My gaze flicks to his. “Get the fuck off of—”

The side of Marco’s fist slams down against my chest, and I choke on my words. A sharp, burning pain punctures my heart. I can’t make sense of it until Marco withdraws his fist, and with it, an empty syringe.

“What’ve you done?” I ask, drawing in a ragged breath and touching my chest.

Shots are fired on the other end of the room, and I have no idea who’s killing whom.

“It’s a serum to make you forget.”

My eyes widen in surprise. Those dazed technicians, that article on memory suppression—I’m staring down the terrible invention behind it all.

“The king’s told you his secrets,” Marco explains. “They’ll torture them out of you unless they’re not there.”

“You bastard,” I whisper. My memory is all I have left. I’ll forget who I am, where I came from. I’ll forget my father, my mother, my entire life.

I want to scratch the liquid out of me.

“The king possesses an antidote. It’s reversible.”

I huff at that. “Like that’s going to do me a lot of good if I can’t remember the king.”

The sounds of gunfire are getting closer.

“He’ll find you. Trust me, he will.”

Marco rolls off me and pulls out a gun.

My breath catches. “What are you doing?” I ask, scrambling to sit up.

He clicks off the safety. “I only had one vial.”

Marco doesn’t hesitate. He places the gun barrel against his temple and fires. Blood and viscous things hit me.

And that is the end of Marco. For only a moment I find it strangely poetic that my father and my father’s killer both died from the same wound. Then the thought is whisked away from me.

I try to snatch it again, but it’s somewhere beyond my reach.

The serum is already working.

I press the back of my bloodied hand to my mouth. Whatever he gave me, it’s puncturing holes in my memory almost at random. I remember entering this room, but not how I got here.

In the next breath I can’t remember the name of the dead man in front of me, only that I hated him. The memory should scare me, but it just serves to piss me off.

I grab the dead man’s gun and the one shoved down the small of my back and begin to shoot the encroaching militants. I’m not even positive who they are, or what they want, but they’re approaching me like an enemy would.

My guns click empty, and I throw them as hard as I can at some of my attackers. I clip one and miss another.

Now I’m weaponless and I can’t remember how I got here.

A handful of guns are trained on me, but they’re not shooting. Death is better than whatever they have in store. I know this on some deep, instinctual level.

As soon as they come within range, I kick out at one and slam my fist into another. A man tackles me to the ground and yanks my wrists behind me. The movement tugs at my injuries and I scream out.

“Shut up,” he growls.

“Fuck you.”

He takes a fistful of my hair and smashes my head into the ground.

Once my wrists are bound, a black bag is dragged over my head, and the world goes dark.

I’m pulled up to my feet and led out of the room, and the men who’ve captured me start barking out questions I don’t have answers for. Questions they expect answers to.

“Where is the king?”

“Why did you betray your country?”

“How do you kill the king?”

When I don’t respond, they begin hitting my injuries until my body simply gives out and they have to drag me away.

I’m bound and blinded, but those are not nearly so constricting as the confusion running rampant in my head.

There are only a handful of things I understand with complete clarity at the moment: I’m a woman without a past, and these people need to access it. And if I can’t remember it soon, I’m going to die a very painful death.

I know I’m someone powerful, someone dangerous. A grim smile tugs at my lips despite my current circumstances. I know I’m not afraid of pain or death. And these men and women? They should be afraid of me. Because whoever I am, I am violent, and I will be having my revenge.