Author: Erin Klitzke

It was the sound of his front door that finally roused her, snuggled in a cocoon of blankets in the spare bedroom. She scrubbed a hand across gritty eyes, grimacing as she slowly started to uncurl from the ball she’d been tucked in. Sunlight peeked in through the curtains drawn across the window in the far wall and she groaned quietly, knowing that she’d slept much later than planned.

And yet, I could go right back to sleep right now and that would be fine. Why am I so tired?

But she knew the answer—she was tired because this was the first place that she’d felt safe enough to sleep in a long time. Then there were the nightmares that had broken her sleep overnight, the ones that made bile rise in the back of her throat even thinking about them now.

Clawing her way free of the blankets, she sat up, again scrubbing a hand over her face and clearing the sleep-sand from her eyes. She looked around the room, sighing quietly. Nothing seemed changed from the night before, which only made her feel that much safer, that much more comfortable.

But I can’t stay here forever. I can’t hide forever. The thought bubbled up from somewhere in the darkness, in the dim shadows shrouding her memory of her life before the cell, but that didn’t make it any less true. I don’t know what I need to get back to, I just know that I need to get back to whatever it is as soon as I can. As soon as I remember, I guess. It wouldn’t be feasible to go before, would it? It’d probably just land me right back where I started, or worse.

How would Davion take that, though? He’d emphasized the fact that she had choices now, choices she probably hadn’t had before. She could make a different call, could disappear into the Protected Zone and whatever trouble she’d gotten into probably wouldn’t follow her.

Or would it? She wished she had the same confidence he did in the safety of the Protected Zone and her ability to vanish and simply be anonymous—to maybe reinvent herself as someone or something else.

I don’t think I’ve got it in me. Exhaling a sigh, she climbed out of bed, unbraiding her hair and trying to rake it into some semblance of order before braiding it again. Maybe it didn’t look nearly as unkempt as she felt like it did. She had very little confidence in that, too.

A light rap at the door drew her attention, the sound of a knuckle against wood. She cleared her throat and called, “You can come in. I’m decent.”

Davion eased the door open, a large bundle of cloth and other odds and ends in one arm. “Morning. You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Sounded like you were having some nightmares last night.” He set the bundle down on the chair in the corner.  “Friend just dropped off some more clothes and shoes and some odds and ends for you. Figured I’d let you sleep until you were ready to get up.”

Her heart seized for a moment, stutter-stepping. “I didn’t wake you, did I? I—I didn’t think that they were all that bad.”

“I’m a light sleeper,” he said with a faint, rueful smile. “It’s okay. Just a little hyperaware sometimes, that’s all.”

“Oh.” She smiled back and headed for the bundle. He stepped back to let her unwrap it, leaning against the doorframe and watching. Inside were a few more changes of clothes, some socks, a pair of boots that looked like they’d fit her, a hairbrush, and some fasteners for her hair.  She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and smiled a little more broadly, nodding. “This is fantastic. Did you thank your friend for me?”

He nodded almost absently, running a hand along the stubble that still marked his cheeks and jaw. “Yeah. I told them maybe we’d see them around town in a few days, if you were up to it. They said no rush.”

She nodded, unbraiding her hair and starting to work the brush through tangles and knots that the braid had hidden. “I would like to see town, but maybe in a couple days. I’m not in any terrible rush.”

“At least not to wander around what’ll strike you as a quaint, old-timey village.”

Heat washed into her cheeks. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said, his grin wry. “I can tell. This isn’t for you, is it?”

“Am I that transparent?”

He shook his head, chin dipping for a moment. “No,” he said softly. “Not at all.  It’s just not a surprise. It’s like I said last night—life in the Zone isn’t for everyone. If you don’t want to stay, no one is going to make you. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

“I appr—wait, what?”

His brow arched. “What?”

“Did you just say you’ll take me wherever I want to go.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “You’re surprised by that.”

“Well, yeah,” she said. “From the sound of it, if you leave, you could end up arrested or worse, right? For desertion?”

“Worse than that,” he admitted. “But I’d still do it. I don’t exactly trust anyone that we could hire to take you off-world to get you anywhere safely, which means that I’ll have to do it myself.”

Well, that adds a whole new wrinkle to all of this, doesn’t it? How can I ask him to put himself in danger just because I don’t want to stay here?

Of course, she knew that wasn’t why he’d brought it up—he was clearly surprised at her confusion and concern. The way he’d said it was very matter-of-fact, steady, and her stomach twisted almost uncomfortably.

He knows what he’s doing, knows what he’s about. Who am I to tell him no? Who am I to tell him he doesn’t have to do that, especially when he said he wouldn’t trust anyone else?

