Luminary {Book 2 ✔️}

Epilogue (six months later)

"You don't want to make that move."

I cocked my head to the side, looking down at the board in front of me. His pieces considerably outnumbered my pieces, but I was still fighting. The winds of summer were picking up, blowing brown strands of hair around my face. The summer was ending, I could feel it in the slight chill of the air, and the first few leaves had fallen and scattered across the park.

"I don't?"

"Who taught you how to play chess?" he asked laughing, with a shake of his head as he took one of my knights.

I swallowed. "My dad taught me."

"Well, he must be terrible," Johnathan joked across from me and I gave him a polite smile, one that didn't feel quite right on my face. We played for a few more minutes as he subsequently kicked my ass. We'd been playing a few games of chess every Friday for the last four months, and I never got any better. And he never remembered.

"He's better now," I told him as I cleaned the pieces off of the board to put them under the chess table. Jonathan leaned back on the park bench, scratching at the graying hair on his chin. It was difficult sometimes to sit across from him, knowing that he didn't remember me. Knowing that he remembered nothing.

After that night in the woods, I realized that what I'd done to Johnathan was much more severe than just taking away his abilities. I'd taken his memory. When I'd severed his connection to the ley tree, I had severed any connection he'd had to the ley lines, power, and himself. While it made me a strange kind of sad, it was a clean slate. He no longer remembered Sam or the torment he underwent- or inflicted. But he also didn't remember me.

"I think your friend is waiting," he pointed to the boy behind my shoulder. Ben waved when he saw us looking at him. "Good game, Eloise."

"Goodbye, Johnathan."

Swallowing a little, I turned from the table and walked toward where my best friend was waiting for me. He ran a hand through his sandy hair, scanning my face for any sign of emotion, but he wouldn't find any.

Ben was with me the first time Johnathan and I had met 'accidentally' at the park. My father thought he was asking a stranger to play a game of chess. It was only a week after the failed sacrifice. Ben drove me home afterward, and I cried the whole way back. He swore to drive me every time, no matter how long our games went. Harry went on the days that I couldn't but it didn't seem to affect him the same way it did me. Perhaps my brother was more resilient or perhaps he didn't know the torment and pain our father had washed away.

"Want a ride?" he asked, with a grin, his words echoing mine many months ago.

I smirked, nodding toward the truck he was leaning against. "In that thing?"

Ben chuckled, the sound light and healthy.

"How'd it go?"

"He kicked my ass again."