Free Exile by Rebecca Lim Page B

used to be. But then I remember the rage I saw in his eyes and I shiver.
    I stare at his face, struggling to reconcile that look with the smile I see playing now on his lips. He’s so beautiful that it’s as if he’s been touched by the sun itself, as if he carries some of its light with him always.
    ‘Memory is power, Mercy,’ he says softly. ‘It shall restore you to yourself in the end.’
    As I look on with horror, Luc’s beautiful features begin to twist into a parody of themselves, a fearful carnival mask. And then shatter — like glass, like a mirror breaking — and his image disintegrates out of being.
    I am alone again, screaming, ‘ No! ’ A cry loud enough to shatter the fundaments of a world.
    And I am falling, falling, falling through the night sky. Burning earthward, like space junk wrenched out of orbit, like a fatal meteor, my screams rending the seen and unseen universe into shreds about my ears.
Chapter 8

    I wake with a jolt in a girl’s body, in a chair, in red plaid pyjamas that are worn out at the knees, as if I have just, literally, fallen out of the sky. I am rigid with fear, and it takes me some time to work out where I am, who I am meant to be.
    Finally, the beat of my borrowed heart begins to fall, my breathing grows easier, my sight grows clear once more. It’s dawn. I can tell from the cool, clear quality of the light, the stillness outside punctuated only by birdsong. We’ve just crossed the threshold into morning. Though it feels as if I’ve returned from a place so distant, I’ve crossed light years to be back at Karen Neill’s bedside.
    She’s still asleep, still breathing, her condition unchanged from the night before.
    I stare at the backs of Lela’s hands, which are shaking a little. Turn them over, study the palms. So small, so ordinary. And yet . . . I can still almost feel a faint tracery of fire in the fingers of her left hand.
    I recall every moment of my dream, as if the fear and anger I felt were, indeed, a key to unlocking memories that my enemies would prefer remained hidden. For I know now why the Eight tried to make me forget my brief life as Carmen Zappacosta. They were trying to hide Ryan Daley, his feelings for me .
    And I’m angry at myself, too — for allowing myself to forget someone so unforgettable in the first place. When I was Carmen, Ryan made me feel so much less alone; he treated me as an equal, like someone whose opinion actually mattered, like I was actually part of the life I was living, part of the family I was living with. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. When I was with him, I felt less of a . . . freak. I liked him a lot. Wanted to know more about him. Hadn’t wanted to leave him, but had always known that I would have to, and it made every second we spent together that much more precious and sacred. Beyond that, I can’t contemplate a future, an alternate universe, where someone like him and someone like me could be together in any way, shape or form, so I’m just going to look at this the way Luc does — coldly, pragmatically — and try not to think about the other stuff, the human stuff.
    You’re not human , I tell myself fiercely. So stop behaving like one . All you have to do is find Ryan and wait it out. That’s all. Feelings can be put aside . You’ve done worse.
    And I know it for a truth.
    I rise unsteadily and head to the kitchen.
    Maybe it is all inside me, everything I need to get the real me back, but I’m like someone who has to relearn how to walk, talk, eat. The connections are missing, or badly compromised. And I have so much lost ground to cover. But I’m a fast study. I’m awake now, more than I have ever been before. Body and soul are beginning to synchronise. Overnight, something in me has begun to regenerate, to lay down new wiring.
    The blockages inside me are dissolving, so that I remember, too, how, when I was Carmen, I was able to call on unexpected powers that I still can’t explain. Like how