“You’re not responsible for me,” she whispered, the words coming unbidden, escaping before she could stop them.

He gave her a faint, sad smile. “Kind of am. I’m going to go make breakfast.”

For the second time, on the second day in a row, he turned and stepped out the bedroom door before she could stop him, leaving her with still another knot to unravel.

They’d spent another two hours sitting there in front of the cold fireplace.  He told her about Westnedge, promised again to take her there.  Her gentle probing to learn more about him hadn’t stopped, but it had eased a little.  That wasn’t necessarily indicative of anything.  There was something else, though, something about what she asked and how that had all but confirmed for him what he’d already deep down known.

Eventually, she’d decide to go back.  She wouldn’t stay in the Protected Zone, nor could he blame her for the choice.  The life he’d chosen wasn’t for everyone and while her life would be in danger out in the wider galaxy, he could understand what forces might drive her choice to return.

When she’d finally gone to bed, he lingered in the chair by the fire, his gaze tracing familiar patterns of soot against the brick and stone.  There were things he needed to do, things he’d put off in favor of keeping an eye on her those first days after he’d rescued her.

The idea of sending her father the files set his stomach twisting uncomfortably, though.  No one deserved to see that sort of evidence and have it related to their child, but Colm O’Shaughnessy was the only person he’d ever trusted with any information like it.

He closed his eyes, bowing his head slightly as he took a slow, deep breath.  It was grief that he was feeling, grief and guilt, already imagining what the reaction might be from his father’s closest friend.  The man had already lost so much in the last six years and this would be an even heavier blow.  How Colm kept going day to day was something he’d never quite figured out.  It was a mystery he didn’t think he’d ever solve, nor did he exactly want to.

It was at least another hour before he worked up the determination to get up from the chair and send the transmission.  At least Colm wouldn’t know where it came from—at least, he was fairly certain that Colm didn’t know where the information ever came from, and if he did, he never asked, never responded to the transmissions.  Still, he knew the older man received them.  He’d seen too much evidence not to believe that.

He locked up the house and went to his room, locking that door, too.  He made sure the curtains were tightly drawn and turned down the lamp before he headed for one corner of the room.  He eased aside the overstuffed chair that more often than not caught discarded clothing and flipped back the corner of the rug.  His fingers traced a seam in the wooden floor before he pressed down firmly on one end of the board, letting it pivot up and reveal the small compartment beneath.  He nudged aside a cloth bag and a small case, reaching down to remove a battery pack the size of his fist.  Closing his eyes, he sent a trickle of magic into the pack to top off its charge, then pushed back to his feet, crossing to the other side of the room.

All of us have our things that we didn’t—or couldn’t—leave behind.  I guess this was one of mine, even though sometimes I wish I could.   The transmitter was hidden at the back of his closet, behind a false panel in the wall, tucked behind winter clothing that he’d be wearing sooner rather than later.  He eased the panel free and leaned it against the wall, then pried open the battery compartment to slot in the power source in his hand.

In a sudden fit of paranoia, he came back to his feet again, checking the curtains—secure—and his bedroom door—still locked.  He squeezed his eyes shut and slid his hand into his pocket, taking out the thumb drive with the data he’d dumped from the Veritan installation.  He’d intended to destroy it after transmitting it.

Why was he hesitating now?

You have to send it.  He needs to know.

But it’s his daughter.  It’s about his daughter this time.  That makes it different.

There was no way to leave her name out of it.  He knew that.  He also knew that he shouldn’t because no matter how much it would hurt, Colm still deserved that truth.

Someday, the galaxy would need that truth.

You know what has to happen.  Stop stalling.

Scrubbing a hand over his eyes, he sighed and went back to the transmitter, kneeling down.  A few switches and buttons later, the transmitter hummed to life.  He plugged the drive into it and took a deep, steadying breath.

I at least have to tell him she’s going to be okay.

He sat there against his heels for a few minutes frowning at his hands in the shadows.  Would he believe it?  Did he dare?

Do I have a real choice?

He started the transmission for the data and started to punch in an addendum to attack to the end of it.

Don’t worry too much, it said.  She’ll be as safe as I can keep her in repayment for a debt my father never got to pay.

He shut everything down as soon as the transmission was done.  The message was the riskiest thing he’d done in years, enough to leave him trembling.

One more person would know the secret, but it was someone he trusted to keep it because he knew, of anyone out there, Colm O’Shaughnessy would understand.

