Forgotten (2 page)

2,004,687. His hand snapped out, wrapping around her wrist as she took it away. Kaie smiled. Not his day? She was about to learn better. He squeezed as he opened his eyes and pressed back until he could feel the tension in the bone. Any further, and he would break her wrist.

Except it wasn’t Kissa.

His breath caught in his throat. The numbers stopped. She was staring down at him with her dark blue eyes, the ones that saw right through to the center of him. Her white-blonde hair tickled his chin and ears, forming a tent around the two of them. It was just like every time he opened his eyes. Except that he was holding her tiny, bone-thin wrist in his hand, and she wasn’t melting away.

“It’s you,” he murmured, his voice nothing more than a whisper. A corner of her mouth quirked upward in a smirk that made her angled face light up.

He laughed. “You’re real!”

His phantom’s smile cracked. Her teeth were straight and white, with a sizable gap between the two in the front. He liked them almost as much as the soft, warm skin beneath his fingers. She was perfect. Here, with her, he was safe. A knot in the middle Kaie’s chest, one he didn’t even know was there, began to loosen.

“I’ve heard better hellos.”

“Not from me, I hope. I’m not sure I can live up to high expectations.”

She giggled.
“Too late for that.”

Kaie sighed like it was a terrible burden. Then let go of her wrist to cup her face in his hand, still half convinced it was going to evaporate.
“Fine.
How about, I’ve dreamed of you every day I can remember?”

She brushed her lips across his forehead in a light kiss that left his skin burning. “Better.
Over the top, but better.”

“I’m new to this.
Or something.”
He ran a lock of her long hair between two of his fingers. Kaie didn’t need memories to know that she was stunning. Not a beauty, maybe. She was more sharp lines than pretty curves. But the light in her was vibrant, overwhelming. He could almost let go of his few memories, allow them to fade away like the rest, and simply lose himself in the feeling of peace that poured out of her with every breath.

She sat back, flipping her hair over her head with a quick and practiced movement. “My name is Peren. We met a little less than two years ago. You thought I was charming.”

“Yeah?”
Her words had the ring of practice in them. He wondered how many times she said the same things to him.

“Yup.
I think it’s because I hit you. So what do you remember this time?”

Kaie scooted up, leaning his back against the wall. It put a distance between them that, after so many days of her vanishing, he wasn’t sure he liked. Whoever she was, whatever she meant to him before, she was something good in a place where there was nothing else. He didn’t want her to disappear again.
“My name.
Some of what they did to me.
My time in the cell.”

“Nothing else?”

He knew what she was asking. He just didn’t know what answer to give. “They did this to me before, then?
How many times?”

Peren’s smile fell apart. The right corner of her mouth turned up, like she was trying to summon it back. But that expression broke too. The end result was one very similar to a kicked puppy. “This is the fifth. They bring you here, Vaughan and I try to put you back together, and then they take you away. We don’t even know if you’re alive until they bring you back empty again.”

Kaie watched her. He watched as she curled up into herself, tucking her legs tight against her chest and folding her arms over her knees. What was there to say to that? Thanks? That didn’t seem to cover it. He wanted to make the lines of appearing on her face go away. With or without his memories, this girl was important. Seeing her like this, knowing why, it brought back the anger. His fists clenched, longing for the feeling of the unmovable stone beneath them.

“How long?
How long have they been doing this to me?”

“The first time was about a year ago.”

His fists opened and closed again. Kaie was on his feet in an instant, ignoring the wave of dizziness, pacing the length of his new location. Two of the walls were made off a pale, shoddy wood. So was the roof above him. The back wall was made of a light brown wood. There were two fireplaces built into it at one time, but one was closed up with what appeared to be planks of the same wood and some sort of cloth. The
other one
extended out into room, separated from the rest of the dirt floor by a tightly packed stone lining. The final side of the room was nothing more than a pair of massive animal hides. The place didn’t smell of dead things, and the color was largely leeched out of them, so he assumed they were old. A thin red ribbon was sewn into one of them, and the bright hue stood out from the rest of the colorless room.

Kaie stared at all of it, seeking a connection with anything. But there was nothing, besides her. His cell conjured more familiarity than anything in the small room. That thought twisted around in his stomach, tightening the knot up again. The peaceful, safe feeling evaporated. She watched him pace, chin resting against her knees, staring with
those huge blue eyes of hers. His hands ached with the need to hit something, but he couldn’t shake the weight of those eyes.

“Why?” he demanded.

She was quiet for a while. He fought down the urge to shake the words out of her mouth. He didn’t know anything. How was he supposed to sort out how to stop these people, if he didn’t know why they were taking his mind away from him?
Five times.
Five gods damned times.

Finally, Peren spoke with a soft, sad voice. “You have magic. That’s what they do to slaves with magic, make them Hollows. Usually only takes the once, though.”

He stopped, his brows coming together in a tight pinch. “You want to run that by me again, precious?”

“Which part?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he snapped. “It’s all so damn fascinating.”

Kaie spun on her, prepared to be furious, but it all melted away when he met her gaze. This was his phantom, and she was important. And, though he couldn’t possibly know, he was absolutely certain she was telling him the truth. Peren wasn’t responsible for the chasm in his memory. She took care of him. With a sigh, he sat back down across from her, folding up his legs and resigning himself to being patient with this tiny, stunning, sad girl.
“The second part.
Start with that. I’m a slave?”

Her head tilted, just a bit. He almost missed it, and wasn’t sure it actually counted as a nod. “Not just you,” she murmured slowly. “We all are. Vaughan says there are 72 slaves on the Autumnsong estate. 78, if you count the Hollows. The ones who are actually Hollows, I mean. But we don’t count them anymore.
So 72.”

