The Vampire King Forgets Me Every Dawn

The Night He Did Not Borrow

The king's key opened a door behind his own portrait.

Liora had walked past it for ten months without seeing the c***k in the stone. Now that Sorin held the ring against the narrow lock, she could not understand how she had missed it. The doorway had always been there. The crown had taught her attention to slide away.

Iven tied a cord around the outer handle and kept hold of the end. Orla and Nera remained outside with him, having seen the lock opened and heard the king request that it remain accessible. Their brief written account lay beneath three seals on the gallery bench. A fact fixed in that way could survive the morning. It could not compel anyone to be brave about it.

Inside, the air smelled of cold metal and the lavender oil used in royal sickrooms.

Glass slivers filled shallow drawers. Each bore a date. Some rested beside a hair ribbon, a button, a letter gone nearly transparent with handling. Objects helped the stolen memories keep their shape, Liora guessed. She did not touch them.

Sorin stopped before a cabinet labeled with her name.

Three hundred and twelve drawers.

Not every drawer was full. Some held a few dull grains, the trace of an evening spent consulting ordinary records. Others shone so brightly she had to turn her face away.

The crown had kept what he lost. It had not kept what she burned to preserve the blood-pages. Those memories were the fuel, gone beyond collection. Nothing here would give her mother's face back.

“Did you know?” he asked.

“I hoped.”

He reached toward the brightest drawer, then stopped with his hand in the air.

“What is this one?”

Liora read the date. “The first night you asked me to stay after the work was finished.”

“May I see it?”

She could have given him the easy version of herself. The one already loved, already admitted. The girl who had not yet learned how resentment could enter a room ahead of desire.

“I don't know what it does when it's taken out.”

He lowered his hand. “I asked whether you wanted me to see it.”

She stood beside him until she could answer honestly.

“I want you to have lived it. That's different.”

They moved on. In another cabinet, Liora found the date of the eastern famine, twelve years earlier. She had been a child. Her father had gone to buy flour and returned without his coat because the price had risen while he stood in line.

Below the cabinet stood a sealed silver bowl. Its label read Royal reserve: northern campaign, left shoulder. Dark blood moved inside as Sorin approached. He put a hand to his shoulder, startled by a pain that passed almost at once.

“They told me it would carry the injury until I finished the campaign,” he said.

“When was it supposed to end?”

He looked at the bowl. “I stopped asking when it stopped hurting.”

Liora left the seal intact. The reserve was doing something to his body even now; opening it would be a poor way to discover what.

Official histories said there had been no famine within the walls.

Sorin read the label. His face tightened.

“I remember ordering relief.”

“Do you remember it arriving?”

He said nothing.

A small drawer stood open at the end of the cabinet. Its label named Marek Vey. A groove in the velvet matched the shape of the sliver beneath Tom's skin. Whoever had placed it there had not bothered to close the gap.

Behind them, Sabine spoke.

“You cannot put those back by opening enough drawers.”

Sorin turned. Iven still held the cord outside; Sabine had entered through the keeper's door at the far end. Liora could see it closing behind her. Two doors. Both had been there all along.

“You put Vey's memories into Tom Arlen,” Sorin said.

“Public memories. Enough to maintain his seat while you were recovering.”

“Vey is dead.”

“Which is why he could no longer occupy it himself.”

The words were so cold that Liora looked at Sorin before she looked at the regent. She wanted him to feel what he had been allowing other people to call necessary.

“Did you kill him?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then we will establish who did without borrowing his face.”

Sabine touched Liora's cabinet. Light gathered around her fingers.

“Is that what she told you? That a memory belongs in one head or nowhere? We have used this chamber to preserve testimony after war, to return skills to injured soldiers, to keep rulers from losing themselves to grief. You authorized its care.”

“I authorized an archive.”

“You authorized me to keep the kingdom steady.”

She pulled her fingers from the drawer. A sliver hung between them, containing a small, red-lit scene: Sorin with his head bowed against Liora's shoulder. Liora saw herself holding him while his heart began again.

She took a step forward before she could stop.

“Give it back.”

Sabine held it out. “Take it.”

The offer frightened Liora more than refusal. She kept her hands at her sides.

“What would it cost?”

The regent smiled. “You are learning to ask the useful question.”

Sorin called Iven. The captain entered with Nera, leaving Orla at the cord. He did not draw his sword when Sabine told him to stand aside.

“I have the king's instruction,” he said.

“For tonight.”

The reminder struck all of them. Sabine put the sliver back into its drawer without surrendering the small shard at her brow. Sorin ordered her to leave the room under escort and remain in her apartments until the morning council could examine what they had found. Iven obeyed with a reluctance that showed how much authority she still possessed.

Liora expected the regent to fight. Instead she looked at the king with something almost like pity.

“You won't enjoy reading this decision tomorrow.”

When they were alone again, Sorin closed Liora's drawer.

“She may be right,” he said.

“She often is. It's what makes the rest easier to swallow.”

He laughed softly, without pleasure. Then he took the key from the lock and gave it to Orla. No spell shuddered. No kingdom changed. One woman simply had an object she could choose not to hand back.

They left the cabinet sealed under three witnesses, its contents undisturbed. Liora kept the private memory where it was. She could not afford to find out the price with someone else's life nearby.

In the gallery Sorin stopped before the bench. One of Liora's shoe buckles had opened again.

“You have been walking like that all day.”

“Your court is hard on shoes.”

He knelt before she could object, then looked up without touching her foot.

“May I?”

Liora sat. He worked the pin through the bent metal with the concentration she had seen him give disputed borders. It was absurd and intimate. She rested her hand on the cold stone beside her rather than in his hair.

“Better?” he asked.

She tested it. “For perhaps another hour.”

“I can ask for another pair.”

“I can buy shoes, Sorin.”

“Yes. Forgive me.”

He remained on one knee, looking almost amused at himself. She touched his cheek. He turned into her hand, slowly enough that she could take it away.

“I'd like to kiss you,” he said.

She looked toward the empty passage. “I'd like not to need it to prove anything.”

“It won't.”

That was the promise she accepted.

The kiss was brief. His mouth was cool, then warmer where it met hers. When she drew back, he did not follow. She stayed close for another breath before rising.

“Where will you sleep?” he asked.

“In my room. With my shoes off.”

She left him in the gallery, with several hours of night remaining. For the first time in months, she had not used every one of them trying to become unforgettable.