Second Memory: A woman with fire in her hair, laughing as she spun through a sun-drenched courtyard. "My little wildfire," she said, and her touch was warm.
Current Reality: A car moving through endless night, a cold stranger beside me, and a ghost of warmth on my cheek.
The city fell away behind us like a discarded skin. Aaron drove in silence, the only sound the purr of the engine and the whisper of tires on asphalt. We left the neon for winding, tree-choked roads that climbed upward. No streetlights here. Only the car's headlights cutting through a darkness that felt alive, pressing in against the windows.
I stared at my reflection in the glass. The blue butterfly from the car had vanished the moment Aaron glanced at it. A hallucination born of a broken mind, maybe. But the cold weight of the ring on my finger was real. The scars on my back, tingling with every shift of the seatbelt, were real.
"Don't fidget."
Aaron's voice was a blade in the quiet. I hadn't realized I was rubbing the silver band.
"I don't remember this," I said, gesturing vaguely at the dark, winding road. "Any of this."
"You wouldn't." He didn't take his eyes off the road. "We lived in the city. This is the family estate. You've never been here before. A convenient truth."
"So we're lying to your family, too?"
"We are surviving." He glanced at me, his profile a sharp cut against the night. "In my family, truth is a currency spent only on blood debts. You have no currency. So you will be silent, you will be charming, and you will cling to my arm as if you adore me. Do you understand?"
"What if I'm a terrible actress?"
"Then you'll be a dead one." He said it calmly, like commenting on the weather. "The Johnsons are here. They were… disappointed by our sudden marriage. They will be looking for cracks. Find none."
The Johnsons. More names with no faces. More players in a game whose rules I didn't know.
The road crested a hill, and the mansion came into view.
It wasn't a house. It was a declaration carved in stone and shadow. Gothic spires clawed at a starless sky. Lead-lined windows gleamed like dark eyes. It sprawled across the cliffside, part fortress, part cathedral to some elegant, ancient dread. No welcoming lights, just a single, pale lantern flickering above massive oak doors.
My breath hitched. The sight triggered something—a flash of white towers amidst clouds, of singing crystal, of *home*. It was gone before I could grasp it.
"Home sweet home," Aaron murmured, a thread of irony in his voice. He brought the car to a smooth halt on the circular gravel drive.
Before I could move, he was at my door, opening it. He offered his hand. A performance for unseen eyes. I took it, his cold fingers closing around mine, and stepped out.
The air was different here. Colder, thinner, charged with something that made the tiny hairs on my arms stand up. It smelled of damp earth, old stone, and beneath it, something metallic and sweet. Like rust and orchids.
The massive doors swung open before we reached them.
The man who stood framed in the doorway was as beautiful and cold as Aaron, but where Aaron was sharp angles and controlled power, this man was languid grace. Same dark hair, same pale skin, but his smile was a quick, bright thing that didn't touch his sapphire-blue eyes.
"Little brother!" he boomed, spreading his arms. "You brought home the lost lamb!"
"Thomas," Aaron said, his voice flat. "This is Ella. Ella, my elder brother, Thomas. The family's resident charmer and chronic disappointment."
Thomas laughed, a rich sound that echoed in the vaulted entry hall behind him. He stepped forward and took my free hand, bending to brush his lips against my knuckles. His lips were as cold as Aaron's. "A pleasure to meet the woman who finally lured my brother into matrimony. We'd begun to think he preferred the company of ledgers and ancient corpses."
I forced a smile, the one I'd seen in my reflection—polite, vacant. "It's lovely to meet you."
Thomas's eyes, keen and assessing, scanned my face. He didn't release my hand. "No memory at all, they say. A clean slate. How… fascinating." There was a hunger in his gaze, a collector's interest. "You must be exhausted, my dear. Come, let's get you inside. The vultures are circling."
He led us into the hall. It was cavernous, with a ceiling lost in shadow. A grand staircase swept upward. The air was heavy with the scent of beeswax candles and that same cloying, metallic sweetness. Portraits lined the walls—severe men and women with pale faces and dark, intense eyes, all seeming to watch our progress.
And then I saw the others.
They were arranged in the great hall like a tableau—a dozen figures in elegant, outdated finery, standing before a fireplace large enough to roast an ox. The fire crackled, but it gave no warmth. Their conversation died as we entered.
Every pair of eyes turned to me. Pale eyes, dark eyes, eyes that gleamed like a cat's in the firelight. Not a single blink.
My scars burned.
A woman detached herself from the group. She was agelessly beautiful, hair the color of polished silver swept into an intricate chignon, her gown a waterfall of black silk. She moved with a predator's grace.
"Aaron," she said, her voice a melodic chill. "You did not tell us your bride would be so… fragile."
"Mother," Aaron said, and I felt the slightest tension in his arm. "Ella has been unwell. The accident."
"So we heard." Her eyes, the color of winter ice, raked over me. "Welcome, Eleanor. I am Rene, matriarch of the D'Cruz family. We are… delighted Aaron has finally chosen to settle."
The word 'chosen' dripped with skepticism.
A man stepped up beside her, imposing and silent, with a presence that seemed to suck the air from the room. He looked at Aaron, then at me, and gave a single, slow nod. "Fin," he grunted. "Aaron's father."