There were more stars in the sky than she’d ever seen from the surface of a planet—she knew that without being able to remember.  It was so dark that it felt like she could see forever.  Centrallia had two moons and that night, one was eclipsing the other, leaving only a bare silver of blue-white light to blot out a few stars.  In truth, she barely noticed the difference.

“If you look up toward the top of the canopy there, you’ll be able to see part of the Seal.”

She twisted slightly, looking up at him.  He was drying his hands with a dish towel, leaning in the doorway, his gaze on the sky.  The evening was warm, though there was the barest hint of a chill breeze heralding the change of seasons to come.

Dinner had been quiet, almost subdued, as if both of them had retreated into their thoughts.  She’d been trying to sort through the bits and pieces of what she’d learned about him, about herself, about where she was and where he’d found her.  The fragmented portrait was starting to scare her worse than being in the cell and knowing that someone might come to interrogate her at any moment had been.  The fact that she couldn’t even remember what they’d asked her, what they wanted to know didn’t help matters any, either.

“Have you ever seen it up close?” She asked as her stare shifted back to the sky, searching for the traces of the nebulae in the sky that had been called the Seal for as long as anyone could remember.

He slung the towel over his shoulder and sat down next to her on the step from his porch.  “A few times.  Never crossed more than a couple of light years in.  No one really does.”

“Why do they call it the Seal anyway?  I don’t think I’ve ever known.”  It was a faint ribbon in the darkness, shimmering with colors she didn’t have names for—every shade of a rainbow and everything in between, glittering out there in the distant sky with faint iridescence.

“There are a lot of legends about that.”  He hooked a bare heel on the edge of the step, leaning against his upraised knee as he stared up at the sky.  “I couldn’t tell you which one is true, or which parts of them are true.  I can tell you that the name makes sense, though.  There’s never been a ship in recorded history that’s crossed into those nebulas and come back out.  There’re gravitational anomalies and storms and things in there that just tear ships apart before they can get in too deep.  So far as anyone knows, those bands are at least fifty light years wide at the narrowest point.  No ship dares go more than about seven or eight light years in.  Anything deeper and bad things start happening.”

“Like hulls getting pulled apart?”

“Among other things,” he said quietly.  There was a haunted note in his voice, a hushed and almost reverent tone.  “There are stories about people going crazy, about them hearing things—sometimes songs, music, sometimes gibberish, sometimes actual voices saying things that do and don’t make sense—about people just dying without any real explanation.  There’s enough documented that I’m not willing to tell you that they’re just old sailor’s tales and legends.  There’s some truth there and if you dig deep enough into records, you’ll find the reports.”

“You went looking?”

“A couple of times,” he admitted.  “Found enough to know that I’m right to be nervous any time I get too close.  Still.  Even if we never cross it, it’s still beautiful to look at.  It’s a nursery for stars.  Someday, all that gas could be planets like this one.”

“Seems like it would take a long time for that to happen.”  She leaned back against her good wrist, letting her head cant to one side, regarding him in profile.  “Thousands of years?  Millions?”

He shrugged slightly.  “Beyond our lifetimes, that’s for sure.  But it’s nice to know that some things will outlast everything humans have ever built.”

“So they call it the Seal because no one has ever crossed it?”

“Not from this side, at least.”

Her brows went up.  “What do you mean?”

He smiled and shook his head.  “There’re some legends that suggest that maybe at least some of the humans here started out somewhere beyond the Seal—fairy tales, almost.  A few of the books on the shelf in there have some of the stories.”

“I take it you’ve read them?”

“A few times.”

“You did strike me as the type to actual read the books you’ve got in there.”

He chuckled softly, standing slowly.  “Glad to meet your expectation.”

“Are you going in?” She asked, watching him for a few seconds.

“If I don’t, I’ll end up wandering,” he admitted.  “I don’t think either of us need that tonight.”

“Wandering where?”

His lips curved in a smirk.  “You ask a lot of questions.”

“If don’t ask questions, you don’t seem to talk,” she said, standing.  “And I can only learn so much from watching you make dinner and sweep the floors.”

His smirk transformed into a rueful grin.  “I suppose you’re right.”

“Thanks for noticing.”

He turned and headed inside, leaving her to trail after him.  She pulled the door shut and set the latch, watching as he crossed to the kitchen to hang up the towel draped over his shoulder.  “I have a friend that’ll be dropping off some more clothes for you, probably tomorrow.  Shoes, too.”

“That should make things a little easier,” she said.  “I won’t feel like I have to stay so close to the house if I’ve got some shoes.”

