Chapter 10 Knew Each Other
I made it three doors down the hallway before I had to stop.
I leaned against the wall — the same wall, I realized distantly, that Marlowe's guest suite shared, though I was several rooms removed by now — and pressed the heel of my hand against my chest, where the bond sat, loud and insistent, refusing to settle back into the quiet hum it had been for three days.
That's never—
I'd felt the pull since the moment I walked into the healing wing, four days ago.
It had been constant, low, a background note that had somehow become familiar faster than I would have thought possible — the kind of thing you stopped consciously noticing after the first day or so, the way you stopped noticing the hum of a building's electrical systems, present but unremarkable.
What had happened on the stairs — by the door, I corrected myself, it had been by the door, not the stairs, though my mind had apparently filed it under stairs for reasons I didn't have the energy to examine — that hadn't been the low hum.
That had been something else entirely. Loud, she'd called it, and the word fit, but it didn't capture the quality of it — the way it had felt less like an emotion and more like a door swinging open onto something vast, something that had been there the whole time, waiting, and I'd had no idea, not until the moment her arm was under my hand and the whole world seemed to tilt toward her.
I'd told her the truth. I didn't trust it.
I didn't trust myself — not when so much of what I thought I knew about my own life had turned out, over the last four days, to be built on a foundation with a three-year hole in it.
How was I supposed to trust a feeling this strong, this immediate, when I couldn't even trust my own memory of the years it had apparently been absent?
But I also couldn't stop thinking about what she'd said. It feels like relief.
I pushed off from the wall and made my way back toward my own rooms, the bond settling, gradually, back into its familiar hum — though even the hum felt different now, charged with the memory of what it could become, like a held note that had briefly resolved into something fuller and then pulled back, leaving the anticipation of it lingering.
I didn't sleep well that night, either. But this time, it wasn't dread keeping me awake. It was something else — something that felt, uncomfortably, like the particular restlessness of a man who couldn't stop thinking about someone, and didn't know what to do with the thinking.
By the time evening came around the next day, I'd made a decision I wasn't entirely proud of, but couldn't talk myself out of either: I went to find Marlowe.
Not for a check-in — the check-ins were scheduled, formal, fifteen minutes that both of us understood the shape of.
This was something else. An apology, maybe, for how abruptly I'd left the day before.
Or just — an excuse. An excuse to see her again outside the careful structure of the Reclamation's required interactions.
I found her in the small sitting room off the east wing's quiet garden — a space the packhouse staff used occasionally for visitors who wanted somewhere peaceful, away from the main building's traffic, and apparently Petra had pointed her toward it as another quiet option.
Birdie was asleep, Marlowe told me when I found her there, worn out from a day of exploring, and she'd come down here for a few minutes of quiet before turning in herself.
"I'm sorry to intrude." I stood in the doorway, suddenly unsure of myself in a way I rarely was. "I just — I wanted to apologize. For yesterday. I left rather abruptly, and I don't think I—"
"You don't need to apologize." Marlowe was sitting near the window, a cup of tea cooling, untouched, on the small table beside her.
In the soft evening light, something about her looked different than it had in the harsher light of the healing wing or the careful neutrality of the guest suite — softer, maybe, or just more tired, the particular tiredness of someone who'd spent four days holding herself very carefully together and was, for a moment, letting some of that go.
"I think we were both a little overwhelmed. "
"That's one word for it." I hesitated, then added, "May I sit? Just for a few minutes. I won't stay long."
She gestured to the chair across from her, and I sat, and for a moment neither of us said anything — the quiet of the garden room settling around us, the last of the evening light slanting gold through the windows, the bond between us a steady, warm presence that neither of us acknowledged out loud.
"Can I ask you something?" I said finally. "And you don't have to answer, if it's — if it's too much."
"Okay."
"Before all of this. Before the checkpoint, before the Reclamation, before any of it.
" I chose my words carefully, aware of how much weight they carried, aware that whatever answer she gave me was going to matter in ways I couldn't fully predict.
"Had we — had you and I — met before? Properly, I mean.
Not just — not just whatever happened three years ago, in the council records. Before that. Did we know each other?"
Marlowe was quiet for a long moment, and I watched something move across her face — calculation, maybe, or just the particular weight of deciding how much truth a moment could bear.
"We knew each other," she said finally. "A long time ago. Before — before everything that happened. We knew each other well."
"How well?"
Her eyes met mine, and there was something in them — careful, guarded, but underneath it, something else, something that looked almost like grief.
"Well enough that I thought — for a long time, I thought I knew exactly who you were.
What you were like. How you'd react to things.
I thought I understood you better than almost anyone.
" Her voice had gone quieter, rougher. "And then everything happened, and I had to spend three years deciding that I'd been wrong about all of it.
That the man I thought I knew had never really existed — that I'd just seen what I wanted to see, because I wanted, more than anything, to belong somewhere, and you were—" she stopped, and something in her jaw tightened, the same controlled flex I'd noticed before, the look of someone holding something back at considerable cost. "It doesn't matter. It was a long time ago."
"It matters to me." The words came out before I'd fully decided to say them, low and certain in a way that surprised even me.
"Marlowe — whatever I was to you, before.
Whatever we had. I know I can't remember it, and I know that's — I know that's its own kind of loss, maybe even worse than the loss you've already had to carry.
But I want you to know that I believe you.
About what we were. I don't have the memory, but I have—" I gestured, vaguely, at the space between us, at the bond that sat there, steady and warm and undeniable.
"I have this. And whatever this is, it's not nothing.
It's not a trick of timing, or proximity, or whatever explanation might be easiest. It's real.