Then a young woman fluttered forward. She was vibrant where the others were still, a splash of crimson silk and bouncing chestnut curls. Her smile was wide, her eyes a touch too bright. "I'm Rose!" she chirped, grabbing both my hands. Her skin was cool, but not icy. "Aaron never told me he was seeing anyone! We were just starting to get to know each other, weren't we, Aaron?"
Ah. The disappointment. The Johnson heiress.
Aaron's expression didn't change. "Rose. A pleasure, as always."
"Oh, don't be so stuffy!" She giggled, but her gaze on me was sharp as broken glass. "So, Ella, was it a whirlwind romance? Where *did* he find you?"
The room waited. Rene's icy stare. Fin's heavy silence. Thomas's amused observation. Rose's predatory curiosity.
Aaron's fingers tightened on mine, a silent warning.
I channeled the ghost of the fiery woman from my memory. I lifted my chin, met Rose's gaze, and let a slow, lazy smile touch my lips—the smile of someone who knew a secret.
"He found me exactly where I wanted to be found," I said, my voice clearer than I felt. I leaned into Aaron's side, a gesture of possession. "Some things, Rose, aren't found. They're claimed."
A beat of stunned silence.
Then, a low chuckle from the fireplace. A man stepped into the light, older, with a groomed silver beard and eyes that held a banked, cruel fire. "Spoken like a true D'Cruz," he said. "I am Alistair Johnson. Rose's father. It seems my daughter has… misjudged the situation."
Rose's smile tightened, but she dropped my hands.
"Enough interrogations," Rene said, though her eyes held a new, speculative glint as she looked at me. "Ella must be weary. Aaron, take your wife to her chambers. Dinner is at midnight. Do not be late."
It was a dismissal. An order.
Aaron inclined his head. "Mother. Father." He guided me toward the grand staircase, away from the watching eyes. I felt their gazes on my back like physical pressure, right between my burning scars.
As we climbed the stairs, a new sound reached me—a faint, rhythmic *thump-thump-thump* coming from behind a heavy door on the second-floor landing. Like something struggling. Like a heartbeat against wood.
Aaron's pace didn't falter. "Don't ask," he muttered.
He led me down a long, torch-lit corridor lined with more forbidding portraits and suits of antique armor that seemed to follow us with their empty helms. Finally, he stopped before a set of double doors carved with intricate, twisting vines that looked suspiciously like thorns.
"Our rooms," he said, pushing them open.
The room beyond was opulent and cold. A four-poster bed with black velvet hangings. A fireplace with embers glowing. Dark wood, rich carpets, and a ceiling painted with a night sky where the constellations were subtly wrong.
"Your things are in the dressing room," Aaron said, releasing my arm at last. He walked to a sideboard and poured a glass of deep red liquid from a crystal decanter. It wasn't wine. It was too thick, too dark.
He didn't offer me any.
"Midnight," he said, staring into the fire. "You will sit beside me. You will eat what is served. You will make polite conversation. You will not mention hospitals, memory loss, or butterflies."
"What if I can't eat what's served?"
He finally looked at me. "You will eat it, Ella. Even if it chokes you." He took a sip from his glass. "This is not a game for the squeamish."
"What *are* they, Aaron?" The question burst out of me, fueled by the overwhelming wrongness of it all. "What are *you*?"
He set his glass down with a sharp *click*. In two strides, he was before me, his cold hands gripping my shoulders. "Listen to me. The only answer that matters is that we are your family now. The outside world, whatever fragments you remember of it, is gone. Here, there are rules. Break them, and the consequences are permanent." His gaze dropped to my neck, then back to my eyes. "Do you understand?"
I wanted to shove him away. To scream. But the memory of those watching eyes, the *thumping* door, the sweet-metallic smell—it all spoke of a danger I couldn't name.
I gave a stiff nod.
His grip eased. "Good. There's a bath through there. Wash off the smell of that place. Clothes are laid out for you. Wear the black gown. It has a high back." A calculated gesture. To hide my scars.
He moved toward a different door, leading to what I assumed was his own chamber.
"Aaron," I said softly.
He paused.
"The butterfly in the car. It was real, wasn't it?"
He didn't turn. "In this house, Ella," he said, his voice barely a whisper, "the line between what's real and what's nightmare is the first thing to blur. Get used to it."
He disappeared through the door, closing it behind him with a soft, final sound.
Alone in the oppressive luxury, I walked to the full-length mirror. The black gown lay across a chaise lounge—silk, elegant, severe. I ignored it and turned, pulling the hospital gown down over my shoulders to see my back in the reflection.
The twin scars were angry red against my pale skin. They weren't surgical. They were too clean, too symmetrical, flowing from my shoulder blades down in elegant, tapering lines.
They itched. Not with healing, but with… anticipation.
*Wings.*
As I stared, the candlelight flickered. In the mirror, for just a second, the shadows behind me seemed to coalesce. To stretch. To form two vast, shimmering outlines of wings, blue as a forgotten sky, etched in silver light.
I whirled around.
Nothing. Just empty room and shifting shadows.
My heart thundered. I wasn't imagining this. I wasn't just a human with amnesia.
From the pocket of the discarded hospital gown, something fluttered to the carpet.
A single, perfect blue butterfly wing.
And on the windowpane across the room, written in delicate frost as if by an invisible finger, were three words:
REMEMBER. THEY HUNT.