“Have you not already figured that out for yourself? You’ve always been able to see right through me,” he says, his voice low. The pitch is both secretive and threatening, and I can’t stop the goosebumps that spread down my arms.
He’s the boogeyman, and he’s come to claim me all over again.
With that thought, I catch a memory. Just a snippet, really.
“Serenity?”
My hand was already on the door. I turned back to face an older man with hair the color of dusty wheat.
The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth deepened. “As an emissary, if an accord is ever to be reached between us and the Eastern Empire, you will likely be a key player in it.”
I swallowed and nodded. I now carried a heavy responsibility.
“Do you know what that means?”
I waited for him to finish.
His gaze lingered on me a long time before he finally answered his own question. “One day you’ll meet the king.”
I blink, and the object of my memory is in front of me again.
The king tilts his head. “You just had your first memory, didn’t you?”
I nod. The man from my past—the man I spoke with—he’s at the edge of my mind and the tip of my tongue. I’m positive I know him, but his identity still eludes me.
“What did you remember?” He picks up a lock of my hair and rubs it as he asks.
He wants to touch me. He’s been fairly obvious about this, but I sense his impatience increasing.
“Nothing that I can make sense of.”
Those dark eyes probe mine. “That’ll change soon enough.” And then you’ll be mine. I swear I hear the promise, though he never voices it.
The king backs off, but that stubborn hand of his presses into the small of my back again. There’s no use fighting him on this; he’s going to keep doing it, and I’m going to keep losing.
In the halls, men and women pass by, and they’re just as ridiculous as the rest of this place. The people here wear fabrics with fine names I doubt, even if I could remember, I’d know.
Their outfits are intricate things that come in colors brighter than I knew existed, and each one is paired with decorative medals and sabers or ropes of jewels wrapped around necks and wrists. Their hair’s too coiffed, their teeth too white, their skin too stretched, their bodies too soft.
It all looks so luxurious and impossibly fake.
I don’t belong here.
The king must see my lingering attention on the people who side-eye me. He leans in, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “None of them are as beautiful as you, nire bihotza.”
I scowl at him. “I don’t care about your standards of beauty.”
If anything, it annoys me. These men and women bask in the opulence of it. But how many lives has this lifestyle cost?
The king’s gaze tracks my movements, and I wonder if I’m one of the lives it’s claimed.
I suspect I am.
In the brief silence between us, a dizzying number of questions bloom. It’s amazing how many a girl with only a few days of memory can have. I want to know more about who the king is, who I am, who my enemies are, why wrong seems right and right seems wrong. Most of all, I want to know how I’ve been bent and twisted into this person that seems to hate and be hated so fiercely by everyone, save the king.
“Why did you marry me?” I ask as we leave the king’s grand ballroom. I won’t even touch on the ridiculousness of a room dedicated to nothing but dancing.
“Ssssh. I’ll answer your questions soon enough. Let me enjoy the last few minutes before you hate me again.”
I know his words are meant to grate, but I doubt he realizes how ominous I find them. What would it take for a woman like me to hate him?
“When I was a prisoner, they told me you killed my family,” I say.
“They told you that?”
“They told me many things. Is it true?”
His features are guarded. “You’ll know soon enough.”
And I do.
WE’RE IN THE palace gardens when it hits.
I stumble, reaching out for the king—Montes. After the bits and pieces I received inside the palace, I assumed the rest of my memories would subtly surface. I didn’t imagine this.
This is a barrage of enemy fire. It rips through me suddenly and violently.
Montes’s arms lock around my torso as I gasp, my messy golden hair dangling around me.
Every memory feels like an epiphany, and I can’t possibly describe the euphoria that comes with each. Life is a series of experiences that stack, one on top of the other.
I see my mother and my father—the man from my first recalled memory now has an identity! I see bikes with training wheels. Suburbia. My parents hold my hands and, on the count of three, they swing me. There are candles and birthdays and mentions of war breaking out in Europe.
There are chalk drawings and games of tag with the kids on my street—some I’ve known for ages, some who are part of the recent influx of immigrants. Nail polish and days out with my mother while my father buries himself in work. My childhood crush that lives down the street.
The act of remembering is magic; I get to live a little of my life all over again.
And then …
And then, somewhere along the way, they turn.
For every ray of light each happy memory casts, there is a much darker shadow.
I moan as I hear phantom explosions. I see blood spray. This dark past is sucking me under.
I step out of the king’s embrace and hold my head. “No, no, no.”