Paint Me as Villain ✔

Five

Ady wondered if his sister knew about this place and magic as well if she had been here. Why didn't she tell Adélard, then? Did she also ask for someone to forget something? Or something else?.. But it wasn't the time to ask. Adélard glanced at his watch. It was already past midnight, and if his parents were true to their words, then in the morning, Ady was to hear a pompous brainwashing speech about how great he would look in a wedding suit. There wasn't much time.

"Mir said Morox helps to get rid of unwanted memories," Ady said.

Nilam chuckled. "You bet. But even if Mir trusts you, I don't. And I don't give these things to everyone I meet," he shook the vial in front of Ady's nose and hid it, clutching his fist. "How do I know that you won't use Morox to rob a bank or shoot someone without witnesses, or...I don't know, steal a baby?"

Adélard grimaced. "Do I look like stealing babies?"

"No, but..." Nilam's expression suddenly darkened with a feeling that Ady couldn't recognize, and his gaze flicked to the door that was left ajar, to the staircase, which was now empty. "You can, for example, help a person forget that they were in love with you."

Give up the one I love? Ady shuddered at the thought. How many lovers do you need to have in order to start throwing them around? No, he would never give up Gyoku, no matter how much his parents pressed, no matter how much he tried to please everyone. Only with Gyoku did he feel free, understood, and accepted--without conditions. Without deceptions and tricks, like it felt around Praejis and the rest of the world.

Now Ady suddenly wondered if he had never truly been in love with Mir? If it was some kind of magic, too? A curse. Longing. The abyss.

Although...yes, Ady shuddered, but his hands itched at the thought of potential possibilities at the same time. A curious idea crept into his head the next moment--what if he just made everyone forget that his parents had picked a bride for him? If everyone in the city did not remember what they expected of him, he would be able to make everyone see in him what he wanted, as he dreamed? Rewrite his destiny? Be free from all the rules?

"Does this thing work with memories of only one evening?" Adélard asked, nodding at the vial in Nilam's hand.

After a long moment, Nilam nodded. He finally turned away from the empty corridor and, with feigned nonchalance, as if trying to convince both himself and Ady that he didn't give a shit, Nilam walked around the sofa. "If you pour Morox into someone's drink without their consent, then yes. It either takes away the memories chosen by the one who drinks it, or by default—the most recent ones. Well, if you don't want any unpredictable problems, of course. And trust me, you don't. Use more than one vial at a time, and people might forget too much. Go nuts." Nilam wasn't very successful in his I-don't-give-a-shit role. On the contrary, the more he talked, the less sleepy he seemed. He talked like an educated and serious person, not like someone who drank his night away at clubs. Mysterious, just like Mir. Another devil, Ady thought, mentally setting a reminder to himself--to be on guard around Nilam. Just in case, right?

"But forgetfulness ain't the danger," Nilam continued, stopping in front of the window, thoughtfully turning the black vial in his hands, and looking into the distance outside. "The danger here is that if you take something away, you have to give something in return--if you forget something, you have to remember something. A cruel balance. And what do people usually forget? Something bad. Pain. Grief. Losses...Our brains are created that way. Besides, magic makes everything sharper and brighter, like a waking dream, or rather living a nightmare." Plastering a new fake grin over his face, Nilam glanced at Ady. "Anyway, it works quite simple. You pour Morox into a person's drink, and the effect is almost instant." He grinned wider, slier. Darker. "If you mess up, know that Mir and your sister will pay for that."

Ady nodded.

"Got it," he reached for the vial in Nilam's hand, already thinking about how to casually offer his parents some tea before bed. "Magic is balance, you can't play with magic. Thank you."

Nilam clicked his tongue. Didn't give Ady the vial. "You don't get, Lishan. Magic is imbalance, magic plays with you. It's nature, breaking its own laws. It's lies and chaos." With a sigh, Nilam finally dropped the vial into Adélard's palm. "Just like people."

Adélard hated chaos. Hated lies. And he hated the very idea that he had considered Mir the Villain his personal enemy for his whole life, and now he turned to his friends for help. Of his own free will, Ady got involved with something unknown, but undoubtedly not good. Something artful, like Death itself, but bestowing a smile upon Ady's fate, as no one had ever done. Giving him a chance to be free, to be who he always wanted to be--only in exchange, he had to violate the principles that Adélard swore to always follow.

That was the real danger, right? Freedom, Ady mused on the way back home. The ability to do whatever you wanted, to whoever you wanted. The ability to rewrite the memories, lives, destinies of other people--by magic or laws--and not to cause harm. To choose not to cause harm when you really could.