15. Lenna
LENNA
Islip through the stable corridors on unsteady legs, my body still humming with the aftershocks of what just happened.
Every step feels foreign, like I'm relearning how to move through space after something fundamental shifted.
My skin remembers the pressure of his hands, the heat of his mouth, the way he said my name like it was the only word that mattered.
Malrec.
Even thinking it makes something flutter low in my stomach—equal parts desire and confusion and a terror I don't know how to name.
We said goodnight at the pasture entrance.
He'd helped me dress with hands that trembled slightly, his fingers lingering on my skin in ways that suggested he didn't want to let go.
The silence between us carried weight I couldn't interpret—acknowledgment of what we'd done, maybe, or shared uncertainty about what happens next.
I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. Just touched his face once, feeling the slight roughness of his jaw beneath my palm, before turning and walking away on legs that barely supported me.
Now I'm navigating the servant corridors in the pre-dawn darkness, trying not to think about how right everything felt. How his body moved against mine with familiarity that transcended logic. How every touch, every kiss, every whispered word felt like remembering rather than discovering.
I turn the corner toward my quarters and nearly collide with someone standing in the hallway.
"Len?" Nimae's voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. "Where have you been?"
My heart lurches into my throat. She's wearing her sleep clothes, her violet eyes sharp even in the dim corridor light. There's concern written across her features, curiosity too, and something that might be knowing.
"I—" The words stick in my throat. "I went to the stables."
Her eyebrows rise. "After kitchen staff hours?"
I glance down the corridor, checking for other servants or guards. The hallway is empty, but sound carries strangely through these stone passages. Without thinking it through, I grab Nimae's wrist and pull her into my room, closing the door behind us with more force than necessary.
The space feels too small suddenly, my narrow bed and sparse belongings creating walls that press in from all sides. Nimae watches me with patient attention, waiting for an explanation I don't know how to give.
"Are you alright?" she asks finally, her tone careful. "You look—"
"I slept with Malrec." The confession bursts out before I can stop it. "Tonight. Just now. At the feeding pasture."
Nimae's expression shifts through several emotions too quickly for me to track—surprise, concern, and something that might be resignation. She sits on the edge of my bed without asking permission, gesturing for me to join her.
I sink down beside her, my hands shaking as I press them against my thighs. The fabric of my uniform still smells faintly like him—smoke and sulfur and something underneath that I recognize even though I shouldn't.
"Tell me," Nimae says quietly. "Everything."
So I do.
The words spill out in a chaotic rush—the dreams that have been plaguing me since I arrived at the estate, the strange familiarity I feel toward Azhrael, the way Malrec's presence makes my body respond with recognition my mind can't explain.
I tell her about the kiss at the auction, about the full memory that crushed me in the corridor days ago, about how being near him feels like returning to something rather than discovering it for the first time.
"The dreams and flashbacks," I say, my voice cracking slightly. "They're about him. Malrec. I keep seeing us together—not like strangers, but like..." I struggle to find words that capture the depth of intimacy those memories contain. "Like we loved each other. Completely. For a long time."
Nimae doesn't interrupt, just listens with the same focused attention I've seen her use when observing the stable operations. Her silence feels supportive rather than judgmental, creating space for me to continue.
"I don't understand how any of it's possible.
" My fingers twist together in my lap, seeking something to anchor to.
"When I first came here, he was so cold.
Harsh and distant and quick to anger. He looked at me like I was just another disposable human laborer who would probably get killed within the week. "
"But he doesn't look at you that way now," Nimae observes.
"No." The admission comes out barely above a whisper. "Now he looks at me like—like he's trying to solve a puzzle he doesn't have all the pieces for. Like I confuse him as much as he confuses me."
I think about the way he touched me tonight, reverent and desperate in equal measure. The way he begged me not to run. The broken sound of my name falling from his lips when he came apart in my arms.
"He's nothing like the version of him I see in my memories," I continue, frustration bleeding into my voice.
"That Malrec was warm. He laughed easily.
Touched me constantly, like he couldn't help himself.
Looked at me like I was the center of his entire world.
" My throat tightens with emotion I can't fully contain.
"This Malrec is so withdrawn. Controlled.
He barely smiles. And when he touches me, it's like he's fighting against it even as he's doing it. "
Nimae's hand finds mine, her fingers squeezing gently. The simple gesture of comfort nearly undoes me.
"But tonight—" I stop, searching for how to articulate what happened in the pasture.
"When we were together, it felt right. Like my body knew exactly how we fit.
Like we'd done this a thousand times before.
And afterward, standing there in the moonlight, for just a moment he felt like the person from my memories. "
"What happened then?" Nimae asks.
"Nothing." The word tastes bitter. "We got dressed. Said goodnight. I walked away and came here, and now I'm sitting in my room trying to understand what any of it means."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with implications I'm not ready to examine. I can still feel him inside me, still taste him on my lips, still sense the phantom weight of his hands on my skin. My body hums with satisfaction even as my mind churns with questions that have no answers.
"Do you want him?" Nimae's question cuts through my spiraling thoughts. "Malrec. Not the version from your memories, but the actual demon who runs these stables. The one who reassigned you to kitchen work. The one who just had sex with you in the feeding pasture. Do you want him?"
I open my mouth to answer and realize I don't know. The truth is more complicated than simple desire or rejection.
"I want to know the version of him I keep seeing," I say slowly, working through the admission as I speak it. "The one who looked at me like I mattered. Who made me feel safe and cherished and—" My voice breaks. "And loved. I want to understand how that person connects to this one."
