Chapter 35

35

Vega's eyes fluttered open, eyelashes tickling her cheeks. She was back in the cell, the pounding in her head intensifying as she slowly sat up. "Gods." The curse left her mouth, and the pain in her head became an afterthought.

Vega jumped to her feet, her vision spotting. She bent down, her hands resting on her knees, to inhale a breath of stale air. At first, she thought it had all been a dream, the memories, but when she started to ignore the pounding in her head, she realized something…

She remembered.

Everything.

"Oh my gods." Vega stood up straight, a hand over her heart, the other over her open mouth.

She remembered the first time Arlet skinned her knee outside of her house and how Marlena snuck into the infirmary to steal bandages so the girls wouldn't get in trouble for being outside when they were supposed to be studying.

She remembered the sound of her mother's voice and the smell of her home burning to the ground .

She remembered the stories Arlet and Khort told her. They were no longer fairy tales from someone else's head—they were hers.

"I remember." Vega choked out a sob. "I remember."

Tears rushed down her face, and she no longer cared about anything going on around her. Nothing mattered except for one thing: the hollow feeling in her chest was gone.

Vega had her memories back, and if she died for good soon, at least she got to remember one more time. There was so much pain in her life, and the memories weren't all happy—but they were hers.

I'm whole again.

Vega didn't care she was locked underground in the Aeris chambers. Maybe she would find a way out, and maybe she wouldn't. There was so much she could be angry about. The pain, the longing feeling she'd become so used to, the loneliness she'd been forced to feel, the curse. All of it would eventually make her blood boil, but for now, Vega just wanted to revel in the beauty of what it felt like to be whole—of what it felt like to be her .

She sat down with her back to the wall and smiled up at the ceiling. Vega was locked in a prison with a smile on her face. Her head no longer felt like a whoosh of radio static.

All of her lives on Earth were there too, spinning around with the lives she had here in Tolevarre. Over her last twenty years, Vega had learned a lot about herself. Fifteen of those years had been on Earth, where she was shaped more than she'd ever been. This last life on Earth wouldn't leave her. None of them would—because they made her stronger, despite how weak she'd felt then.

Marlena meant for last night to be another moment that beat Vega down, but she'd been wrong.

It only made her stronger.