The world froze as Feyla's gaze drifted from the staff's blade at her throat to the man wielding it. Their eyes met. Desden shook his head almost imperceptibly.

Feyla didn't listen.

Her hand came up and twisted the staff away. Desden lurched forward. She tucked into a roll and escaped from underneath him. Now she just needed to find an opening to knock him out and—

Pain surged in Feyla's head again. Her vision went black and when it finally cleared, the cool feeling of the staff against her throat touched her again. Again? Had she moved? She had to have, she was on a different part of the floor.

But I don't remember moving...

"Can keep doing this if you want to," Desden said.

"Doing what?" Feyla snapped.

"Tiny version of what you did to my brother."

Feyla breathed in shallowly as the tip of his staff drew closer to her throat. The memory spell. That had to be what he meant. "I did escape just now. Didn't I?"

"You tried."

A terrible thought hit her. "How many times?"

"Just the once. Less than your friends downstairs. They've been 'arriving' at my door over and over and over again."

Feyla's hands curled into fists. "You leave them alone or I'll—"

His staff scraped down her skin, drawing a tiny trickle of blood. "Ah, ah, ah, I'm the one threatening. Was going to get this information elsewhere but you'll do better." A red glow shot through his staff before it darkened to black. "Where's your guild hiding the spell you used on him?"

Feyla's neck stung from the cut. She sucked in in a breath to draw her skin away from the blade.

Desden's voice dropped to a harsh whisper as he leaned closer to her. "They were supposed to have been moved to that new healing house. They weren't. Where are they?"

"You burnt a place meant to help people to the ground over some papers. I'm not helping you do it again."

"You stole my brother. Anyone who does that deserves to burn." He rose smoothly to his feet. An orb of red light sparked to life above his staff. He manipulated it with his other hand, making the lines in it darken black and writhe into place. "Can do this the hard way. I never said that you needed to tell me out loud."

Feyla bolted to her feet. She rolled out of the way of Desden's first shot and flew out the door. Whatever that spell was didn't sound like something she wanted to experience up close. Where are the stairs? she thought frantically. Finding Delia and Daydrel was first priority.

A blast hissed above her head as she ran down the stairs. Desden's feet pounded behind her. Feyla glanced over her shoulder just in time to catch Desden launching himself down the stairs.

The two crashed into each other and tumbled down onto the stairwell's landing. Desden's weight knocked the breath from her chest as he landed on top of her. "No more. No more of you ruining my life." He'd abandoned his staff, taking only the detachable blade from the bottom. Desden held it to her throat, oblivious to the fact it had cut into his palm during the fall.

Feyla tried to move, tried to catch her breath but Desden's blade kept her from doing both. Desden licked his cracked lips. The spell from earlier reshaped itself in his hand. Red veins crisscrossed a black orb and formed ominous looking shapes like the lines Sedgewick carved into rune discs.

"Let's see what you've been hiding," Desden whispered.

Feyla's chest felt like it was going to give way within her. Memories of another time she'd been trapped and unable to escape reached out across the years and seized her. She fought back wildly, determined to free herself from both him and the memory.

The spell hit her first.

Feyla's eyes snapped open. A weight still crushed her chest but it was no longer Desden above her. A wild, white-eyed gaze bore through her skull while a set of dirty hands grasped onto her throat and squeezed.

No, not again, please... Feyla tried to cry out but the man above her crushed the words in her throat. Tears stung her eyes and black spots flickered in the corners of her sight. The world grew hazy. Her hands began reaching, grasping desperately for anything that would free her as all thoughts except for life, for air fled her mind.

Feyla tried to close her eyes but the world had transformed into a bloody play she couldn't look away from. If only the black spots would blot out her sight and keep her from reliving that fast-approaching moment when her desire to live would trump everything else, when she'd reach up and—

"Not here," Desden spoke, his voice breaking past the blood pounding in her ears.

The white eyes melted in front of Feyla, replaced with a vision of colors bright enough to make her head ache. As everything around her shifted, Desden came back into view. Feyla flung herself at him just in time for the world to finish melting around her.

They tumbled into a hellish copy of the stairwell she'd been in minutes before. The dirt in the wood floor stood out like black veins in tan marble, and the dingy white walls now shone like they were freshly painted.

Feyla pinned Desden to the floor. Her hand shot out and jabbed him in the neck with the perfect amount of force she hadn't been able to use in the memory moments before. He should have crumpled into slumber.

He didn't.

Desden laughed. The sound hung close to her ears and faded slowly. "That doesn't work here, healer."

"What did you do to me?" Feyla shouted. She grasped his shirt and shook him, but it had no effect.

"We're in your head, little healer. You can't hurt me here."

"In my..." Feyla cast her gaze around frantically. Desden's shirt slipped from her fingers. He shoved her off him effortlessly and rose to his feet.

"Now you're going to help me find out how to fix my brother." Desden grabbed her head and jerked it back. His grip dug into her skull with unnatural strength. "This would be easier if you'd cooperate."

"I'm not...helping you," Feyla panted. Inside her head? Could she even run away? Or wake up? Where's Sedgewick when I need him? she thought, panic rising in her chest by the second.

"Won't make a difference." He tugged on her hair until she was forced to look up and face him. "I cast the spell and I'll rip through every memory here until I find the right one." He released her and began circling around her like a bird of prey. "Where were we before?"

"That's none of your business," Feyla snapped.

"You killed him, didn't you?"

"Shut up!"

"Your guild. What did your guild say after they found out?"

The guild...wait, no, she couldn't think about that. If she did then Desden might actually be able to—

The memory felt like a punch in the face.

Before Feyla could even think to refocus her thoughts on something else, the room around them melted away into marble swirls that sent her spinning wild like a child's top.