He chuckled and shook his head.  “You probably shouldn’t range that far alone anyway.  Not until you’ve got your bearings.”  He turned to look at her again, brow furrowing slightly.  “Though if you want to go to town after you’ve got more clothes and shoes, I can take you.  Westnedge isn’t much, but it’s more than a wizard’s cottage in the woods.”

“Is that what this is?”

“That’s what the locals think it is, anyway, and I guess it’s not far from the truth.  I do the things wizards do when they ask me to.  And when I have to.”

“Do you have to very often?”

He shook his head, sinking into an easy chair that sat in front of the cold fireplace.  “It’s mostly a quiet life.  Only a little bit of chaos here and there to deal with—and wrinkles.”

“Wrinkles like the place you found me.”  She sank down into a chair near his, one much less well-worn than the one he’d chosen.  “That’s never happened before here, has it?”

“No,” he said.  “That’s why it worries me.”

“It worries the man who chose a quiet life on a planet where what he can do is easily hidden?”

“If you’re talking about being a pilot, yeah, I guess it is pretty easily hidden.  But yeah, it really does worry me.  The Veritans don’t usually show up out here in the Zone—there’s no reason to, except I guess now they’ve found one.”

“The same reason you’re out here—because no one’s going to look for a retired pilot out here.”

He nodded.  “You’d be surprised how many retired sailors end up out here.  It’s more than a few.  After seeing some of the shit we see, sometimes quiet lives somewhere no one will look for us is appealing.”

“I’m guessing a lot of you didn’t leave much behind, did you?”

If she hadn’t been watching, she would’ve missed his wince.  It had been slight, and he’d covered it quickly, but she’d seen it just the same.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Mostly just us in the universe.  Not a lot of people to miss us, if any at all.”

It was a lie, but she let it go.

For now, at least, she’d let it go.

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.

She lingered in the bath, letting the heat not only only seep months of captivity and privation form her flesh but letting it soothe the aches of her body and the churning in her mind.  The warmth left her relaxed and the scent of the soap—goats milk and lavender, she thought—helped with that, too.  She washed her hair twice before just laying there in the tub, staring at the wooden planks of the ceiling above her.

The Protected Zone.  The words were familiar, meant something, something just out of reach but not that far, not nearly as far as her own name seemed.  Her surroundings were much more primitive than her gut screamed they should have been and the man’s choice of words when he talked about the person who’d looked at her wrist—healer, not doctor, not something else—only added fuel to that particular fire.

Then, of course, there was what she’d seen when she came into he bathroom.

That was magic.  I know that it was—it had to be.  How she knew, she couldn’t quite say, but she knew that the ability to do it was important, above and beyond what he’d already done.

The little things suggest larger things—the ease suggests so much more.  I know that, I just don’t know how I know it.

Who the hell is he?  Why did he bring me here—why did he come for me?

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, closing her eyes for a moment.  The water was slowly starting to cool.  The possibility that he’d come for the place she’d been held, not necessarily for her in specific, had crossed her mind.  It was becoming increasingly likely, in her estimation, that scenario was actually the correct one, but if that were true, then it opened up a Pandora’s box of more questions.

Questions can be as dangerous as they can be useful.  She frowned at the thought.  It felt so familiar but she knew it was something she’d heard, something she’d said herself, but not something she’d come up with on her own.  That bit of wisdom came from someone else.  She just couldn’t remember who.

“Maybe if you stop trying so hard, something will click,” she murmured to herself, then sighed.  Sitting up a little straighter in the tub—it was huge, much bigger and better crafted than she’d have expected given the surroundings—and carefully wrung as much water as she could from her hair.  She’d been careful to keep her splinted wrist as dry as she could, though the linen that held the splint in place was certainly damp.  She hoped it would dry out without incident, but that was a bridge to cross sometime later.

Her skin puckered as she climbed out of the tub, though the chill that seized her eased as she wrapped herself in the towel.  It was thick and warm, again surprising her with its level of quality.  She cast another glance toward the closed bathroom door, frowning.

A man who wields magic easily but quietly, living out somewhere in the Protected Zone.  Some kind of local wizard or wise man?  Or something else?  A faint frown tightened her lips and somehow made her temples ache.  What she’d seen of the house so far suggested that it was a modest dwelling, not terribly large, but comfortable.  And yet…

Something just feels weird.  But then again, didn’t everything?

She dried off and dressed, finger-combed her hair as best she could after toweling it.  He hadn’t left her any shoes but there were a pair of socks with the clothes he’d left for her.  She shoved them into a pocket of the soft linen pants and hung up the towel to dry before she quietly padded out of the bathroom.