And I think, whatever happened to my memory, it didn't happen because what we had wasn't real. I think it happened because it was."
Something in Marlowe's expression cracked — just slightly, just for a moment, the careful guardedness giving way to something rawer, something that looked almost like hope fighting against three years of learning not to hope.
"What do you mean?" Her voice was barely above a whisper.
I took a breath, and for the first time since the conversation with Desmond in the records office, since the sealed envelope I knew was sitting, even now, in Ilse's careful keeping while she verified its integrity — for the first time, I said it out loud, to someone other than myself.
"I don't think I rejected you on purpose.
I don't think the man who did that — whoever he was, in that moment — was actually me .
Not in any way that matters." My voice was steady, but underneath it, I could feel the weight of what I was saying, the enormity of it, the way it reframed everything.
"I think something was done to me, three years ago.
Something that took the bond — took you , took the memory of you, took everything about that time — and erased it.
Cleanly. Completely. And then made sure there was a tidy explanation waiting, so that nobody would ever think to ask the obvious question. "
Marlowe stared at me, and for a long moment, she didn't say anything at all. When she finally spoke, her voice was unsteady in a way I hadn't heard from her before — not guarded, not careful, just raw.
"Three years," she said quietly. "Three years, I've told myself the story where you just — didn't want this.
Didn't want me, didn't want Birdie, made a choice and walked away from it without looking back.
And it was awful , but it was also — it was simple.
It was a story I understood. I could be angry at it.
I could build a life around it. And now you're sitting here telling me that maybe none of that is what actually happened, and I don't—" her voice cracked, and she pressed a hand to her mouth for a moment, composing herself before continuing.
"I don't know what to do with that. If it wasn't a choice — if it was something done to you — then what does that make the last three years?
What does that make me , for believing the story I was given, for never once questioning it, for raising Birdie believing her father had simply decided not to want her? "
"It doesn't make you anything except someone who was lied to.
" My voice was gentle, but firm. "Marlowe, you had no reason to question what happened.
You were there. You heard the words. You felt the rejection — the real, physical pain of it, I'd imagine, given what I understand about how rejection affects the rejected mate.
From where you were standing, there was nothing to question.
The story you were given matched everything you experienced.
The only person who could have questioned it was me — and I didn't, because I had no memory of any of it to question.
Whoever did this, they didn't just take something from me.
They took something from both of us, and then made sure neither of us would ever go looking for it. "
"Desmond." Marlowe said the name quietly, almost to herself, and something in her expression sharpened. "Petra mentioned — she said you'd changed, around the time all of this happened. That something seemed off. And your uncle—"
"I think it was him." I hadn't said it out loud before, not even to myself, not in those exact words — but saying it now, to Marlowe, in the quiet of this small garden room, it felt less like an accusation and more like a fact finally being given its proper shape.
"I don't have proof. Not yet. But last night, I asked him directly — about that year, about you, about the gap in my memory — and the way he answered—" I shook my head.
"It wasn't the answer of someone who didn't know anything.
It was the answer of someone managing a conversation.
Careful. Redirecting. He told me, almost word for word, that some things, once they're gone, are better left that way. "
"That's not comfort." Marlowe's voice had gone hard, sharp in a way that hadn't been there a moment ago. "That's a warning."
"That's exactly what I thought."
We sat with that for a long moment, the weight of it settling between us — three years of certainty, on both sides, built on a foundation that might not be what either of us had believed it to be.
"What happens now?" Marlowe asked finally, her voice quieter. "If you're right. If something was done to you, and Desmond was involved — what does that mean? For the Reclamation? For—" she gestured, vaguely, encompassing the whole impossible situation. "For any of this?"
"I don't know yet." I held her gaze, steady despite everything.
"There's a record — a sealed one, from that night.
The full transcript, not just the summary.
Ilse, the pack historian, has had it for three years, sealed on Desmond's instruction.
She's verifying it now, making sure nothing's been tampered with, but in a few days, I'll be able to read it.
The whole thing. What actually happened that night — to both of us. "
"And then what?"
"And then I'll know." I reached out, slowly, and let my hand rest on the small table between us — not quite touching her, but close, an offering rather than a demand.
"And whatever it says, Marlowe — I want you to know, whatever happens with the Reclamation, whatever the council decides at the end of thirty days — I'm not going to let this stay buried.
Whoever did this, to either of us, they're not going to get to keep the story they wrote. Not anymore."
Marlowe looked down at my hand, resting on the table, and after a long moment, she reached out and covered it with her own — not the overwhelming surge of the day before, just warmth, steady and quiet, the kind of contact that felt less like a spark and more like an anchor.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "For believing there's more to this. For not just — accepting the easy version. I think I needed to hear that, even if I don't fully know what to do with it yet."
"You don't have to know what to do with it.
" My hand turned, slightly, under hers, until our fingers laced together, simple and warm.
"Neither do I. We've got—" I did the math, quickly.
"Twenty-five days left, give or take. I'm not asking you to figure out what any of this means in the next twenty-five days.
I'm just asking you to let me try to find out the truth.
For both of us. Whatever it turns out to be. "
"Okay," Marlowe said softly. "Okay. I can do that."
We sat there, hands joined, the evening light fading slowly into dusk outside the windows, and for the first time since I'd walked into that healing wing four days ago, the bond between us didn't feel like a confusing, unwelcome intrusion into a life I'd thought I understood.
It felt like the first solid ground I'd stood on in three years.
Neither of us said anything else for a long time. We just sat there, together, in the quiet — and for once, the quiet didn't feel like something either of us needed to fill.