my head! Don't act like you know me."

"It's frustrating. It's so, so frustrating. Know you're right. Certain you're right but the people you love can't see it and won't change. He's my brother. We were each other's world and he rejected me. Ran away." Desden cocked his head to the side, his dark eyes and hair making him look like a raven about to peck something apart. "Maybe you and I should make a deal. Help me get my brother back."

"You've done nothing but try to hurt my friends and Reiden. I'm not helping you hurt them more." Her hand slowly moved toward her cloak clasp. She grasped the necklace through her clothes. "Maybe we can work something out, bring back some of his memories, but I won't—"

"Hurt him? Never," Desden snarled, ignoring the last part of her statement. "I'm trying to fix him."

"You're trying to force him to be a wizard again. I know you miss him but he's better off staying away from that life. Black magic—"

"What makes you the judge of that?" Desden shouted. "Stole. You stole him from me. You gave him no choice, he spat out the word. "What makes you better than me? You're right, false healer. I did dig around your head. I learned. You want to change people. You can taste it. You would do the same as me if you weren't a coward."

Desden slowly lowered the knife away from her throat. "I can do it for you. I'm close, so close. Give me what I need to fix my brother and I'll fix everyone for you. Where's this Jaerick?"

Fix? What did he mean? Fix her mother? Sedgewick?

"Fix everyone." Desden's words echoed through her head again.

But before she could think on it further, the sound of a blast shattering wood shook the floor below them. A voice she would have known anywhere followed it.

"THIS IS THE MAGIC MINISTRY! I know someone's bloody well up there and you have about ten seconds to come out before I start ripping this building apart piece by piece!"

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Author's Note: First chapter of the summer! What do you all still think of Desden? How will Sedgewick react? Did you like seeing some more of Feyla's past?