16. Malrec
MALREC
Imake it to my private quarters on legs that barely support me, my body still humming with residual heat from what just happened. The door closes behind me with a heavy thud that echoes through the empty chamber, and I lean back against it, eyes closing as I try to process everything.
My hands still carry the phantom sensation of her skin beneath them—warm and impossibly soft, yielding in ways that felt like memory rather than discovery.
The taste of her lingers on my tongue. The sound of her breathing my name when she came apart is burned into my mind with the kind of clarity that suggests it will haunt me for days.
Everything about being with her felt right in a way I have no framework to understand.
I push away from the door and move deeper into my chambers, stripping off my uniform with mechanical precision.
The fabric carries traces of her scent—something that makes my chest constrict with emotion I don't have names for.
I should wash. Change. Try to restore some sense of order to the chaos currently consuming me from the inside out.
Instead, I sink onto the edge of my bed and drop my head into my hands, fingers pressing against my temples as though I can physically push back the confusion threatening to overwhelm me.
What the fuck did I just do?
I had sex with a human laborer in the feeding pasture like some impulsive adolescent with no control over his own responses.
Begged her not to run from me. Held her afterward like she was something precious I'd been searching for without knowing I'd lost it.
And the entire time, every touch, every kiss, every whispered word felt like I was remembering rather than experiencing something new.
The dreams have been building for weeks now—vivid scenes of domesticity and intimacy that feel more substantial than typical unconscious projection.
But tonight, being with Lenna physically, that wasn't a dream.
That was reality. And it felt exactly like the visions that have been plaguing my sleep.
I've been operating in this strange fog for weeks, caught between rage I can't justify and grief I don't understand.
Snapping at subordinates over minor infractions.
Avoiding Lenna because looking at her makes something crack in my chest. Lying to Damiros about the intensity of what I'm experiencing because admitting it out loud would make it too real.
And now I've crossed a line I can't uncross, done something that fundamentally shifts whatever precarious dynamic we've been maintaining.
I can't keep doing this.
The realization settles over me with crushing weight. Can't keep walking away from her. Can't keep pretending the pull between us is something I can control or ignore. Can't keep letting her slip through my fingers when every instinct I possess screams at me to hold on.
I need to talk to her. Actually talk, not the careful, measured exchanges we've been having where both of us dance around what's really happening.
I need to ask if she's experiencing the same impossible recognition I feel every time we're in the same space.
Need to know if her dreams mirror mine in ways that transcend coincidence.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I'm moving—pulling on clean clothes with hands that shake slightly, running fingers through my disheveled hair, checking my reflection to make sure I don't look as wrecked as I feel. My heart pounds against my ribs like it's trying to escape my chest entirely.
The servant quarters are on a lower level, far enough from my chambers that the walk gives me time to question every aspect of this impulse. But I don't stop. Can't stop. Something fundamental has shifted tonight, and the thought of waiting until morning to address it feels impossible.
I navigate the corridors with the practiced ease of someone who knows every inch of this estate, passing through transitional spaces where the architecture gradually becomes less refined. The servant annex is quiet at this hour, most of the household asleep or at least pretending to be.
Lenna's door is easy to identify—third from the end, marked with the same simple binding ward that secures all human quarters. I raise my hand to knock, then pause as I hear voices coming from inside.
"—he was so cold." Lenna's voice carries through the wood, slightly muffled but clear enough. "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."
My hand freezes mid-air. She's not alone.
"But he doesn't look at you that way now." Another voice—Nimae, I recognize after a moment. Her tone is gentle, probing.
"No." Lenna's response comes out barely audible. "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 should leave. Walk away and pretend I didn't hear this. But my feet won't move, rooted to the stone floor as though some external force is holding me in place.
"He's nothing like the version of him I see in my memories," Lenna continues, and something in her voice twists like a blade between my ribs.
"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.
" Her voice cracks slightly. "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. "
Cold. Withdrawn. Nothing like the version she remembers.
The words hit hard, each one stripping away another layer of the tentative hope that had been building in my chest. She's talking about me like I'm a pale imitation of someone else—someone better, warmer, more capable of giving her what she needs.
"Do you want him?" Nimae asks. "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?"
The silence that follows feels endless, stretching into something that threatens to suffocate me where I stand.
My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms hard enough to draw blood.
Every instinct screams at me to leave before I hear her answer, but I'm frozen—caught between desperate hope and the certainty that what comes next will destroy something I didn't know I needed to protect.
"I don't know," Lenna says finally, and the words shatter whatever fragile thing had been forming inside me tonight.
She doesn't know. After everything—after the way her body responded to mine with perfect recognition, after how she clung to me and begged me not to stop, after the impossible rightness of being inside her—she doesn't know if she wants me.
I step back from the door as quietly as I can manage, my chest aching with something that feels dangerously close to grief.
The logical part of my mind recognizes this is an overreaction, that her uncertainty is valid given the circumstances.
But the irrational part—the part that's been driving my responses to her since she arrived—feels like it's being flayed open.
I retreat through the corridors on autopilot, barely registering the route back to my quarters. My thoughts spiral in directions I can't control, circling the same impossible questions without finding purchase on anything resembling answers.
She remembers a version of me that doesn't exist. Warm and open and easy with affection in ways I have never been.
And she's disappointed by the reality of what I actually am—controlled and withdrawn and so fucking damaged by whatever happened that I can't even access the memories that might explain any of this.
By the time I reach my chambers again, the ache in my chest has transformed into something sharper, more familiar.
Anger. At myself for being inadequate. At the situation for being incomprehensible.
At whoever did this—removed these memories and left us both grasping at fragments that don't make sense.
I should have listened to Damiros from the beginning. Should have removed her from the stables the moment I recognized she was disrupting my carefully maintained control. Should have prevented this entire situation before it could spiral into whatever the fuck this has become.
I can fix this. Send her to work in a different household entirely. Put distance between us until these impossible feelings fade back into the background static of my existence. Return to the structured, predictable routine I maintained before she arrived and turned everything sideways.
The thought makes something twist viciously in my gut, but I push past it. This is practical. Necessary. The only solution that makes sense when continuing as we are will clearly destroy us both.
I'll talk to Damiros in the morning. Tell him he was right about removing her. Arrange for reassignment somewhere far enough away that I won't have to watch her move through the estate and remember what it felt like to touch her.
The decision should bring relief. Instead, it feels like I'm carving something essential out of my own chest.
I collapse onto my bed without bothering to remove my clothes, staring at the ceiling and trying to convince myself this is the right choice. The only choice. That protecting her from my inadequacy is worth the hollowness already spreading through me at the thought of her absence.
Sleep, when it finally comes, pulls me under like drowning.
I'm in my study, late afternoon light slanting through the narrow windows and casting everything in shades of amber and gold. There's paperwork spread across my desk—acquisition contracts, stable rotations, feeding schedules—but I'm not focused on any of it.
Because Lenna is here.