Now that Pax’s growing skills working with his mother’s memories had helped him discover the first dark threads, he could make out more of them. It took focused effort and a push of extra light mana into his skill.

  Like diseased veins, delicate, almost invisible threads of darkness ran through the membrane surrounding the memory. They pulsed with an energy that seemed to control and confine the images and sensation trapped within.

  He wondered if the Inquisitors had done this. And, if so, how did the tendrils still have the energy to keep suppressing Jane’s memories after all these years?

  And what about a source? If these threads entangled every lost memory in a similar fashion, there had to be a hidden source somewhere inside his mother that spawned them all. What if he could find and neutralize it?

  He shuddered at all the implications, good and bad, at restoring all his mother’s lost memories. What a mess.

  Pax shook his head. None of that mattered right now. He needed to figure out how to cleanse or disable the ones right here. Pax blew out a breath and focused on the task for tonight. Once he was successful, he could worry about the rest of her memories.

  With careful movements, Pax extended a finger of his light mana toward the imprisoning net of dark threads. He moved slowly and concentrated on gaining as much insight as possible first.

  To his delight, the closest tendrils shifted away from his light mana, like vermin scattering from a predator. Being careful to keep a tight hold on the memory so it didn’t slide back into the stream, Pax pushed a small bit of his awareness through the outer membrane to examine the bubble from the outside.

  Determined to find the sources of the dark threads, Pax scoured the outer shell for clues. If he could find where they drew their energy from, maybe he could sever the connection and cut the power. His Strategist skill suggested that move would be his best shot at freeing the memory.

  After a cautious circle around the outside of the bubble, Pax finally found what he was looking for. In a spot at the base of the memory bubble, the threads coalesced into a trunk that still wasn’t very thick. The gathered column of threads disappeared off into the distance, trembling with occasional pulses of some kind of energy.

  With all the caution he’d developed working with his mother’s mind, Pax shaped a chunk of his light mana into a broad sheet that he used to encompass the memory bubble with a protective shield, leaving the smallest opening possible around the trunk of gathered threads of the dark energy. He took extra care, determined to contain anything that might go wrong when he attempted to fix things.

  Once satisfied that he’d done his best to ensure a safe working area, Pax took a moment to consider his next step. The simplest one would be to sever the trunk connected to this single memory and see what happened.

  Part of him wanted to dive after the trunk and figure out where it disappeared to, but he’d gotten much better at curbing his impulsive and often reckless instincts. He wasn’t the same rash, young boy she’d left back in Thanhil. Still, he couldn’t help considering what he might find out.

  Would he discover how the Inquisitors had hurt her so long ago? Could he finally find the answers to everything still hidden in his mother’s past? Fix everything she’d lost?

  Visions of his mother, restored to her full function, made him long for success. With only the smallest twinge of regret, he forced himself to start small, just like he’d planned with Titus and Harkness. Besides, even a small step forward would bode well for a full cure.

  Pax drew on his resolve and carefully shaped more of his light mana into a sharp, thin blade. Forcing himself to keep his breathing even, he laid it gently against the thin trunk of dark energy, as close to the junction with the memory bubble as possible.

  As a precaution, Pax took a moment to ready his Healing skill, just in case. He spread a gentle cloud of mana to the surrounding area of Jane’s brain, ready to jump in and fix things if the worst happened.

  There wasn’t anything else he could think of to improve his chances of success and to minimize danger. All that was left was to act. And so, with a quick slash, he severed the connection.

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  The cord of darkness snapped instantly and much more easily than he’d been expecting. Like a cord under extreme pressure, it whipped away, a wild, severed tail. To Pax’s horror, it jerked out into the darkness, away from the protective bubble of mana he’d formed around the memory.

  He immediately dumped more mana into his Haste, slowing everything down so he could focus on doing everything right in the next few seconds. He forced away worries that he’d messed everything up despite all his safety precautions. There’d be time for that later.

  Leaning hard into his powerful mana skill, Pax dove after the fast-disappearing strand of angry energy. He wasn’t fast enough to prevent it from careening into other memory bubbles in the area.

  They jerked, knocked out of the stream by the impacts. Pax pushed harder, forming multiple wide cones of light mana faster than he’d ever managed before. He sent them chasing after the original wild trunk of dark energy and each of the others it had torn free along its path of destruction. He had to stop this from spiraling through Jane’s entire mind.

