“What is your name?” A chill slithered down her spine. The words were flat, devoid of inflection, yet heavy with a primal demand. Blood, like dark ink, stained Kaelen’s cheekbone, stark against his pale skin. He looked less man, more predator, crouched over the dismembered deer. “Elara,” she stated, her voice steady, despite the tremor beginning in her hands. “Elara Volkov.” His head tilted, a silent question. The air hung thick with the metallic tang of fresh kill. “Volkov,” he echoed, a rasping sound. Her mind raced. This was the ‘Waking Dread’ Master Theron had spoken of. Not stupor, but a terrifying rebirth. She had to guide him, control him. Her life, perhaps the stability of her entire house, depended on it. “You are Kaelen Volkov,” she said, carefully, as if taming a wild beast. “We must return to the keep.” He remained still, his eyes fixed on her. The silence stretched, fraught with unspoken violence. Would he attack? Devour her as he had the stag? Slowly, Kaelen rose. His movements were fluid, unnervingly graceful. He was taller than she remembered, broader. A beast clad in man’s flesh. He wiped a hand across his mouth, leaving a smear of crimson. He took a step towards her. Elara held her ground, every muscle screaming for flight. The ancient stories of the Sunderlands whispered of such creatures, beings of instinct and hunger, born of the old magic. “The keep,” he said, the word a question. “Yes. Your home.” She turned slowly, offering him her back. A profound act of trust, or perhaps, calculated provocation. She knew she couldn’t outrun him. Her only hope was to assume command. The rustle of leaves behind her signaled his movement. She did not look back. The scent of him, blood and damp earth and something acridly wild, clung to her. Each step was a tightrope walk over an abyss. “How old am I?” His voice, close behind her, made her jump. Elara’s breath caught. A landmine. Every answer a potential trigger. She couldn’t reveal the true extent of his malady, the decades lost to the stupor. “You are in your prime, Kaelen,” she offered, a carefully chosen half-truth. “Near thirty years.” She, herself, was five and twenty, but it felt a lifetime more with the burden of Volkov secrets. He hummed, a low, guttural sound. “And you?” “My age is of no consequence,” she deflected smoothly. “Only that I remember the world, and you do not.” A moment of silence. Then, a chilling question. “Are you my sister?” Her heart hammered against her ribs. No. Her position was far too precarious to be just a sister. And if she was, why would she be tending to him alone, in this manner? “No, Kaelen,” she said, keeping her tone even. “I am your wife.” The lie felt like a venomous snake coiling in her gut, ready to strike. It was a monstrous fabrication, born of desperation. Yet, it offered the only viable path to control him, to bring him back into the semblance of order. A wife could command, could claim. A wife could hide his true nature. “My wife,” he repeated, the words slow, testing their shape. She imagined his mind, a blank slate, absorbing the falsity as truth. Once lies germinated, they spread like a blight. She would need a veritable garden of them. --- The flickering torchlight cast dancing shadows as they entered the keep’s lesser entrance, a servants’ passage Elara often used for clandestine forays. The air within was cold, smelling of damp stone and ancient dust. She guided him to the bathing chamber, usually reserved for knights returning from patrol. “You are unclean,” she stated, her gaze sweeping over his matted hair and bloodied clothes. He looked down at his hands, then back at her. A flicker of something, perhaps confusion, crossed his blank features. Servants scattered, their hushed whispers following them like wraiths. A few averted their eyes, knowing the nature of the Volkov lord’s long sleep, fearing its end. Elara dismissed the bathing staff. No one must see him like this. She would attend to him herself. A small basin of steaming water, a clean cloth, and a pot of physician’s salve were all she allowed. He stood impassively as she helped him shed his ruined garments. The strong, unmarred lines of his body were revealed, crisscrossed with superficial scratches from the forest undergrowth, but nothing deep. The reddish marks pulsed faintly. Her fingers trembled as she dipped the cloth in the warm water, pressing it to a fresh laceration on his shoulder. He did not flinch. No groan, no sigh. Only the slow, steady rhythm of his breath. She worked meticulously, her gaze fixed on the task, avoiding his eyes. The scent