The market

[Maero]

Melody gasped as Alex's spell wrestled with the ward. Melody blinked and looked up at Alex, and she recognized him, and then forgot him. The ward still had her memories! It sucked them all up so that Arkurus could retrieve them later from her corpse, likely to find out who had tampered with his slave. But Alex was the master of magic, and although Arkurus was a formidable spell sword, he was no mage. The ward shattered and sent horrible pain wracking through Melody, who screamed at the top of her longs as her memories began to fall back into place, painfully shoved back. She gasped several times and began to hyperventilate, panicking badly, not understanding what was happening to her. Then the ward reset and remained silent. Melody had her memory, more or less, but if Alex tried to alter it again, the ward would reactivate, and it was not likely that she would survive a second round of that.