Kaie considered this news, swallowing back several angry comments in favor of something more likely to win him answers. Maybe something that wouldn’t add any more sadness to the girl’s heavy voice. There didn’t seem to be any magical words like that, though.
“How long?
Why?”

Peren sighed and squeezed her legs tighter. “We met right after you were first brought here. The Finders took you and your village
about a
two years ago. It’s what the Urazin Empire does. It takes over countries, imprisons most of the nobles and enslaves a lot of the peasants. Vaughan says it’s because they don’t have the resources to support their own population, so they have to…” she shook her head. “You should ask him about it. You two used to talk about that stuff a lot. It never seemed important to me. It’s just what they do. You and me, the other 70, we just got swallowed up by a monster and this is what happens to us unimportant people after that.”

Kaie swallowed hard against protests. He was
not
unimportant. He didn’t know what he was, but he was certain of that. But it wasn’t Peren who needed to be taught that lesson.
She took care of him, when it clearly hurt her to do it. He must matter to her. He forced his attention on to the next piece of the puzzle.
“And the magic?”

“You never talked about it,” she confessed. “Not to me. Not really. Vaughan said you have more of it than anyone he’s ever heard of. But I can’t tell you anything else.”

“You said they make Hollows out of slaves with magic?” he asked. Peren nodded. Kaie rubbed at his head
and slid
back down, trying to figure out how all these pieces fit together. Somehow, there was a way everything made sense. He needed to sort it out. “So who reported me?
This Vaughan?”

She shook her head. “No. He showed you his magic, to win your trust. Vaughan – my brother – he would never, never report someone for magic. Not anyone, but especially not you. You’re too special.
To both of us.”
Peren pressed her eyes closed and he saw the glimmer of water clinging to her long eyelashes. “I don’t know for sure, no one was there but you and the Mistress, but I think you told her.”

Kaie scoffed. “Me? Why the hell would I do that?”

Peren was quiet again. Kaie took a deep breath, leaned forward to prop his elbows against his knees, and bit his tongue while he waited for her. After a moment she began to slowly unfold. First her arms dropped to her sides, then one knee slid down, followed slowly by the other. Another
moment,
and she leaned forward and brushed the back of his hand with two dainty fingers.

“You never told me,” she whispered at last. “Vaughan thinks you did it to get away, that you used your magic on the Mistress and tried to run. But he didn’t see you that morning, like I did. You weren’t going to run. I didn’t know you were going to do this. I thought… I suppose I thought you were going to get yourself killed. But you came back. Part of you came back.”

“Why?” he repeated, muscles in his jaw twitching in protest of his calm tone. “I didn’t tell you. Ok. But you know me, right? Knew me?
So why?”

Peren shifted closer to him, paused,
then
shifted a little more. In a moment she was close enough to him to lace those delicate fingers through his. Her hand was like a child’s. It was soft and clean, even the patches of blotchy red skin running all the way up her arm. It looked like burn marks, but it was just as smooth as the skin around it. It didn’t feel like the hand of a slave.

He squeezed her fingers, just a little. Kaie didn’t know if she was trying to comfort him or if he was supposed to be comforting her. It didn’t really matter.

“It’s a complicated story. Are you sure?” she said.

“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.”

She nodded and bit her bottom lip for a second. She was shaky, he could see it. But Peren tried to smile for him. “Some things happened with a girl from your life before the Finders
brought you here, before the brand on your shoulder. She didn’t like me. She made sure I knew it. I was in trouble. You and Vaughan came to save me like heroes out of the stories. It was quite impressive.”

“Sure it was,” Kaie agreed readily, trying to sort the details left out of the story.

“You won. You saved me. But a man died.”

“Okay. Well the only complicated part about that is figuring out what in the Abyss that has to do with two women playing around in my head. What aren’t you telling me?”

“A lot,” she confessed. “I’m not trying to keep secrets. I just don’t know what to say. The man’s death isn’t directly to blame for the Namer, but it was a problem. He belonged to the Mistress’s niece, Lady Luna. She’s…terrifying. And she was keen on you. We don’t know why. If you did, you never said. The Mistress tried to keep you from her, but when Samuel died, we all knew that was done. Either she was going to put you to death, or she was giving you to Lady Luna. The good bet was Luna.”

“Sounds like fun. I’m still not seeing how that would motivate me toward spontaneous confessions.”

“I know you were determined not to get handed over to Lady Luna,” she said quietly. “The things she does…You would’ve betrayed Vaughan. We all knew it. You wouldn’t want to, but you would. Everyone she gets betrays, in the end. That’s what she does. But why you decided to be a Hollow, instead of making the Mistress kill you…All I know is that you did it to protect me.”

He scowled and tried to pull away, his whole body nearly shaking with the need to move. Her smile fell apart again. Peren dropped her other hand on top of his, clinging to him like he was all that kept her from floating away.
“A Hollow.
Like the ones I met when the younger bitch decided it was time for my nap. How do they do it?”

She drew in a slow breath. “They don’t tell us. I can only tell you that people get taken away normal, they stay away for weeks, and come back empty. You saw them. Vaughan doesn’t even know what they do.”

“Crawl into your head and rip everything out,” Kaie muttered. He took in a slow breath. “I must have had a plan. Why aren’t I like them?
The other Hollows.
How did I intend to get away?”

“You didn’t tell me anything.”

“Not much of an answer.”

“It’s all I have.” He thought she was going to cry, that the tears he saw gathering in the corners of her eyes were going to spill down her pale cheeks. Then, suddenly, she was better. Her face smoothed and she was up on her feet. It wasn’t a graceful stretching out, either. She managed to kick him twice in the process. Somehow, the girl gained four extra limbs while she was in motion. “Want to meet your son?”