Book 3: Chapter 26 – Life Reset [Part 2]
Book 3: Chapter 26 - Life Reset [Part 2]
The three friends, with Seraphina’s escorts in tow, made a brisk march to the infirmary. The guards ringed about the facility shot them a few curt looks but stepped aside—orders had clearly been given. Professional, they still did their job: Seraphina’s Knights were halted and required to surrender their steel before entering.
The young de Sariens, not wanting to make a scene, ordered them to instead simply wait outside and to storm the place if she did not return within the hour. At this, the Royal Guard just shook their head.
If Seraphina wished for the prince’s life, she could have taken it many times over. The only problem with doing it in such a manner would have been, apart from the obviously bad look, laying down a precedent that it was right to kill those in power was the done thing. This, the young girl decided, she would not abide. Image, after all, was everything.
Seraphina turned to her escort. “Wait here.”
Sir Gravens shifted behind them; Sir Filippe’s jaw worked, but both kept wisely silent. They both obeyed.
They were shown through a cool corridor that smelled of camphor and boiled willow-bark by Royal Healers, then out beneath a cloister where pale autumn sun washed a square of garden. Beds of broad, rough-edged leaves and bright coin-like blooms were laid out soldier-neat; bees labored at the last blossoms; a little rill whispered under a footbridge. And there, walking slowly as if relearning the measure of his own limbs, was Velens.
He wore plain clothes of a fine cut, soft grey and winter-blue, no jewels, no sword. A linen bandage wrapped across his head. He turned at the scrape of their tread on the gravel of the path and his eyes, clear grey as rained-on slate, fixed only on Seraphina, as if the rest of the world had fallen away.
“Seraphina?” he said, her name shaped like a question, not a summons.
It put her immediately out of temper. Feeling slightly on the back foot, she snapped her mother’s fan open with a delicate flick. “We are not on given-name terms today,” she said, sweet as frost. “Nor, do I think, any day from now on.”
He blinked, stung, and perplexed. “Forgive me. They told me you might come and… that I should… should apologize. The Healers said I would know you. That you would be the most beautiful golden girl. Yet I do not—I know only that you can only be that Lady Seraphina, by their description. A beautiful name that truly suits you. Every time I say it, I feel odd here,” He confessed as he touched his chest. His mouth tried on a smile that had none of the schemes of Aran’s court in it, no practice—only a young man’s awkward earnestness.
Seraphina hissed without moving her lips, “Eloise. Explain.”
Eloise, who already looked perilously glossy-eyed, dabbed at her lashes with a pink handkerchief. “He… the Royal Healers say… that because His Highness struck his head. There are… gaps. Large ones. The Prince has lost a good portion of his memories.”
“A convenient fiction,” Seraphina said, almost idly. The fan’s ribs clicked. “Velens was never shy of creating a few tall tales here and there when it suited him.”
Rashana bit her lip, shaking her head. “Sera, please. I do not think this is a deception.”
Velens took a cautious step nearer across the gravel. He stretched out for her, but stopped himself when he saw the daggers in her eyes. “They say I am a prince, the Crown Prince, in fact,” he said, as if reporting on a stranger. “They say my name is Velens, that I have duties, that we were engaged, and that I have… wronged you. I woke up in a room full of other people’s words. None of them sit right in my head.” He glanced at the herb beds, at the little rill, with a faint wonder that did not suit the old Velens at all. “Only seeing you do I feel no longer adrift. I feel only regret for anything I have done to you... That, at least, is true.”
Seraphina narrowed her eyes. If this was a game, it was most definitely a rather cruel and elaborate one. A Glamor, then? The thought wormed up, unbidden. If there was Fae-work here, it was not the cheap sort.
“Very well,” the young noblewoman declared crisply. “Let us pretend you have forgotten everything. That does not mean you can be so easily forgiven. Your actions have set the kingdom into chaos.”
Seraphina watched him as one might regard a dangerous animal that had inexplicably gone tame. There was no deception, no telltale clusters of it around the eyes, around the lips. His stance was open and honest.
The disdain she had ready—sharp, well-honed—found nothing familiar to bite. No smirk. No preening pride. No boy who believed that her heart was his by right. Only a young man blinking at the world as if it were too bright.
“Do you recall the duel?” she asked, voice gone very even.
“What duel?” he said, and there was no guile in it, only a faint alarm.
“What duel!?” Her anger stumbled. She found herself asking other things. He knew the old kings by number, the succession of treaties; he could recite a prayer by rote. But when she mentioned more private memories, like his declaration to her in the Gilded Gryphon, his face was only puzzled.
“This is just too much…” Rashana murmured, half to herself.
“Am I forgiven for it… if I cannot remember it?” Velens asked Seraphina, his voice a pathetic plea.
“You may have forgotten, but I have not. That is not how forgiveness works,” Seraphina snapped—and then stopped, hearing the echo of something petty in her voice. “How can you apologize for something you profess you do not recall? Not to mention, you could always remember…” She looked at him again, properly. The grey eyes did not flinch, did not slide away to the nearest flattery or escape. They stayed on her, steady, waiting to be told what the world was.
At last, she sighed and folded the fan entirely, tucking it away. “Very well, Your Highness,” she said, the title given without only the slightest mockery. “We will begin with simple things. Walk with us. I will instruct you on what you have forgotten.”
“I think… I would like that.” He inclined his head, relieved—and for a breath the garden grew very quiet. As they set out along the path, Seraphina felt the first thin thread of belief tug at her—unwanted, undeniable.
And, for the girl, this was yet another opportunity.