"But this version?" Nimae presses gently. "The real one you're actually dealing with?"
I think about Malrec's harsh authority during my first days here, the way he dismissed my presence as irrelevant.
The cold efficiency with which he reassigned me to kitchen work without explanation or discussion.
How every moment of warmth or vulnerability from him feels like he's fighting against his own nature to show it.
But I also think about the way he watches me when he thinks I'm not looking.
The protective impulse that flickered across his face when Damiros suggested removing me from the stables.
The genuine confusion in his eyes when he touches me and feels the same impossible recognition I experience.
The way he held me tonight like I was something precious he'd thought he'd lost.
"I don't know," I admit finally. "He's guarded and distant and sometimes cruel in his practicality.
But underneath that—" I struggle to articulate what I sense beneath his controlled exterior.
"There's something else. Something that responds to me even when he's trying not to.
Like parts of him remember me even if his conscious mind doesn't."
Nimae is quiet for a long moment, her violet eyes studying my face with an intensity that makes me uncomfortable. When she speaks, her voice carries the weight of difficult truth.
"You need to talk to him."
"I know." The acknowledgment comes easily, but the thought of actually doing it makes my stomach clench.
"But what do I say? 'Hello, Beast Master, I keep having vivid memories of a life we supposedly shared, and I think someone deliberately removed them from both of us'? He'll think I've lost my mind."
"Maybe." Nimae's expression doesn't shift. "Or maybe he's experiencing the same thing and is just as terrified to say it out loud."
The possibility hadn't occurred to me—that Malrec might be having his own version of these memory fragments. That his dreams might mirror mine in ways he can't explain or ignore. The thought makes something twist in my chest, hope and fear tangling together until I can't separate them.
"What if he doesn't want to know?" The question emerges quietly, carrying the full weight of my uncertainty. "What if he's content with his controlled, structured life and doesn't want me disrupting it with impossible suggestions about shared pasts we can't remember?"
"Then you'll have your answer." Nimae's voice is firm but not unkind.
"But Len, you can't keep going like this.
Caught between memories that feel real and a present that doesn't make sense.
Sleeping with him while pretending you don't know there's something deeper happening. It's going to destroy you."
She's right. I know she's right. The constant dissonance between what my body remembers and what my mind knows is already wearing me down, creating fractures in my sense of self that grow wider every day.
"I'm scared," I whisper, the admission costing me. "What if I'm wrong? What if these aren't memories at all, just some strange magical effect from working around the beasts? What if I'm creating connections that don't exist because I'm desperate to feel like I matter to someone?"
"Are they just magical effects?" Nimae asks pointedly. "Do they feel like an external influence, or do they feel like you?"
I think about the memory that crushed me in the corridor—Malrec and I in his study, confessing love with the kind of certainty that comes from deep familiarity.
The domesticity of the dreams, waking up beside him as though we'd shared countless mornings together.
The way my hands knew exactly how to touch him tonight, guided by muscle memory rather than experimentation.
"They feel like me," I admit. "Like pieces of my life that were taken and hidden somewhere I can't quite reach."
"Then you need to be honest with him." Nimae's hand squeezes mine again. "Tell him about the memories. The dreams. The way being near him feels like returning rather than arriving. Give him the chance to acknowledge whether he's experiencing the same thing."
"And if he denies it?" My voice comes out smaller than I intend. "If he looks at me with that cold authority and tells me I'm delusional?"
"Then at least you'll know." She stands, moving toward the door but pausing with her hand on the latch. "But Len? I don't think he will. I've watched the way he looks at you when he thinks no one's paying attention. Whatever you're feeling—I think he feels it too."
She slips out before I can respond, leaving me alone with my churning thoughts and the phantom sensation of Malrec's hands still burning against my skin.
I lie back on my narrow bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to organize everything into something coherent.
My body still carries evidence of what we did—the pleasant ache between my thighs, the slight tenderness where his fingers gripped my hips, the swollen feeling of my lips from kissing him like I was drowning and he was air.
Everything felt far too right. That's the part I can't escape or rationalize away. Being with him physically didn't feel like a first time—it felt like coming home. Like rediscovering something essential I'd been missing without knowing I'd lost it.
And I still don't understand what's happening with my memories.
The gaps in my past have always been there, strange absences I've learned to work around without questioning too deeply.
But now those gaps feel deliberate. Purposeful.
Like someone reached into my mind and carefully extracted specific pieces, leaving just enough residue that the memories bleed through in dreams and flashbacks when my guard is down.
If that's true—if someone actually stole my memories—then the obvious question is why. What could be important enough about my relationship with Malrec that someone would go to such lengths to make us both forget?
Unless we weren't supposed to forget. Unless something went wrong with whatever magical working was used, leaving us with these ghostly impressions that refuse to stay buried.
I close my eyes and try to summon the warmth of the memory-version of Malrec—the one who smiled easily and held me like I was precious.
But all I can see is tonight's version: desperate and confused and fighting against his own responses even as he gave in to them.
Withdrawn and guarded, showing me pieces of vulnerability like they're dangerous secrets he's terrified to share.
Nimae is right. I need to talk to him. Need to lay everything out and see if he acknowledges the same impossible truth I'm grappling with.
The thought terrifies me more than anything I've faced since arriving at this estate.
But I know I'll do it anyway. Because pretending none of this is happening isn't working, and the alternative—continuing to exist in this liminal space between memory and present—will eventually tear me apart.
I just have to figure out how to say the words without sounding completely insane.