of blood and wildness was still on him, beneath the steam. This was not the Kaelen of her fading memories, the aloof, scholarly lord she’d known before the Waking Dread claimed him. This was something else entirely. “What did I do, before?” he asked, his voice low, making her jump. She paused, the cloth suspended. Before. Burying people alive, she thought, a dark, bitter humor rising within her. He was the Volkov lord, yes, but he had spent his life mostly confined to the inner libraries, cursed with the family malady, never truly ruling. What could she tell him? “You... tended the keep,” she murmured, an innocuous truth that masked so much. “You cultivated the garden, the one within the inner courtyard. It was your passion.” Lies, carefully planted. He hadn’t touched a flower in years. Her own father had maintained that small patch. “Flowers?” he repeated, a hint of curiosity. “Yes. The Obsidian Roses,” she elaborated, pulling a truth from the novel’s title, making it his. “They are notoriously difficult to grow, yet you made them bloom. It was how we met, you tending them, I... observing.” She wanted to sew her mouth shut. The words tumbled out, each one deepening the illusion. “We were betrothed young,” she continued, emboldened by his silence, building her narrative. “And then, when your malady deepened, I pledged to care for you. For our house.” --- The Lord’s chamber was a cavernous space, cold and shadowed, lit only by a single brazier and a few iron sconces. The heavy bed, draped with dark velvet, seemed a desolate island. Elara finished applying the last of the salve to a long scratch on his forearm. His skin was warm beneath her fingertips. He wore a simple tunic and breeches she had laid out. “Sleep here, tonight,” he stated, his gaze fixed on her. Not a request. A declaration. Elara flinched, pulling her hand away as if burned. “Kaelen, you are still recovering. Your mind...” “We are married, aren’t we?” he cut her off, his voice calm, but with an underlying current that brooked no argument. His eyes, though still blank, held a piercing quality. “Can a husband not share his chamber with his wife?” Her heart began to race. This was the consequence of her hastily constructed narrative. She had not foreseen such an immediate demand for its execution. “I... you are a patient, my lord,” she tried again, her voice barely a whisper. “Master Theron insisted upon your rest alone.” “Yes, a patient,” he agreed, stepping closer. The brazier light caught the stark planes of his face. “But I am no longer lost in the sleep, am I? And I am your husband.” He stood over her, a silent, imposing question. Her instincts screamed to flee. She had lied to control him, to save herself, not to bind herself to this feral stranger. “Are you uncomfortable with me, Elara?” His voice softened, a chilling echo of manipulation. “Because I am not the man you remember?” She couldn’t respond. The thorns of her lies were now piercing her own tongue. “It is alright,” he said, and the bleakness in his eyes was profound, almost convincing. “I will not treat you harshly. I will neither force you nor threaten you, just as the old husband you knew me as.” Was this another calculated lie of his own? Or a genuine, if broken, attempt at normalcy? She couldn’t tell. Her own deceit had blurred the lines of reality. “So,” he concluded, his gaze steady. “Sleep here with me.” Master Theron had warned her. This new state of consciousness for Kaelen was fragile. He could slip back into the stupor, or worse, into a deeper madness. But when he fell asleep, Theron said, no one knew when he might awaken again. Lulling him to sleep was paramount. If she refused, what violent turn might he take? Slowly, Elara moved to the great bed, her movements stiff. She lay down on the edge of the mattress. It was vast, large enough for three, yet it felt impossibly small with him beside her. The scent of disinfectants from the salve mingled with his primal aura. He moved to the bed, lying down beside her. His presence was overwhelming, a dark weight. Her gaze fixed on the shadowed ceiling. “I have so many things to ask,” he said, turning his head to face her. His gaze hit her like an arrow. She kept her eyes fixed upward. “What are you most curious about, my lord?” she asked, her voice a strained thread of sound. “How did I become... vegetative?” The word, so clinical, so incongruous from his lips. Elara drew a deep breath. This was her terrain, the ancient lore and shadowed histories. “It is the Waking Dread,” she began, weaving a story from fragments of truth and desperate invention. “A