He was nowhere to be seen in the main room, a space that seemed to be part kitchen, part sitting room, part study.  One corner of the room was dominated by shelves festooned with odds and ends and at least two dozen books bound in different colors of leather.  Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she crossed to those shelves, reaching slowly for one of the books.  The embossing on the spine suggested the title Legend of Starfall, as did the beautifully decorated front piece.  Her fingers brushed against the ink and paper, lingering against the words for a moment before she closed the book and replaced it on the shelf.  For all she knew, she’d have time to read all of the volumes on the shelves and then some before they parted company.

Her gaze drifted toward the door.  He said I was safe here.  From who—and what?  Another question without an answer.

He said if he wasn’t out here, he’d be outside.  Would he have gone far?  Sunlight slanted through the windows, the shade and angle suggesting—she thought—afternoon.  Had it been two days she’d been unconscious or closer to three?

Does it even matter?  It probably didn’t.

The door was unlocked when she tried the knob.  The fact that there was a lock on it at all—not just some kind of latch—struck her as meaningful, too, though the meaning and the reason she knew were two more things lingering just beyond her grasp.  Still, if he’d left the door unlocked, he couldn’t have gone that far.  He wouldn’t have left her alone in an unlocked house if he wasn’t going to be nearby.

Would he?

No, she thought.  No, that doesn’t seem like the type of man he is.  Cagey, mysterious, careful—that kind of man isn’t going to leave a stranger alone in his house and go far without taking more precautions.

As it was, she spotted him sitting in the grass a dozen yards from the front door, gazing out over the water of a creek that ran parallel to one side of the house.  From outside, it seemed even smaller than she’d imagined and yet it seemed right.

He glanced back at the sound of the door, his brow arching slightly.  She managed a smile and padded out into the grass to join him, sitting carefully alongside him.  The air smelled clean, the scent of flowers and the trees on the wind, and it seemed quiet except for the sound of that wind through branches, the birds in the trees, and the sound of the water tumbling over rocks in the creek.

“You look like you feel better,” he observed quietly.

“I do,” she admitted.  “Thank you.”

He nodded, leaning one arm against his knee as his attention turned back to the creek.  “The people who had you—they’ll never hurt anyone again.”

“Because they’re dead.”  The words came easily, far more easily than she expected, her tone matter-of-fact.  They didn’t surprise her at all—and she wasn’t sure if that scared her or was a comfort.

Silence lingered for a moment before he answered.  “Yes.  They weren’t supposed to be here.”

“Neither am I,” she whispered.

He shrugged.  “That remains to be seen.”

“Really,” she said, glancing at him sidelong.  The afternoon sun painted more shades of red and gold into his hair, picking up highlights she hadn’t noticed earlier.  It also made the level of five o’clock shadow that dusted his cheeks that much more pronounced and she wondered for a moment if he’d spent the last two days and nights in that chair in the corner of the bedroom where she’d been sleeping.  Had he been keeping watch over her?  Why?

“They came here to hurt you,” he murmured, not meeting her gaze, instead fiddling with a piece of grass he’d plucked form near his foot.  “Maybe other people, too, but you were the only one I found there.  They were here with ill intent and malice and intended to use the Protected Zone to hide what they were doing from the rest of the galaxy.  They didn’t belong here.”

“But I’m not from here, either.”

“No,” he agreed.  “They brought you here.”  He finally looked at her, his gaze steady.  “And you get to take the time to choose what you do next.  If that’s staying here, fine.  I’ll help you get on your feet, find a place.  If you decide that’s not, well.  That’s a bridge to cross when we reach it.”

“You said when,” she observed.

“I did,” he said, then sighed, standing up.  He raked the fingers of both hands through his hair, every muscle strung tight, tension cording his frame.  “Maybe I already know somehow that you’re not going to want to stay here.  I guess I can’t blame you.  The Protected Zone isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.”

“You’re not from here, are you?”

He winced slightly.  “What makes you—”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “Instinct, I guess.  But you’re not from here, not originally.  You chose to be here, chose to stay here.  I don’t know why, but you did.  But you had a life out there in the galaxy before you came here, didn’t you?  Something out there brought you here and something out there makes you stay.”

He shivered and turned away.  “You’ve got good instincts,” he whispered.

“Do I?”

He turned a wry smile on her, though the rest of his expression was laced with pain.  “Oh yeah.  Much better than you realize, I think.  Most people can’t—don’t—make those connections unless they already know something.’

“And I don’t.”

“Not unless you’re the best actress in the galaxy and while you might be good, I doubt that you’re that good.”  He glanced at his feet, then slowly sat back down, stretching his legs out in front of him and leaning back against his palms.  “So what do I call you?”

