It wouldn’t be the last question, but he hoped that it would forestall some of the harder ones, some of the ones he hadn’t quite decided how to answer yet. He’d been going back and forth about how to answer the most important question, one he knew was coming, and had settled on the answer that felt safer—even if it could lead to more questions later, once her memory started to return. He knew that moment would come, once it all wore off and cleared her system, her memory would start to come back and she would start to connect dots.
What would happen after that, he wasn’t entirely certain, but facing it was something he’d have to do one way or another.
“How long, do you think?” She asked, still watching him. He could feel the weight of her gaze on him, even as he stared off into the distance beyond the creek, letting the familiar sounds of the area around his cottage ease the tension that had only gotten worse since he’d found the Veritan installation almost a week earlier.
“Until what?”
“Until I can remember. Or start to remember.” She paused, frowning. “Am I getting ahead of myself here? I’ll start to remember, right?”
His chin dipped slightly in a nod. “You should,” he said. “It’s hard to know how long that’s going to take, though. There are a lot of factors.”
“I shouldn’t ask how you know that, should I?”
One corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile even as his stomach dropped. “You could. I won’t tell you, though. Neither of us are ready to talk about that. But it’ll happen. Once once they dosed you with starts to really clear, it’ll start coming. Speed and how it happens are pretty specific to the individual and based on a lot of stuff, but it’ll come.”
She nodded slightly, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “I still don’t know what to call you.”
“Davion’s fine,” he said, giving the name he’d lived under since the day he’d joined the Hybrean Expeditionary Forces, a family tradition going back as far as the line had been able to trace. “That’s what most people here call me.”
“But you don’t trust many with that name, or any name,” she said, resting her cheek on her knees. “You’ve got reasons.’
“Astute,” he said softly. There was an urge to stand and walk away, to escape, but he fought it down. He didn’t often encounter anyone with instincts as sharp as hers. The only chance he had of keeping the most important secrets under wraps was ensuring that they trusted each other.
Trust was hard, though. It had been for a long, long time.
“I can’t help but feel like someone hurt you, too,” she said, still watching him. He glanced down toward his hands, smiling faintly.
“Perhaps that’s the easiest explanation for why I am the way I am,” he admitted. “It’s not the whole of it, but certainly the easiest piece of the puzzle, though not all that easy to explain.”
“I don’t follow,” she said. “It’s the easiest explanation but not easy to explain?”
He nodded slightly. “Not easy to explain because it gets pretty complicated pretty fast.”
“And there’s things wrapped up in it that you’re not ready to tell me,” she guessed.
“Yes.” He met her gaze, her eyes a deep, stormy gray, so unlike her father’s sea-blue eyes. Must take after her mother, there, or someone else deeper in the line. He knew more than he might have liked about those kind of inheritances. “Knowing too much about me puts you in more danger than you need to be.”
“Because you’re hiding out here—you’ve gone to ground.” It was a guess, but one that hit much closer to the mark than most would. He was already realizing exactly why the Veritans were probably afraid enough of her to want her either out of the picture or as a tool in their arsenal.
“Something like that. It’s not exactly going to ground if you’ve decided that this is where you want to make your home.” He stood up slowly, then reached a hand down to help her up. “That’s a choice I made—a choice I had the luxury of making. It’s not one I regret, either.”
She took his hand, let him pull her up to her feet. She glanced down toward her bare feet and he winced.
Should have thought further ahead on that. At least Daria said she’d bring some, just maybe not as soon as either of us would like. “It’s not a bad life here in the Zone,” he said quietly. “It’s just really different. The cadences are different, the day to day.” He smiled, almost wistfully, his heart swelling into his throat for a moment without his knowing why. “The adventures you get to have.”
“Beyond my wildest dreams,” she said with a wry smirk. “Right?”
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
She glanced from the creek to the house. “Are we going inside?”
He nodded. “I should start making some dinner. The bread I started this morning should be ready to go in.”
“Cadences of life,” she said, grinning, echoing his words as she trailed him back to the cottage. The smile faded after a moment. “How long have you been here?”
“Not nearly long enough for my soul,” he said, evading her attempt to begin piecing together some kind of timeline for his existence. She’d get pieces eventually—that much he was more than well aware of—but he’d already given away more than he’d anticipated this afternoon. “But I have time to deal with that yet, I think.”
“Spoken like a man who’s looked for something low-key all of his life that couldn’t find it until it was almost too late.” She was the one to close the door behind them as he stopped to sit down and take off his boots.
“Something like that,” he said quietly, watching as she wandered deeper into the cottage, heading for the bookshelves. “Maybe not quite that, but something like that. You’d be surprised at how many people from the fleets come to the Zone after their time in the service is over.”
She turned, her brow furrowing. “That’s it. That’s what was bothering me. You were a pilot. The precision, what you did with the water, the ease of magic, the evasiveness. You were a pilot for a ship of the line, weren’t you? And probably a good one, considering how paranoid you are.”
Either she was between doses longer than the records indicated, or some things break through faster than others. Could be a little bit of both. He took off one boot, starting to unlace the other, and nodded. “I was. And then my ship was captured by the Veritan League and we were given a choice—join the League navy or be spaced. Clearly, we chose life.”
It was more complicated than that, of course. He and the two other pilots, plus the medical crew and their chief engineer—they were never going to be killed. They had the choice of cooperating or ensuring the death of their crew mates, regardless of whether or not the rest of the crew decided to join the Veritan navy or not. They had, of course, complied because there was no choice.
The ensuing months, up until he’d spearheaded a mutiny, had been nothing short of hell. And then there had come the months in a Veritan brig before he’d managed to stage a jail break and find his way to the Zone, to safety—and back to some of his fellow survivors of the Inishmar’s seizure.
He still didn’t know what he would have done if he, Val, and Daria hadn’t reunited here, but reconnecting with them had been nothing short of a balm on his tattered soul.
The entire time he’d been in Veritan hands, he’d feared they’d figure out who he really was, and that terror only grew when he was on the run after his escape, when word had come about the supposed death of the Hybrean royal family. He knew that there was something going on, something beyond the surface that no one dared give voice to, dared believe might be the truth.
Staying hidden, for now, kept him and a lot of other people safe.
He set his boots out of the way of the door, ignoring the horror and sympathy mingled in her gaze as he passed her, heading to the kitchen. “How was the soup?”
“What?”
“The soup earlier,” he said, opening the proofing box and pulling risen loaves out. “How was it?”
“Oh. It was good. Why, is that for dinner?”
“With more rice and chunks of meat, yes,” he said, staring the oven. “And bread. It’ll be a bit, but if you’d like something else—”
“No, no. The soup’s fine.”
He nodded, nicking the loaves and laying them out on a tray for the oven. He glanced back over his shoulder to find her still standing by the shelves, staring at him. A quiet sigh escaped him. “It was a long time ago,” he said, his voice gentle. “It’s okay.”
She nodded.
Something in her gaze told him that she knew it wasn’t, but the lie made it easier.
For both of them.
