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 likeyou?"
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 iswhy. 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—continuingto 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.
16
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 feltrightin 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.
