Chapter 2
Serenity
Lieutenant Begbie ends the interview shortly after my admission, promising me “advanced interrogation techniques” if I can’t come up with answers soon.
Suffice it to say, the man doesn’t believe me.
After he finishes questioning me, he unlocks my cuffs, and this time I’m wise enough not to attack. The guard with the assault rifle looks ready and willing to use it. If I want to rebel, today won’t be the day.
I make note of the fact that the lieutenant has a gun holstered to his hip, and he likely has another weapon somewhere on his person.
If what I know won’t save me, then my actions must. I’m going to have to hurt people to leave this place.
That should bother me more than it does. I add heartlessness to my growing list of character traits.
Until then, I’ll bide my time and figure out what, exactly, is wrong with my mind. Specifically, why I don’t know who I am.
Once Begbie and the guard leave, I lean against the cement wall of my cell, my legs bent in front of me. I rub my wrists.
I haven’t changed clothes since my capture. I wear black leather boots, fitted pants, and a crimson shirt.
At least, these were the original colors I wore. Blood and dust now cake them. My outfit’s ripped in several locations, and the back of one boot’s burned away. I can’t remember how I got this way, which makes my past all the more intriguing.
I finger the material of my shirt. I have nothing to compare it to, but its softness, weave, and saturated color all scream wealth.
While I’d been unconscious, someone cut away the fabric covering my injured arm and leg. Gauze covers both wounds; these enemy soldiers went to the trouble of patching me up. I’d assume it was a small kindness, but after seeing the way they’ve treated me, they probably just wanted to make sure I live long enough to be of use to them.
Eventually I’ll need to check the wounds and let them breathe. Even if they were tended by combat medics, staunching the blood flow and wrapping a wound up is no permanent remedy.
How do I know any of this?
I’m still absently rubbing the material of my shirt when light glints off my hand. My body stills as I hold it up.
I don’t know which surprises me more: that I’m wearing jewelry, or that my captors haven’t yet confiscated it.
If I’m someone important, they will eventually. Another truth I inexplicably know.
I study the two rings that adorn my hand. One is a band of yellow diamonds. Expensive. The other is a polished piece of lapis lazuli. Tiny flakes of gold shimmer amongst the dark blue of the stone, reminding me of the night sky. This one doesn’t seem so expensive, but meaningful perhaps.
My heart thumps loudly in my chest.
I’m married.
I let that sink in. I don’t think I like that. Even without the aid of memories, there’s something constricting about the prospect.
Still, that means someone’s missing me right now.
Around my rings, the skin is scarred—particularly my knuckles. Apparently the guard wasn’t the first face these fists have dug into. My hands, however, are free of even the hint of wrinkles.
I add up what I know: I’m young, female—I gleaned that much from the mirror—married, dangerous, and valuable to these people’s cause.
It’s an unlikely combination.
Who am I to be so young and so experienced in the darker deeds of men?
I hold my hand up again, letting the rings catch the light.
And what kind of man would marry a woman like me?
Time ticks by slowly in this place. No one’s come for me again, but they will.
I lean my head back against the cool cement wall and close my eyes.
I’m at the back of the room. Cornered. Enemy soldiers creep closer to me. Between us, bloody men and women lay unmoving.
This is the first memory I have, and it’s a struggle to hold onto it. I try to focus on the wounds of the fallen, but my mind won’t give up those details.
The hiss of scraping metal snaps my eyes open. A tray slides through the slot at the bottom of my cell’s door. Those crafty soldiers use the end of a broom to push it through; by now they’ve figured out that I’ll take out a finger or two if given the chance.
I’m not a very nice person. I wonder if that’s the result of nature or nurture.
My stomach cramps painfully as I stare at the food, and only then do I realize just how hungry I am. Adrenaline and pain had distracted me up until now.
I get up and grab the tray. The sight of the food tempers my appetite somewhat. If I were less hungry, perhaps I’d simply skip the meal. Instead I pick up the plastic utensil and try what can only be described as gruel.
It’s over salted, and the more I eat, the queasier I get.
I set the food aside and steady my breathing. I’m all right, just a little too battle worn. It doesn’t help that my arm wound pounds like it has its own pulse.
The memory of those dead bodies flash through my mind again, only now, when I don’t bid it, do I see their injuries in all their gruesome detail.
I barely reach the toilet in time.