"Did you kill him?" one of the guild leaders asked. His voice floated above her while the room slowly came into focus.

Feyla's hands were moving without her making them. She looked down to see her arms outstretched and holding her old white healer's cloak. She'd folded it neatly, but that did nothing except draw more attention to the red stains blotting the pure white. "I did." Her voice sounded hoarse. She'd cried just before this.

The room stayed silent. Feyla kept her eyes on her cloak, not daring to glance up at the spot where her mother was sitting. If she did, she might lose her nerve.

"Our investigation so far has shown no intentional misuse of your training. If this continues to hold true then you will be able to resume guild activity after a period of restriction and training reinforcement."

"That's—that's not necessary. I won't be coming back."

Feyla felt, rather than saw, the way her mother stiffened in her chair. She handed her disgraced cloak to one of the guild leaders and muttered an inadequate thank you before walking from the room as fast as decorum allowed.

"You must have yielded," Desden said. "Wouldn't be here otherwise."

The room fractured behind her like a mirror. Feyla watched herself leave the room, tears finally falling from her face.

Her ears slicked back at Desden's voice. "What do you care? Life is nothing to you."

Desden appeared beside her. Feyla stiffened, forcing her body not to jump. "What you did to my brother was just as much a murder as what I've done."

"He consented to the treatment," Feyla responded through clenched teeth. The room began swirling around them again.

"Did he?" Desden asked right before they were flung into another memory.

Desden landed in a crouch. Feyla fell to her knees as she was flung into her past self. "Earlier. Looks like we needed to go earlier. Get up, healer."

Feyla shot Desden a glare. Her eyes watered from the spinning and she blinked rapidly in an attempt to take in the memory. The spell pulled her like a puppet into place and she was once again trapped in a vision of the past. Her own thoughts sunk away, drowned out by the ones of the past.

"You must be so proud, Madam Everbloom," one of her mother's plethora of acquaintances said as she greeted Arilla and Feyla. Feyla smiled at the older woman. What was her name again? She was probably some high-ranked healer or guild sponsor.

Arilla smiled brilliantly back. "My Feyla is everything I could want in a daughter. I'm so thankful to have her following after me."

Feyla dipped her head in respected and flushed with pleasure. Mother was always so poised, so certain. Could anyone else have taken all the insults thrown their family's way and spun them into a victory?

Tonight was a double celebration. Her mother had been confirmed as a guild leader once again and the ink on Feyla's healer license was drying as they spoke. People mingled about her mother's party. Feyla's turquoise eyes scanned the guests for a pair that matched her own, a search her childhood had long proved it pointless.

"He's not here, lovey," Mother whispered discreetly beside her. "I wouldn't expect to hear anything out of him for a few months."

Feyla kept her smile frozen in place and let only the barest hint of a sigh escape her. She was okay. Father was so busy and he and mother were unpleasant around each other anyway. But...

"I wanted to show him all my accomplishments," she huffed. Her voice sounded younger and whinier than she intended.

Mother touched her arm gently. "Your father will see what you've become in time. Go enjoy tonight. I think I see Healer Elyssgrow over there."

Feyla turned to where her mother had nodded and spotted Daydrel approaching from across the room. Their eyes met and Feyla's heart melted into the green flecks in his eyes. Daydrel was so handsome and twice as gifted as her and—and—

And definitely not her Sedgewick.

Feyla would have lost her balance if she wasn't still trapped in her past self's body. Oh, her head hurt. It pounded to the time of the slowly-shifting walls. Desden surfaced beside her. Next to the sharp colors of the memory, he seemed watery and weak. His grip was not.

Desden jerked Feyla from her past self. "Wrong again," he gasped, short of breath. Was the spell taking its toll? "Looks like I'll have to do this the rough way." He reached for her head again.

Feyla snatched his wrist. No, he was getting closer. She couldn't let him see anything he might be able to use. The room around them started flecking apart. Swirls of color spun out from the flecks and even the ground underneath them began fading away. Desden's spell had to be tiring him. If she could just keep him away from her Dormaeus memories a little longer... Feyla cast her gaze around frantically. What I wouldn't give to have Sedgewick here.

An orange swirl spun close to them. Feyla dug her nails into Desden's arm and flung them both into it.

And fell into the arms of her Sedgewick.

Relief temporarily washed over her. She'd tell him about Desden and together they'd figure out how to stop him and then everything would be okay.

The relief died a second later when Sedgewick spoke words from a memory.

"While I would like for your mother to not utterly hate me, I don't need people telling me what I already know."

Oh, Sedgewick. Feyla would have smiled even if her past self hadn't. Before the rest of their conversation could fly through her lips again, the world around Feyla froze.

Black tendrils wrapped around Feyla's arms and dragged her out of her past self. Desden shimmered on the edges of the memory like a nightmare in the corner of her mind. His chest heaved while he pulled on the strings of the spell, dragging her away from her memory of Sedgewick and closer to him. "I'm done...done letting you mess with my plans. No more waiting. Hard way it is."

Sparks of red shot off the black tendrils, soaking up all the color around them. They curled their way along her arms and neck toward her eyes. Feyla lashed out against them hard enough that if she'd been in the waking world, they would have choked her. The tendrils rushed on like an unchecked disease. She tried to cry out but no one besides Desden heard her. Tears failed her. She shot Desden one last look of anger before the spell reached her eyes and a flood of memories blotted out everything else.

***********************

Author's Note: Long time, no see! Here's an extra-long chapter to make up for my absence. What did you all think? Did you like seeing a bit of Feyla's past (despite the circumstance)? Will Desden succeed in finding the correct memories? I picked a song instead of an image this time. It helped me write the chapter and kind of reminded me of Desden.

Chapter dedicated to the lovely autumn_sunfire . Happy birthday!