Chapter 5 The Beautiful Prison
1015 Words
SELITHRA POV
He moves to the door and opens it, and Darius is standing right there like he was waiting for this exact moment.
"Take her to the prepared room," Zephran says. "Make sure she has everything she needs but don't let her leave, and inform me immediately if she tries anything."
"Yes, sir," Darius says, and he looks at me with something that might be sympathy in his eyes.
"This way, miss," he says gently.
I don't move, I just stand there looking at Zephran, this man who claims to be my husband, this stranger who's decided to imprison me for reasons I don't understand.
"What if you're wrong?" I ask him. "What if I really don't remember anything and I really did just come here for a job?"
He meets my eyes and for just a second I see something in his expression that looks like doubt, like uncertainty, but then it's gone and his face is cold and closed again.
"Then I'm sorry," he says. "But I can't take that risk."
"Why not?"
"Because the last time I trusted someone who looked at me with those eyes," he says quietly, "she put a gun to her father's head and pulled the trigger to save my life, and then she disappeared for three years, and I'm not going through that again."
The pain in his voice is real, raw and undeniable, and I don't know what to do with it.
I don't know how to respond to this man who's hurting over someone who might or might not be me.
"I'm sorry," I say, and I mean it even though I don't fully understand what I'm apologizing for.
"So am I," he says, and he nods to Darius. "Take her."
Darius's hand is gentle on my arm but firm enough that I know I don't have a choice, and I let him guide me out of the office and into the hallway where the two guards are still waiting.
I look back once as we're leaving and I see Zephran still standing by his desk, watching me leave, and the expression on his face is something I can't read, something complicated and painful that makes my chest hurt even though I don't know why.
The door closes between us and I'm being led down hallways I don't recognize, past rooms I don't remember, toward a future I can't predict, and all I can think is that somewhere in the last hour my life stopped being mine and started being someone else's.
Someone named Selithra Noctis who killed her father and married a man with winter eyes and then vanished into nothing, leaving me behind to deal with the consequences of choices I don't remember making.
And the worst part, the truly terrifying part, is that some small voice in the back of my mind is whispering that maybe he's right, maybe I am her, maybe everything he said is true and I just can't remember it.
But if that's true, if I really did all those things he claims I did, then who am I really?
And do I even want to know the answer?
We stop in front of a door at the end of a long hallway and Darius pulls out a key, unlocking it with a soft click.
"I'm sorry about this, miss," he says, and he sounds like he genuinely means it. "The boss isn't usually like this, he's just—he's been looking for you for a very long time."
"I'm not who he thinks I am," I say, but even I can hear the doubt in my voice now.
"Maybe," Darius says. "But until we know for sure, you're safer here than out there."
He opens the door and I see a bedroom beyond it, luxurious and clean and nothing like the tiny room I've been renting in the city, and I feel something crack inside me because part of me wants to just give up, wants to believe Zephran's story and let myself be this Selithra Noctis person because at least then I'd belong somewhere, I'd have a name and a history and a reason for existing.
But I can't, I won't, because if I let go of the truth that I don't remember, if I let myself believe his version of events without proof, then I'm losing the only thing I have left—the certainty that I'm my own person, not someone else's memory.
"The attack today," I say to Darius before I step into the room. "Do you really think it was because of me?"
He hesitates, and I can see him weighing whether to tell me the truth or lie to make me feel better.
"Yes," he finally says. "The timing was too perfect to be coincidence, and the men we captured before they could escape, they were professionals, the kind you hire when you want something specific, not the kind who attack random estates."
"What did they want?"
"We're still questioning them," he says. "But my guess? They wanted you."
The fear that's been simmering in my stomach all evening turns into full-blown terror.
"Why?" I whisper.
"Because," Darius says gently, "someone out there knows exactly who you are, even if you don't."
He guides me into the room and I hear the door close behind me, hear the lock engage, and I'm alone in a beautiful prison, trapped by a man who thinks I'm his wife, hunted by people I don't know for reasons I don't understand.
I sink down onto the bed and I finally let myself cry, quiet tears that slide down my face and drip onto my hands, and I don't know if I'm crying for the girl in the photographs who looks so happy, or for myself who can't remember being her, or for the impossible situation I've found myself in.
All I know is that my life as I knew it, the small fragile existence I built out of nothing over the past three years, is over.
And I have no idea what comes next.
- Writer
