Page 82 of Fallen Nocturne

Strong hands catch me before I hit the ground.

“Stop.” Arescaine’s voice is calm and commanding. “Let it go.”

The pain is too intense. I can’t think past it or breathe—

“Let it go,” he says again, firmer.

I stop fighting or trying to grasp the memory.

The pain vanishes. It’s gone, leaving me gasping and shaking. His hands are on my shoulders, steadying me and keeping me upright.

“What was that?” I stare at him, still trying to catch my breath. “Is it vampire compulsion? Did you make my memory disappear?”

The accusation feels wrong the moment it leaves my mouth. He has done nothing except help me, but the gaps are too strange and too precisely shaped around him to ignore.

The silence that follows lasts a beat too long. When he speaks again, his voice is careful in a way it wasn't before. “I didn’t. Memories can hurt. Let it go.”

“I don’t understand.” My voice comes out weak and shaky.

Arescaine releases a long, heavy breath. His gaze shifts toward the darkness between the trees as he considers his answer, and for several moments, he says nothing.

“Sometimes healers place wards around memories that are too painful for the mind to endure,” he says at last.

“A ward? From what?”

His eyes return to mine. “Monsters like me. Perhaps I frightened you badly enough that someone believed forgetting was a mercy.”

I look at him.

His hands are gentle despite their strength. Worry shadows his face as he watches me, his attention fixed on every tremor I fail to hide.

Arescaine protected me from the fire spell, shielding me with his own body even while his wings burned around us. He gathered evidence against a traitor and carried me safely to Greenvale. Again and again, he has risked himself for me without asking for anything in return.

A monster would not hold me like this. A monster would not watch every unsteady breath as though afraid I might break.

No, a monster wouldn’t do that.

My hands are gripping Arescaine’s arms. I don’t remember reaching for him.

The thought settles somewhere deep in my chest. He isn’t what I’d thought. Whatever he is, whatever darkness he carries from his long life, whatever secrets he keeps, Arescaine Darian Andras isn’t a monster.

Not to me.

After a moment, he releases my shoulders.

“We should keep moving,” he says.

I nod, accepting the explanation though my heart doubts it.

We start walking again. My leg protests immediately. The brief stop has let the muscles stiffen. Now every step is agony shooting up from my knee.

I ignore it and keep walking.

Arescaine notices. Of course he does. He notices everything.

I manage three more steps before he moves in front of me and bends. One arm slides behind my knees while the other circles my back. The ground vanishes beneath my feet as he lifts me against his chest.

“What are you doing?” I grab his shoulders.