Broken Bonds: The Rogue's Redemption-Chapter 15: Memories That Burn

Lyanna’s POV

The pain hit me like a lightning strike.

One second I was standing beside Cassian, watching guards take Ember to safety. The next, my head felt like it was splitting open from the inside.

"Lyanna?" Cassian’s voice sounded far away. "What’s wrong?"

I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think past the pain exploding behind my eyes.

Images crashed through my mind. Not mine. Never mine.

A battlefield soaked in blood. Dragons falling from the sky, their wings torn and burning. Screams in languages I shouldn’t understand but somehow did.

"No," I gasped, holding my head. "Stop. Stop!"

Hands—not my hands, rougher, scarred—gripping a sword. Swinging at shadows that moved like live nightmares. Beside me, a young man with golden eyes and red hair. Cassian? But different. Younger. Wilder.

"Make it stop!" I was screaming now. "Get out of my head!"

Cassian grabbed my shoulders. "Lyanna, talk to me!"

But I couldn’t see him anymore. The visions swallowed everything.

A tent at night. Cassian’s old face above me, young and fierce and so in love it hurt to see. His voice whispering promises. "When this war ends, I’ll make you my queen. We’ll rebuild the kingdoms together."

My voice—not my voice—answering. "I don’t need a crown. I just need you alive."

His lips on mine. Fire and desire and desperate hope.

I doubled over, puking onto the ground. My body refused the foreign memories like poison.

"Someone help her!" Kieran’s words cut through the chaos. His hands replaced Cassian’s, softer but just as worried. "Morgana! She’s having some kind of attack!"

Fast forward. Months passed in heartbeats. My stomach growing with child. Cassian’s hand on the growing bump, his dragon purring satisfaction. "A daughter," he said with certainty. "Strong like her mother. We’ll name her Ember, after the first flame."

Tears streamed down my face. Not my memory. Not my baby. Not my love story. But I felt it all like it was happening to me.

"The memories are transferring," Morgana’s voice broke through the images. "The creature’s presence activated the dormant link. Her soul is trying to recover what was stolen."

"How do we stop it?" Cassian demanded.

"You can’t. She has to ride it out."

Battle again. Bigger this time. The sky dark with monster wings. I was fighting beside Cassian, our daughter—baby Ember—hidden somewhere safe. Or so we thought.

A scream. Not mine. The baby’s.

Running. Panic. Finding the hiding place ruined. Blood everywhere. So much blood.

"NO!" I screamed aloud, the ancient sadness mixing with my modern horror. "Not the kid! Please, not the baby!"

Cassian’s ancient face, destroyed by grief. Holding our daughter’s tiny, still body. Both of us broken. The war lost. Everything forgotten except this impossible pain.

"I’ll fix this," old me whispered. "I swear on my soul, I’ll bring her back."

"Don’t." Cassian’s voice cracked. "Don’t do anything foolish."

"Our daughter deserves life."

"And I deserve you! Don’t leave me!"

But I was already running toward the demon door, toward the forbidden magic that could reverse death. Toward my own death.

I came back to myself panting, lying on the ground with Kieran holding me. Cassian knelt on my other side, his face white.

"What did you see?" he asked softly.

"Your past life." My voice came out hoarse. "Our past life. We had a girl. She died. I tried to bring her back using devil magic and—" I choked on the words. "Something went wrong."

Morgana knelt beside us, her old eyes sad. "The demon magic twisted your soul. Split it in two at the moment of death. One piece fled to reincarnate. The other got trapped, becoming a prison for the very demon entity you tried to deal with."

"So that thing in the cell," Kieran said slowly, "it’s been possessing part of Lyanna’s soul for three thousand years?"

"Yes. And now that the two halves are close again..." Morgana looked at me with pity. "The memories will keep coming. Getting stronger. More painful. Until—"

Another wave hit.

Standing at the entrance. Demon lords surrounding me. "You want your kid back? Then trade yourself. Your soul for hers."

"Done."

"Lyanna, NO!" Cassian’s roar behind me. Too late. The deal was struck.

The demon enters me. Burning. Screaming. My soul trying to escape but caught, sealed, bound forever— I screamed again, thrashing in Kieran’s arms. He held tight, his lightning magic flowing into me, trying to ground me back to reality.

"Fight it!" he pushed. "You’re here. You’re now. Those aren’t your memories!"

"But they are!" I sobbed. "They’re mine. I did that. I made that choice. I killed myself trying to save our daughter and I doomed us both!"

Cassian’s face sagged. "If that’s true... if you died trying to save Ember..."

"Then she’s the reason I’m half a soul," I finished sadly. "The original Ember. Your first girl. I destroyed myself for her."

"Did it work?" Cassian whispered. "Did you bring her back?"

I opened my mouth to answer when the biggest memory wave yet slammed into me.

Success. Impossible, banned success. Baby Ember’s eyes opening, golden and living. But wrong. Changed. Something else looking out through baby eyes.

"What did you do?" Cassian’s fear.

"I brought her back," my old voice said, already fading, already dying. "But the price... the devils kept more than my soul. They kept hers too. Our daughter is alive but..."

"But what?"

"But she’s not just Ember anymore."

I came back to the present with a gasp so violent I nearly bit my own tongue. Everyone stared at me.

"The original Ember," I wheezed. "She came back wrong. Possessed. The monster didn’t just take my soul. It took hers too."

Morgana’s face went gray. "That’s impossible. If the first Ember was possessed three thousand years ago, where is she now? What happened to her?"

The answer hit me like ice water.

I looked at the way they’d taken my daughter. My modern Ember. Four years old with bright eyes and strange power she shouldn’t have.

"Oh gods," I whispered. "The monster that was in my old soul fragment? The one in that cell?"

"What about it?" Cassian demanded.

Another memory flashed. Final. Terrible.

Ancient Ember, grown to a child of four, the demon inside her getting stronger. "Mama’s gone," the thing wearing my daughter said. "But don’t worry, Papa. I’ll find her again. In every lifetime. And next time, I’ll make sure we’re never parted."

I grabbed Cassian’s shirt, pulling him close.

"It’s not in the cell anymore," I gasped. "It escaped. And I know where it went."

"Where?"

The world turned. Everything made terrible, perfect sense.

"Our Ember," I choked out. "Our girl. The demon didn’t just take the first Ember. It IS the first Ember. Reincarnated. Following us through lives."

Cassian jerked back like I’d slapped him. "That’s crazy. Our baby is—" "MAMA!"

Ember’s scream cut through the night. Not a scared scream. A successful one.

We all ran toward the sound, toward the room where they’d taken her to safety. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

The door was blown off its hinges. Guards lay unconscious. And in the middle of the room stood my four-year-old daughter.

Her eyes were pure black. Her smile was too big.

And she was holding the frozen thing from the cell in her small hands like a toy.

"Thank you for bringing the rest of me," Ember said in a voice layered with something old and hungry. "Now I can finally be complete."

She pressed her hands to the creature’s chest. Dark magic burst outward.

When the light faded, there was only one body standing.

My baby.

But her eyes danced with three colors now: gold, red, and black.

"Hello, Mama," the thing wearing Ember said. "Did you miss me? Because I’ve waited three thousand years for this family gathering."

She opened her mouth, and a demon’s true voice came out.

"Let’s talk about why you really named me Ember."