malady of the Volkov line, ancient and arcane. A curse, some say, tied to the very foundations of this keep. It steals the mind, cloaking it in a deep sleep, leaving the body a mere vessel.” She paused, measuring his reaction. He was listening intently, his eyes unblinking. “You were afflicted many years ago, after a journey into the Shadowfen,” she continued, pulling from a known Volkov tragedy. “A ritual site, some say, where the veil between worlds thins. We found you, unresponsive.” “And you?” he asked. “Were you there?” She shook her head. “I was not. But I was the first to find you, to tend to you. A duty of my station, and of our bond.” Another lie, cementing her fabricated role. “Did you care for me, since then?” “Yes, my lord,” she answered, the words feeling like ash in her mouth. “Though the physicians, especially Master Theron, bore the heaviest burden. My part was to ensure your comfort, to speak to you when others could not, to guard the house in your absence.” She might be killed the moment he discovered the full depth of her fabrication. She was walking on ice thinner than a winter’s breath. “You have a family, Kaelen,” she offered, trying to deflect, to ground him in some other truth. “An older brother, Lord Gareth of Greyford. He often visited, before...” She trailed off, letting the unspoken weight of his lost years hang in the air. “I do not remember him,” Kaelen said. He reached out, his hand closing over hers. Her skin crawled, but she forced herself not to flinch. His grip was cool, strong. Though it was only her hand he held, she felt as though her entire body was bound. “The only person I need right now is Elara,” he declared, his gaze still fixed on her. “It is only your face that lingers in my mind, a faint echo from the dark. I suppose I love you very much.” Love. The word felt like a poisoned dagger. Her parents, long dead, their faces flashed in her mind, disapproving, heartbroken by the lie. She swallowed, holding back the urge to curse. He shifted, drawing the heavy blanket further over them both. A sudden warmth enveloped her. It was cozy, a fleeting respite from the night’s chill, from the day’s fatigue. She instinctively snuggled deeper into the covers, seeking comfort in the unexpected warmth. Her eyes, still fixed on the ceiling, drifted to his face. He was watching her. “When did we marry?” he asked. “Uh... two years past,” she lied. Another number plucked from the air. “Have you ever wept because of me?” “What?” The question caught her off guard. “We were newlyweds,” he observed, “and you had to nurse me, watch over a shell. That is a terrible fate for a young wife.” “I am accustomed to tending the sick, my lord,” she said, inventing a past that suited her current role. “The mute, the ailing. I did not weep overmuch.” “How long did we court?” “Ah, um...” The questions were becoming dangerously specific, knotting around her like an inescapable snare. She had spent her life immersed in musty scrolls, not the intricacies of courtship. “We did not... court for long. We married soon after we met.” “Soon after?” His brow furrowed faintly, a subtle shift in his blank mask. She found herself lost, grasping for a plausible detail. Many marriages in the Sunderlands were abrupt, arranged. She remembered one such tale, of a hasty alliance, common enough among the lesser houses. “One night?” Kaelen prompted, a strange, knowing lilt in his voice. “What?” Elara gasped, her eyes widening in shock. “Did we share a bed the very night we met?” His lips curved into a slow, unsettling smile. “And you, Elara, thought I was a perfect match?” As she opened and closed her mouth, speechless, he chuckled softly. It was a sound devoid of mirth, yet it softened the sharp angles of his face, making him seem almost... young. His eyes, for a terrifying moment, no longer held their distant, predatory blankness. They were alive with a cruel intelligence. Elara stared at him, shock giving way to raw, primal fear. It was like waking into a nightmare, only to find the nightmare was real, and it was smiling. “Guess you were quite bold back then,” he murmured, his gaze holding hers. “No! That is not what it was!” she finally managed, a choked whisper. The misunderstanding, the insidious twist of her own lies, made her feel profoundly sick. But no plausible refutation sprang to mind. Every truth she might offer would unravel her entire desperate fabrication. When she fell silent, Kaelen simply tilted his head, resting it back on the dark pillow. His smile lingered, a dark, knowing curve in the shadows.

The Weaver of Lies