“You’re the one who knows my name,” she said, studying him.  “Will my knowing it hurt that much?”

“I suppose not,” he said.  “Not if you can’t remember everything attached to it yet—and if you remember, well.  That makes choices more complicated, I guess, but it won’t change the fact that you’ve got the chance to make them.  Your name’s Kelcie Dorothea O’Shaughnessy and you’re right.  You’re not from around here.”

“And neither are you.”

“No,” he admitted.  “Neither am I.”

Okay.  So she had no idea who you are—that’s good, right?  No recognition.  On the one hand, okay, one secret safe for now.  Then again, she has no bloody clue who she is and that’s not a good thing.

“Those bastards,” he muttered under his breath.  “Those godsdamned bastards.”

He glanced back over his shoulder toward the spare bedroom where he’d tucked her into bed after carrying her to his cottage in the wilds from the smoldering ruin he’d left of the Veritan installation.  She’d been the only prisoner and that thought alone had been enough to turn his stomach.  It was something he’d seen before, but not here, never in the Protected Zone.

He wasn’t sure how Kelcie O’Shaughnessy had managed to piss off the Veritan League enough to warrant what they’d done and what he knew they’d planned to do, but he wasn’t going to let them finish what they’d started. For the first night, he’d been worried that maybe he’d come too late.  Val had come the next morning with Daria and after the former ship’s doctor looked at the files and then at Kelcie, she’d assured him that it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared.  Still, the lack of recognition—and her clear confusion—meant that things had gone far enough.

She’s got choices, though, being here—being found here.  He sank slowly into a chair in front of his fireplace, staring at the cold logs piled on the hearth.  Whether she remembers anything or not, she’s got choices.  Stay.  Go. Drop out of sight.  Start over.  Go back, pick up where she left off.

Choices.

For a few seconds, he closed his eyes, fighting down a sudden surge of guilt and pain that tightened his throat and soured his stomach.  There was no reason to believe that she’d make the same ones he had.  Most people wouldn’t, but he’d had his reasons.  Even if he’d never expressed them to anyone, he still knew that they were good enough if he ever had to.  People would understand.

At least that was he told himself on the nights when the ache was the worst.

A floorboard creaked and his gaze snapped toward the bedroom door.  She leaned there, staring at him steadily, a hint of panic buried beneath a mask of resolve.  “Do you know who I am?”

“Does it matter if I do?”

Her jaw tightened.  “Do you, or don’t you?”

He inclined his head slightly.  “Do you?”

“No,” she said simply, standing up a little straighter.  She’d wrapped herself in one of the blankets from the bed and she just stood there in the doorway, staring at him with a stubborn set to her jaw and an almost authoritative tilt to her chin.  “And I don’t know why I don’t know, either.  Do you?”

He inclined his head again.  “There were records where I found you.”

“Can I see them?”

“Are you sure you want to?”  He twisted in the chair, leaning over the armrest with a casualness he didn’t quite feel.  It was a struggle to keep the tension from showing in his shoulders and jaw and he found it was a fight to keep any hint of the same out of his voice.  “Once you see what they were planning for you, there’s no unseeing it.  It’ll haunt you.”

Her expression softened slightly, her brow furrowing.  “It’s that bad?”

He stayed quiet, holding her gaze for a few seconds.  She finally looked away, swallowing hard.  Her head bobbed in a single, quick nod.

“Right.”  She took a tentative, limping step out of the doorway.  “You said something about clean clothes and a bath?”

“Yeah.”  He unfolded from the chair.  “Just give me a minute to take care of that.  Be careful with the splint.”

“Is it broken?”

“The healer that looked at your wrist said probably.  She wasn’t sure what was going on with the knee.”  He didn’t look at her as he headed for the bathroom.  He’d filled his huge copper tub earlier, in anticipation of her waking, and a clean towel and fresh clothes were folded on a stool next to it, along with a cake of soap.  For a second, he frowned.  Should have asked for a brush when Val and Daria came.  Wasn’t thinking, I guess.

Closing his eyes, he leaned down slightly, splaying his hands, palms down, over the surface of the water.  It was easy, the spell to heat the water, easier than most of what he did beyond maybe lighting candles and lamps.

He heard her breath catch and opened his eyes, glancing up to see her standing in the bathroom’s doorway, staring wide-eyed at the tub and the steam that beginning to rise from the water.  He knew that she’d seen, knew that she’d just watched him bring the water from room temperature to steaming hot without a hint of flame.

“What planet is this?” She whispered.  “Where am I?”

He wet his lips, straightening.  “The locals call it Centrallia.”

