Chapter 27 He Has No Memory Of Me
Brea's POV
He was alive. That was the only thought I had. The only one that fit.
Everything else the pain, the cold sheets, what Kaelen had done and almost finished doing all of it fell away the moment Rayne's eyes opened.
I heard myself make a sound I didn't recognize. Something between a sob and a gasp. Something that had no name.
I reached for him. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely feel them.
My whole body was shaking. I didn't care. I reached anyway, fingers finding his arm, needing to confirm it that he was warm, that something was moving inside him again.
He was already moving. His hand shot out and closed around Kaelen's throat before I understood what was happening. One motion.
No hesitation. He lifted him off me like he weighed nothing and I scrambled back against the headboard and watched.
Kaelen didn't even have time to speak.
Just a single wet crack, the kind that meant something had broken in a way it couldn't come back from.
Kaelen's body convulsed once, legs kicking uselessly, hands clawing at Rayne's wrist with fingers that were already losing strength.
Rayne watched it happen with those flat black eyes, no hurry, no satisfaction, just cold patience and when the last twitch faded he opened his hand and let him drop.
Kaelen hit the floor face first and didn't move again.
Rayne looked down at him for one moment. Then he stepped over the body like it was furniture.
Rayne turned around. "Rayne." His name broke apart leaving my mouth.
He looked at me. I waited for it that flicker of recognition, the thing that would make this make sense. I waited and waited and it didn't come.
His expression was blank in a way his expressions had never been blank before. Not his usual nonchalance. Something emptier. Something that had no memory of me in it at all.
"Who are you?" The question hit me so hard my breath left my body.
"It's me." The words barely made sound. "It's Brea."
He frowned slightly. Looked at me the way you look at something you genuinely cannot place. "Why are you in my room...Naked."
And that was when the first sob came. I pressed my hand over my mouth and tried to hold it in but it came anyway.
Tears flooded my eyes before I could stop them and I sat there on his bed, crying, while he looked at me like a stranger trying to be polite about it.
I had survived everything to get back to this room. To him.
And he didn't know my name. He turned away. Already moving on cataloguing the broken doors, Kaelen's body, the guards frozen in the doorway.
One of them stepped forward and Rayne killed him before the foot landed. Then the one beside him. A noble dropped to his knees and Rayne's hand was at his throat before the words came out.
He dropped him..."Who allowed this disorder?"
He didn't look at me again. I pressed my fist against my mouth and cried as quietly as I could manage, which wasn't very quiet at all.
My shoulders were shaking. My face was wet. I couldn't make it stop and I stopped trying to.
Someone found a sheet. I wrapped it around myself with hands that felt disconnected from the rest of me.
I stood in the corner and watched Rayne's court reassemble around him guards straightening, advisors appearing, nobles repositioning.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and crossed the room because I couldn't just stand there.
"Rayne." I kept my voice as steady as I could. It wasn't very steady. "Please. Look at me."
He turned. His hand caught my chin quick, and tilted my face up. He studied me the way the Queen had studied my wound. Like something that didn't add up.
"You smell like my blood," he said.
"You gave it to me." Fresh tears spilled before I could stop them. I didn't bother wiping them this time.
"You saved my life. More than once. You sat beside me and you held my hand and you " My voice cracked completely. I pressed through it.
"You 'know' me. You know me, Rayne, please just 'look' at me!" He released my chin.
"I don't know you," he said. A sound came out of me that I had no control over.. I pressed my lips together hard and stared at the floor and breathed through my nose and tried to find something solid inside myself to hold onto.
The doctors appeared in the doorway within minutes. Three of them, medical bags in hand, moving with the careful energy of people who understood they were walking into something unpredictable.
Rayne looked at them and said nothing. Just looked. The lead doctor took one step forward. "My lord, we need to—"
"Don't." The word came out quiet. Final.
The doctor stopped. "Your vitals need to be—"
Rayne moved so fast I didn't see it. One moment the doctor was standing, the next Rayne had him by the collar, lifted slightly off the ground, face inches away.
"I said don't," Rayne repeated. Same tone. Same flatness. Like he was explaining something simple to someone slow.
"Rayne." I didn't plan to speak. It came out anyway. "Let him work."
He turned his head toward me. That blank studying look again.
"You know my name," he said. Not a question. An observation.
"Yes." My throat was tight. "I know a lot about you. Please... let them check you. You were dead twenty minutes ago."
He finally released the doctor, stepped back, and stood with his arms at his sides.
"Make it fast," he said. The doctors moved quickly, not one of them making eye contact with him.
I watched from the wall, arms wrapped around myself, while they worked.
Rayne bore it like someone tolerating an inconvenience, his eyes moving around the room constantly restless, assessing never landing on the same thing twice.
Never landing on me.
When they finished, the lead doctor crossed to the far side of the room and spoke quietly. I moved closer without thinking.
"Death-state trauma," he said carefully. "Severe blood depletion. His memory has regressed to before the triggering event." A pause.
"He won't remember anything that happened after a certain point. Anyone he met, anything he experienced it's gone."
"How far back?" My voice cracked on the question, tears spilling before I even finished asking it.
The doctor hesitated. "Far enough."
I already knew what that meant. I turned and looked at Rayne across the room, standing with his jacket in his hand like he was already somewhere else in his mind.
He shrugged it on. Adjusted the collar. Walked toward the door.
"RAYNE! I REGRET THE DAY I MET YOU!." The word came out soaked.
Rayne stopped. One hand on the door frame. His back to me. The room held its breath. One second....then, he pushed the door open and walked through it..
The doors closed behind him and I sank to my knees on the cold floor and cried.