My entire body shakes as I vomit, and all the awful food I just forced down leaves my system. I feel weak, so weak, as I hunch over the toilet bowl. My stomach didn’t just purge itself of food. There’s blood in the mix as well.
From my injuries?
Behind me, the door creaks open. I don’t bother glancing back. I’m too tired to defend myself, and I’ve already accepted the fact that torture will come. If it’s right now, then there’s not much I can do about it.
Instead, a chair scrapes back. Someone’s taken to watching me.
“You’re sick.”
I recognize the voice. It belongs to the general, the man who knows me.
I’m not surprised he’s come back, but I am surprised at the shift in his temperament. His voice even has a modicum of control to it.
Experience that I can’t remember tells me not to trust his calmness. There’s always a calm before a storm.
I reach a hand up to flush the toilet, then drag myself to the wall, leaning my back against it. I’m sweating, either from sickness, like the general mentioned, or my injuries.
“I hadn’t realized …” the general starts, taking me in. “When you were sick before, we assumed you and my son …” He lets the sentence trail off. His Adam’s apple bobs.
I try to process all that he is and isn’t saying. Apparently this nausea is more than just fatigue, and the general’s known me long enough to have some insight into this. More surprising, this man who opposes the king is father to a man I was once close to.
“Will?” I ask, remembering the name he threw out at me yesterday. There’s something downright spooky about learning of a relationship and having no recollection of it.
The general bows his head and nods.
I’m afraid to ask what happened to Will. Afraid of what else this man knows about us.
“You really don’t remember who you are?” he asks.
I stare at the rings on my left hand. “No.”
I am a woman unmade. Something of skin and meat and bone and consciousness, but not a person, not in the truest sense. I have no opinions, no past, no identity. It’s been stripped from me. And even here I can feel the wrongness of it.
“That bastard,” the general whispers.
I glance up at him. All the earlier heat in his expression is gone. Now he just looks old and defeated.
He studies me, something like pity softening those hard features. “Our sources believed he’d been working on a memory suppressant. Never thought he’d turn it on you.”
A memory suppressant. So that’s why I lack an identity. Someone deliberately erased my memory—the king, if the general is to be believed.
He could be lying. About everything. For all I know this entire situation was concocted for some purpose I’m unaware of.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I’m the former general of the Western United Nations—the WUN.” He says this as though it should ring a bell. It doesn’t.
“Who am I?” I ask.
“You were our former emissary.”
Past tense.
“But I am no longer?” The cell is proof of that. Still, I want to know what changed between then and now.
The general rubs his face.
“No, Serenity,” he sighs out. “No.”
White whiskers grow along his cheeks and jaw. He doesn’t strike me as a man who forgets to shave. Everything about him screams defeat, despite the fact that once he’s done here, he’ll be the one walking out that door a free man.
“What happened?” I ask.
I don’t think he’s going to answer me. I’m stepping out of line, the prisoner asking questions of her captor. But then he does speak. “The WUN surrendered to the Eastern Empire and you were part of the collateral.”
I furrow my brows. What he says makes no sense.
“It’s my fault,” he admits, leaning forward in his seat. He threads his hands together and rests them between his legs. “I made the call to give you to King Lazuli.”
Lazuli, like the stone on my finger. My stomach drops.
“‘Give’?” He makes it sound as though I was nothing more than a commodity. Little more than what I am now—a means to an end for these people.
“It was the only way,” the general says. He’s pleading with me, and I can tell this long ago decision cost him. “The king was prepared to rip apart the WUN. You were the only bargaining chip we had, and God, he wanted you so badly. He was willing to give us everything we wanted.”
Bile rises up in my throat again, and I swallow it back down.
“Why did he want me?”
He bows his head, staring at his clasped hands. “You left … quite the impression when you and your father negotiated the terms of our nation’s surrender.”
“So you gave me to him … in return for peace?” I say, making sense of his words.
He rubs his eyes. “Yes, I did.”
Outrage flares up in me. I may not recall this decision, but I had to live through it at some point. This general offered me to our enemy. Never mind that it saved countless other lives. This was the same man I must’ve worked with—whose son I had some sort of relationship with—and yet he threw me to the wolves.
I stare at my ring as an even more terrifying idea takes form. “I don’t work for the king, do I?”
The general sighs and meets my eyes. “No, Serenity, you don’t work for the king. You’re married to him.”