“The locals,” she echoed, slowly unwrapping the blanket.  She was still in the prisoner’s jumpsuit he’d found her in and the sight of it made his jaw tighten, made his fingers curl unbidden into fists.  Spotting his reaction, she winced slightly, glancing away as she started to fold the blanket.  He forced himself to relax.

“Yes,” he said, glancing away.  “We’re in the Protected Zone.  On a starmap, this would be Trallia V.”

“But the people here call it Centrallia.”

He nodded, swallowing as he stepped carefully around the tub, headed for the door.  “Yeah.  Because why would they call it something else?  It’s the fifth world of a nine-planet system.  In the center.  Centrallia.”

“Makes sense,” she murmured.  “Towel, soap, all of that is for me?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “I’ll—if I’m not in the other room when you’re done, I’ll probably be outside.  Take as long as you want.”  He paused for a moment, then moved back to the tub, fingers brushing along a set of runes etched into he rim.  They glowed slightly with the trickle of magic he’d infused them with for a second, then the glow faded and he stepped back again.  “Water should stay hot for at least an hour, maybe a little longer.  I’ve never actually been awake to feel it get cold.”

“I take it you’ve fallen asleep in the tub before?”

“More than once,” he said with a faint, wry smile.  “Like I said.  Take as long as you want.”

She smiled back, tremulously, and nodded.  “Thanks.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, no problem.”  He ducked out of the bathroom, tugging the door firmly shut behind him, not looking back, not listening to see if she came back to the door to lock it.  He went straight to the bench by his front door and sat down to put on his boots.  He needed air.  He needed to think.

If the Veritan League is starting to try to bury people here, that doesn’t bode well for anyone in the Protected Zone—or anywhere else.

The poison is spreading.  The only question is what to do about it.

It was a question to which he had no answer—but he feared that once upon a time, the girl in his bathroom who couldn’t remember her own name did and that was what had landed her where she was now.

The worst of it was, he wasn’t sure what to do about that or if he was really going to have a choice in the matter either way.  He knew what he suspected.

Either way, it was not going to be his choice to make.

Get up.

Her eyes blinked open, bleary, and it took a few seconds for her to find her bearings.  It was dark, not unusual for the night shift, but something wasn’t right, something was different.

The strobe.  A red light in the corridor blinked on and off, on and off, too slow to be an actual strobe light, but that was the term her sleep and drug-addled brain could come up with at the time.  She pushed herself upright on the thin mattress, brow furrowing.  There was something else.

The door.  The door’s open and there’s no one there.

Her breath caught, eyes widening.  The door to her cell was open and for once, no one stood there waiting for her to escort her out, down the hall to another room.  The dark corridor was empty.

The corridor wasn’t just dark, she realized, it was pitch black, the only light coming from the intermittent light of the red emergency bulbs.  There were five of those along the corridor, evenly spaced end to end.

This could be your only chance.  Get up.  Move.

She lurched out of bed, bare feet stumbling for a moment before she caught her balance.  The world spun around her and she sucked in a few breaths as she tried to steady herself.  There was little use trying, she realized after a moment, then started to move, fighting through pain and vertigo.

How long had it been since she’d been returned to her cell after the last round?  How long had she been sleeping?

What was going on?

Something flashed ahead of her that wasn’t the red lights.  Her foot hit something hard, sending her sprawling.  She felt around near her feet, trying to figure out what it was.  Fingers brushed against the muzzle of a carbine and she recoiled, bile rising in the back of her throat.

What’s happening here?

She remembered them telling her this place was the only place she’d ever be again.  Even that memory, like so many others, was fuzzy, fading, often all but eluding her grasp.  It had been like that for—she thought—weeks, but even gauging time was starting to get hard.

Scrabbling back to her feet, she left the fallen weapon behind her, reaching one arm out toward the wall to steady herself.  The flashing of the red emergency lights was starting to make her head hurt, making the vertigo worse.

Just breathe and keep moving.  Just breathe and keep moving.

The corridor felt so long.  It wasn’t actually that long, was it?

A muffled cry, another flash—this time she was sure it was behind her.

You don’t want to know.  You don’t want to know.  You jut have to get out of here.  Keep moving.  Keep moving.

The next time she fell, a few steps later, it wasn’t because she’d tripped over anything.  Her legs had just stopped working, numb at the knees, and the feeling was spreading.  Panic seized her, mind screaming the word noover and over.  This had happened before.  This spreading numbness was familiar, though she couldn’t say how or why she knew.