  The next seconds passed with every scrap of concentration focused on corralling the disaster and preventing the mess from spreading. His cones of his bright, ordered energy engulfed the dark threads, latching onto them with strong threads. To his relief, his powerful mana trapped them long enough for him to pump even more light mana into them and eradicate them.

  He ignored his growing headache and dipped into his extra mana stores. One by one, he felt his efforts break through some invisible resistance to snuff out each of the cords of destructive energy with surprising suddenness, like candle flames between wet fingertips.

  Stomach twisting with worry, Pax finally caught and eradicated all the escaped cords. He hung suspended in the stream of his mother’s suppressed memories and looked around. How many and which memories had he freed? He looked around, assessing the damage.

  A handful of memory bubbles caught his attention immediately, drifting up and away from the others. They gleamed with a new light that they’d been missing before. Did that mean Jane could access them now?

  Pax shook the distracting thoughts free. He needed to deal with the fallout of unlocking more than the single memory he intended. He tried to keep track of the affected memory bubbles. Which ones were they? What if some of them were full of pain and torture? Would she re-experience the worst parts of her past?

  Then Jane cried out, a single sharp sound full of shocked pain.

  All thoughts of tracing the effects of what he’d done disappeared as Pax desperately looked for a way to ease his mother’s sudden distress. With no regard for his fast-draining mana, he threw a wide net of Healing energy outward in every direction.

  Before he could find anything to fix, Jane’s head spasmed away from him, ripping out of his hands and throwing him out of her internal world. Blinking his eyes furiously, Pax saw both Harkness and Titus reaching out to help Jane, panic and worry clear on their faces.

  Notifications pulsed to get Pax’s attention. He shoved them away, desperate to help his mother.

  “Fix her,” Titus demanded when he saw Pax’s eyes open.

  “What did you do to her?” Harkness turned toward him, anger and pain easy to read in her eyes.

  “I—” Pax stuttered, unable to answer as he rushed around to the front of the couch. He knelt in front of Jane and reached up to the hands she had pressed into both sides of her head. “Jane, look at me. Tell me what’s wrong. Where does it hurt? I need to know where to Heal.”

  She hadn’t screamed again after the first time. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, expression screwed up in pain as her entire body rocked back and forth in pained movements on the couch.

  “Say something.” Harkness’s tone was soft but firm as she squeezed Jane’s arm. “Tell the boy how to help you. Where does it hurt?”

  Pax exchanged a panicked look with Titus, only to see his brother looking just as helpless. Should he head back into her internal landscape? Track down the freed memories.

  He suspected they were merging with Jane’s consciousness right now. The sudden influx of long forgotten incidents would explain her distress. But that still didn’t rule out some physical injury. Maybe his efforts had re-injured one of the newly healed void areas in her brain.

  “Jane.” Pax summoned a calm he didn’t feel and kept his voice even. “I’m going to figure out where you’re hurting and try to fix it. Alright?”

  For a long moment, Jane didn’t respond, her eyes tightly closed and facial muscles clenched. Pax pulled up his mana and gently reached his hands out to touch the back of her hands, clasped to the sides of her head.

  She flinched but didn’t move away. Instead, she blinked her eyes open. Her gaze flicked around, unfocused, like someone trying to summon a coherent thought.

  “Tell me you’re alright, that I didn’t break anything.” A note of desperation slipped into Pax’s voice.

  Her eyes moved toward him and then snapped to his face. Her brow furrowed, and then she spoke, both unsure and hopeful at the same time. “Pax? Is that my plucky Pax?”

  Pax’s throat closed so tightly he couldn’t get out a word. She recognized him? He shot a look full of desperation and hope toward his brother.

  “Mama?” Titus crowded in next to Pax, crouching down to her eye level in an instant.

  Her eyes moved to his, and she let out a soft gasp of astonishment. “My Tough Titus.”

  “Yes. It’s us.” He sucked in a choked breath, smiling and nodding. “We’ve missed you so much.”

  She let out a handful of quick breaths, her eyes moving between the faces of her two boys with amazed disbelief

  Just as Pax began to hope they had their mother back, her eyes suddenly widened in fear and darted around the room before fixing on the door and then shooting a desperate look toward the window. “Run. Get out of here before they get back. Hurry.”

  Harkness had just reached out to comfort her when Kindra’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she sagged back into the sofa, completely limp.