Elara adjusted her grip on the enchanted gurney, its levitation charms groaning under Kael’s weight. The polished flagstones of the subterranean passage offered little resistance, but the journey felt interminable. His gaze, heavy and unsettling, clung to her back. She didn’t look. The Estate’s oppressive silence pressed in, broken only by the faint hum of distant containment spells and the rhythmic squeak of a loose wheel. “How old am I?” Kael’s voice, a low rumble, startled her. He shifted on the gurney, propping himself on an elbow. Elara’s mind raced. His face, unlined and unsettlingly youthful, offered no clues. He could be thirty or a thousand, given what she knew of his origins. Pinning him to her own age felt… safer. Less volatile. A small, manageable lie to add to the burgeoning collection. “You’re thirty-two,” she stated, turning her head slightly. “The same age as me.” He nodded, a slow, deliberate movement. “Do we… always speak so formally?” A bitter laugh threatened to escape. *Formally?* He was a walking disaster, freshly escaped from an arcane prison, and she was his unwilling keeper. “Yes,” she said, the lie tasting like ash. “You’ve always been… exceptionally polite. And gentle.” Thorns sprouted on her tongue. Lies, like ancient parasitic flora, quickly rooted, branching, and choking out the truth. “What did I do for a living?” Elara nearly stumbled. *Bury people alive, that’s what you did.* Plant them like monstrous seeds in cursed earth. She pictured the forgotten crypts, the grim harvest. Her breath hitched. She needed something innocuous, something completely divorced from his past atrocities. “You… so…” she stammered, her gaze darting to the shadowed arches above. A calloused hand brushed her elbow, a jolt running through her. Kael’s touch was cool, dry, surprisingly light. “You cultivated,” she blurted out. “Yes. You cultivated rare specimens.” “Specimens?” His brow furrowed. “Botanical ones,” Elara clarified, wishing she could sew her mouth shut. “The Conservatory. You planted exotic flora in the Estate’s Conservatory. That’s how we met.” The absurdity of it was almost comical. “What?” Kael blinked. “I planted flowers?” Her silence was damning. She focused on the faint scuff marks on the floor, on anything but his intensely curious eyes. This was a nightmare, meticulously unfolding. --- Kael was a mess. Crudely stitched wounds marred his torso, raw abrasions crisscrossed his forearms, and dust from the ruined containment chamber clung to his hair like a macabre halo. After a quick, clinical shower in the Estate’s infirmary, Elara set about the unpleasant task of applying a soothing salve to his injuries. The antiseptic tang filled the small, sterile room. She frowned, dabbing at a particularly angry-looking scorch mark near his ribcage. He didn’t flinch. Not a groan, not a hiss of pain. Only the steady, unnervingly calm rhythm of his breathing. Each time her fingers grazed his skin, a tremor ran through her. Her only desire was for this night to end, for the peculiar horror of his amnesia to pass. “We should sleep here,” Kael said, his voice quiet, almost conspiratorial. “Together.” Elara froze, the jar of balm nearly slipping from her grasp. “What?” “We’re married, aren’t we?” His eyes, the color of storm clouds, met hers with an unnerving directness. “Can’t we stay together here?” Panic coiled tight in her gut. Married? The word was a foreign body, an anachronism in her meticulously ordered, solitary life. “You’re still a patient,” she managed, her voice thin. “A patient, yes. But no longer vegetative. And still your husband.” He pushed himself higher on the cot, his gaze piercing. Elara instinctively backed away from the edge of the mattress. She hadn’t considered the full ramifications of her improvised narrative. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs, a frantic captive. “Are you… uncomfortable with me?” Kael’s voice softened, laced with a hint of something resembling vulnerability. “Because I might not be as you remember?” Elara swallowed, unable to form a coherent reply. “I…” “It’s alright.” He reached out, his hand hovering, then dropping. “I won’t treat you harshly. I won’t force you, or threaten you. Like the husband you knew.” His eyes, so recently storm-tossed, now looked bleak, almost hollow. For a terrifying moment, the violent memories she carried of him seemed a figment of her own imagination. “So, sleep here with me.” Dr. Aris, the Estate’s resident physician, had warned her. Once Kael fell asleep, there was no telling when he might