An arm wrapped around her neck suddenly, pulled her up to her knees.  The voice was that of one of her captors, barely more than a breath in her ear.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

A tremor went through her and she gathered the breath to answer, mouth sour even as cold and numbness gnawed its way up her body.  “I—”

The light flickered strangely and suddenly she was falling, collapsing to the floor face-first.  She thought she heard something, like voices in a tunnel, like distant thunder.  The floor rushed up to greet her even as darkness even blacker than the corridor swallowed her whole.

——

The bed was unfamiliar.

That was the first realization that hit her as she clawed her way free of unconsciousness—the bed wasn’t the thin padding and barely adequate blanket of the cot in her cell.  This was softer, smelled of woodsmoke and pine and wool and something else, the blankets piled over her a comforting weight.

Everything hurt, too.  Every muscle was sore, as if she’d run two marathons without stretching or enough water.  There was bone-deep pain in one knee and in her left wrist.  What had happened?  Trying to remember was like reaching for shadows in a thick, rolling fog, and every time, the shadows eluded her fingertips.

A floorboard creaked.  It was enough to tell her instantly that she was somewhere very different from the last place she could remember being—the corridor and before that, her cell.  The smell of strong tea and chicken soup hit her nose, even nestled as it was in a cocoon of blankets.

Slowly, she stared to claw her way free of the warm, safe pile—or at least, the pile that seemed to be both.  Another board creaked, closer this time, and suddenly a face swam into view above hers.  Reddish hair, too long to be by design, and at least three days’ growth of beard beyond what was clearly intended to be there.  His eyes seemed to shift from gray to green and then on to blue as she stared up at him, brows knitting.

She didn’t know him, but felt like she should—somehow, he felt familiar, even though she couldn’t remember ever having met him, much less attach a name to his face.  “Where am I?” she croaked.  “Who are you?”

“Safe,” he said, gently reaching to help her free herself from her blankets.  “You’ve been asleep for almost two days.  I was starting to worry.”

“Two days?”  She stared to try to push herself up on her elbows, wincing as muscles protested and pain shot up her arm.  Instead of trying to stop her, he just cleared the blankets enough so she could sit up the rest of the way, reaching behind her to adjust the pillows against the wall behind her so she wouldn’t hurt herself if she fell back.  “How could I have been out for two days?”

“My guess is that you somehow knew that you weren’t there anymore and you could afford to relax just a fraction.”  He turned to get two mugs, one larger than the other with a spoon in it, the other a more normal size.  Both steamed slightly, as if full of some kind of hot liquid.

Her stomach growled for the first time in as long as she could remember.  It was strange to actually be hungry, and her mouth watered at the smell of the soup and the tea—another sensation that was almost beyond her ability to recall.

“I don’t remember how I got there,” she said as he came back with the mugs, setting the smaller on the bedside table and offering her the larger, that one full of soup.  She took it from him with the hand that didn’t hurt, the other splinted and wrapped, as if she’d broken it somehow.  Maybe she had.  She couldn’t remember.  “I don’t—I can’t remember a lot.”

His expression softened.  Somehow, it made his otherwise rugged countenance seem kind.  “It’s okay,” he murmured.  “I wish I could say I was surprised.”

“What was that place?”  She moved the soup around in the mug with the spoon for a few seconds before she dared to take a bite.  Her stomach twisted, then settled, and she exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.  Just an empty stomach.  She took another bite.  “I just remember waking up there one day.  They kept asking me questions but I don’t even remember the questions anymore.”

“It’s all right,” he said.  “You don’t have to worry about that anymore.  It’s taken care of.”

“Taken care of,” she echoed, watching him as he glanced away.  More of the room was coming into focus.  It was a small bedroom, she realized, the walls white-washed, the floors wood with a faint, satiny sheen.  There was a chair in the corner next to the door, a quilt half fallen onto the floor from its seat, and a rug covered the floor next to the bed where she sat.  “My gut tells me that’s probably not good for the people that were holding me.  What about other prisoners?”

“There weren’t any,” he said softly, gently.  “You were the only one.”

“Just one?”  Just me?  She swallowed hard, slowly setting down the spoon.  “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly, then rose from his crouch alongside the bed.  He walked to the chair, folded the quilt.  “Finish eating.  I got you some clean clothes and if you’re up to it, I can get you a bath ready.”

All of that sounded amazing, she realized as she watched him head for the door.  She could see a wider room beyond it, but mostly just in snatches of color and texture.  “Okay,” she said, watching him.  “But you didn’t tell me your name.  What should I call you?”

He glanced back over his shoulder and smiled faintly.  “Start with figuring out what to call yourself before you worry about what to call me.”

He stepped out the bedroom door, leaving her with that new puzzle to consider over soup and tea.