"Who... are you?"

  For a moment, I couldn't breathe.

  The royal physicians had warned me. The Tower consultants had repeated it with clinical detachment.

  'Mana Recoil of this severity may result in retrograde amnesia.'

  I had heard the words. I just hadn't expected to live them.

  Rocher looked at me like a stranger.

  Not like the man who'd fought beside me. Bled for me. Whispered so many soft truths against my throat that I still dreamed of them.

  He just stared.

  Confused. Awed. Hungry in a way that meant nothing at all.

  I forced myself to smile.

  "Rocher... it's me. Cire."

  He blinked up at me, brow knit. "Cire," he repeated slowly, as if testing its bance.

  Then his gaze slid down, lingering with a boldness I hadn't seen from him in almost a year. Not since the day we'd met in the Ashenwood convent. Not since he had mistaken me for some doe-eyed maiden eager for his attention.

  His mouth curved, warm and zy. "Well, Cire. Forgive me, but waking to the sight of you... I can only assume this is fate being kind."

  The words hit me like a sp.

  Not for their forwardness. But for how easy they came. How casual they were.

  How utterly empty they sounded.

  "Oh," I managed, my voice cracking. "You really don't remember anything."

  "Suppose not," he said with easy confidence. "Else I would quite certainly remember you."

  "Can you tell me the st thing you do remember?"

  "I recall taking the Hero's Oath. The royal send-off. And..." He frowned, then looked at me again. "Hm."

  My chest hollowed out.

  A year. He had lost an entire year.

  The year we survived together.The year we'd learned each other's rhythms.The year my name stopped being a sound and became a promise.

  He had forgotten everything that made him a person instead of a script.

  "Cire?" he said softly. "Are you alright? You look unwell."

  "I'm fine." It came out too fast.

  He hesitated, then chuckled, almost apologetic. "That's good. If I didn't know better, I'd think you cared for me."

  I felt the words thud into me like stones.

  Once, he said that sort of thing with quiet sincerity, almost shy.

  Now it was a line. A throwaway line. A lure cast toward a woman he saw as a soft bed to fall into.

  "Rocher," I said, and my voice stayed steady only because I forced it to. "You've suffered a grievous injury. Until your memories return, it would be safer if you refrained from... making passes."

  He lifted an eyebrow. "Did I make you uncomfortable?"

  "Yes."

  "I apologize." He smiled ruefully. "That's not my intention."

  A quiet part of me cracked.

  But I pushed it all down. Every splinter. Every ache.

  I could not afford this.

  Wanting him blurred the edges of everything else.

  There were bigger things at stake. The Crown Prince. The Demon Lord.

  He needed to be made whole. Whether he remembered me or not.

  "I'll help you recover your memories," I said, willing myself to believe it was strategy. "You will need them. For everything that lies ahead."

  "Recover them?" He studied me as if reassessing the situation. "Did we know each other well?"

  The understatement nearly made me choke.

  "Yes," I said quietly. "We did."

  He watched me for a long moment, something uncertain flickering behind the flirtatious ease he wore like armor.

  Then, softly: "Then I am fortunate to be in your care."

  It was uncanny how he could use the exact same tone that once made me blush... only now it scraped me raw.

  "Rest," I said, stepping back before he could see the pain. "You need to conserve your strength. His Majesty will want to see you as soon as you're able to walk."

  He y back down, confused but obedient.

  I turned away before the tears could rise. The door closed softly behind me.

  I pressed my forehead to the wood and swallowed the sound of my heart breaking.

  The days blurred.

  Rocher recovered faster than anyone expected. His body seemed to remember how to be strong even when his mind didn't. Within two days, he was walking. By the third, he was doing light exercise in the courtyard. By the fourth, the royal physicians decred him fit enough to attend the ball, albeit with caution.

  He looked healthy. Radiant.

  It hurt.

  I distracted myself with etiquette and dance lessons. Corveaux's instructors drilled them into me from sunrise until my legs ached. Curtsies, posture, the correct angle for eye contact, the precise number and order of steps for each dance.

  They corrected every touch of my hands, every angle of my posture—not for my sake, but for their master who might cim me.

  I stumbled through the lessons on autopilot.

  Sometimes, when the music paused and the attendants turned away to reset the phonograph crystal, I caught sight of Rocher in the doorway.

  Watching.

  Curious.

  Trying to pce me in the fog of his memory, perhaps.

  He never said a word when our eyes met.

  He just looked at me with a mix of confusion and hunger and something soft he didn't yet have a name for.

  And every time, I wondered whether he was seeing me or the woman Corveaux had polished into existence.

  It struck me then how few had seen us that way. Who we were under the stars. Who we were allowed to be.

  Only the Forest. Only the dead. Only the handful who'd made it out whole.

  Maybe that was the point.

  Maybe whatever we were out there was never meant to survive. The price of crossing that line, and trying to carry it back with us.

  And maybe... maybe this was not cruelty, but a kindness. A chance to let go—gently—before those feelings cost us anything more.

  Before I knew it, the week was over.

  It was the day of the ball.

  The attendants fussed around me again, not nearly as intensely as that first day—hair rebraided, perfume refreshed, the ash-blue gown smoothed and secured. Corveaux approved every detail with a cool, distracted nod.

  Everything felt muffled, like my heart had been wrapped in cotton.

  The carriage waited outside the pace archway. Prince Corveaux offered his hand to help me inside—not gently, but with the polite, possessive assurance of a man handling something valuable.

  Rocher climbed in after us and sat across from me. He wore formal attire: a fitted bck doublet, silver embroidery tracing the sleeves, the Hero's sigil pinned at the colr. It was unfair how good he looked in it.

  I tore my eyes away and fixed them somewhere far outside the window.

  Fabric rustled faintly as Corveaux took his seat beside me.

  The carriage lurched forward.

  Outside, nterns glowed along the road leading to the Grand Hall. Fireflies drifted like falling stars. Carriages rolled in neat procession. Warm voices rose from the crowds gathering to watch.

  I stared at all of it without seeing.

  Corveaux noticed first. He angled his head toward me, voice low. "Spirits low already? The ball hasn't even begun."

  I didn't answer. My fingers stayed curled around the edge of my gown.

  Across from me, Rocher couldn't seem to look anywhere but at me.

  It was subtle at first—his gaze drifting, returning, lingering. Then less subtle. His eyes kept tracing the line of my braid, the slope of my shoulder, the shimmer of the gown.

  "You're quiet," he said softly.

  I didn't trust my voice, so I nodded.

  Corveaux barely gnced at me. His attention was fixed entirely on Rocher. Studying him. Measuring him.

  "And you? How is your conditioning? Any residual fatigue? Headaches? Disorientation?"

  Rocher blinked, startled. "I'm... fine? Mostly."

  "Mostly?" Corveaux's tone sharpened by a fraction.

  Rocher rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, things feel a little off sometimes. Like something doesn't quite fit." He sighed. "Or gone missing."

  Corveaux hummed. "That's expected. Your memory will return in due time."

  Rocher shifted uncomfortably, then gnced at me again—quick, almost shy, which made my heart twist because he didn't mean it the way the old Rocher did.

  "It's strange," he murmured, uncertain. "Almost as if..."

  Corveaux's eyebrow lifted, just enough.

  Rocher hesitated at that, his breath catching before the thought could fully leave him. His eyes darted to me once more.

  Corveaux followed his gaze this time. His expression cooled by a single degree—enough to freeze the air.

  The carriage rattled onward, ntern light flickering across the three of us. Silent. Coiled.

  I closed my eyes and imagined myself smaller, more forgettable. Wishing I could disappear.

  The ball waited for us at the end of the road.