awaken. Making him sleep, then, became the priority. A calculated risk. Elara sat stiffly on the cot, then carefully laid down beside him, her back to him. The small cot, barely large enough for one, felt impossibly vast and suffocating with two. The omnipresent scent of disinfectant offered little comfort. A faint tremor ran through her limbs. “I have so many questions,” Kael murmured, turning to face her. His gaze, a physical weight, pressed into her back. Elara stared at the stark, whitewashed ceiling, refusing to meet his eyes. “What are you most curious about?” Her voice was clipped, betraying nothing. “How I became… incapacitated. You said you found me. What happened?” “We… we were exploring a newly rediscovered chamber,” Elara began, weaving another fragile thread into her web of lies. “Deep beneath the Estate. There was an accident. A surge of uncontrolled arcana.” She kept it vague, deliberately so, to allow for future embellishment. “You took the brunt of it.” “You too?” he asked, a frown creasing his brow. “Were you hurt?” She shook her head. “Only minor burns. I was further back.” Elara’s heart continued its frantic drumming, a frantic accompaniment to her deceit. “And you cared for me, since then?” “Yes,” she said, a small lie. The Estate’s wardens and physicians had done the lion’s share, she merely managed the complex containment. “But the medical staff bore the true burden.” Her life hung by a thread, she knew. The moment he discovered the truth, her carefully constructed world would collapse, perhaps literally. Walking on ice, thin and cracking, felt an apt description. “Only think about yourself now. Your recovery,” Elara prompted, trying to steer him away from the treacherous waters of his past. “You’ll soon meet… others. Allies. Of the Estate.” No family. Not for Kael. “I don’t remember them,” he said, his voice a low hum. A warm hand closed over hers, fingers interlacing. Elara stiffened, resisting the urge to pull away. It was only her hand, yet she felt as if her entire being was bound to him, trapped. “The only person I need right now is Elara,” he continued, his thumb gently stroking her knuckles. “Only your face lingers in my mind. Nothing else. I suppose… I must love you very much.” Love. The word echoed in the sterile room, a cruel joke. Elara’s mind recoiled, a surge of revulsion threatening to choke her. She bit back a curse, her teeth digging into the inside of her cheek. Kael shifted, pulling the thin medical blanket higher, draping it over both of them. A surprising warmth, an unexpected comfort, seeped into her. The day’s fatigue, a heavy cloak, seemed to loosen its hold. She instinctively snuggled into the meager warmth, her eyes drifting shut. Then, they snapped open. Kael’s gaze was upon her, intense and unblinking. “When did we marry?” “Two years ago,” Elara blurted out. Another lie. Her mind, usually so sharp, was struggling to keep pace. “Have you ever cried because of me?” “What?” “Newlyweds,” he mused, a phantom smile playing on his lips. “And you had to nurse me, all that time. That’s terrible.” “I’m accustomed to treating… patients. Those who cannot speak,” she said, her voice flat. “So, no. Not very much.” “How long did we date?” “Ah, um…” The questions were escalating, becoming impossibly tangled. Elara, who had never ‘dated’ anyone in her life, found herself adrift. What could she possibly say about a fictional courtship? “Not long. We married very quickly. Almost immediately after we met.” “Immediately?” His eyebrows rose, a hint of amusement in his eyes. He waited, letting the silence stretch. Elara’s mind raced, searching for a plausible anecdote. Many of the Estate’s wardens had unconventional arrangements. Perhaps… “One night?” Kael suggested, a wry smile forming. “What?” Elara’s jaw went slack. “Did we… sleep together, that first night? And you decided I was… ideal?” He looked so young when he smiled, the cold distance in his eyes momentarily replaced by something akin to playfulness. Elara stared at him, a cold dread seeping into her bones. It felt like waking into a recurring nightmare, only to find the monster next to her in bed. “You must have been quite bold, then,” Kael continued, his smile widening. “No! That’s not what happened!” The misunderstanding, grotesque and humiliating, made her skin crawl. But no plausible explanation, no coherent story, came to mind. She remained silent, trapped by her own fabrication. Kael simply tilted his head, resting it back on the pillow, his gaze still on her. Waiting. Always waiting.

A Bed of Lies