I sat down without a word beside the trio at the main table, trying to appear calm. But my eyes at once caught on the door at the far end of the room.
Double panels flung open. Beyond them, a bedroom. And a bed. Large. The coverlet spread out, soft, fluffy, almost provocative.
Gods. Why was I staring at it?
Probably because the past nights I had slept on the floor.
On the damned floor.
Something about that bed looked… offensively luxurious. As if it were laughing at me.
"Ahem," Blake cleared his throat.
My gaze snapped from the bed, his voice was like a flick to the skin. He was looking straight at me.
All right. Time to tear myself away from bedbound fantasies. Looks like this is some sort of… meeting?
"First," he began calmly, with that icy certainty of his that always made my eye twitch, "we need to deal with the curse laid on your pillow."
…What?!
Wait. The curse. On. My. Pillow? I was baffled, but did not dare utter a word.
All attention. Only on him.
"That's why you couldn't sleep in the bed, isn't it?" Blake leaned slightly forward, his voice lower, almost intimate. "Don't you want to tell us?"
"Every time I lay down in the bed," I breathed out, feeling my fingers reach for the back of my head on their own, "a sharp pain shot through me. Right at the centre of my head."
The words broke free, but then stuck in my throat.
"I didn't say anything because…"
A pause. Heavy. Awkward. I knew how it sounded.
Like nonsense. Like a pitiful excuse.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Nimor's eyebrow lift. Adel frowned, studying me intently.
And Blake… sat as always. Stone.
No emotion. No sympathy, no anger. Just a flat, frightening nothing.
"Why?" His voice was sharp, honed by a soldier's drill. He was not asking. He was ordering.
I swallowed.
"I thought… Maybe I'm not who I'm supposed to be. That the bed rejected me… or I rejected it." My voice trembled. Even now, after all his words, I wasn't an imitation… I didn't believe it. Because inside there was still only emptiness.
I saw Adel cast a glance at Blake. She was waiting for an explanation.
"I've confirmed it." His voice was level, almost icy. "You are the real Biana. The same as before."
"But…" Adel began, but Blake turned to her with such a look that the words died on her lips.
"This is not up for discussion." His voice turned to steel. "Biana is genuine. Without memory. Without magic. But it is her. And now something else concerns us: who and how managed to lay a dark curse upon her pillow. And what it means." After a brief pause, he went on: "No one must know. If the kingdom suspects that the girl from the prophecy has no power, panic will begin."
He looked at me again, a heavy, piercing gaze.
"We stick to the legend: Biana sleeps as before. But in truth she will take the role of my permanent Keeper at Vetarion."
I didn't even have time to ask a question, he was already reading the shock off my face.
"Explain. Was there anything strange when you woke up?"
I swallowed.
"Only… pain. At the back of my head." My voice came out quieter than I wanted. But clear.
"Then it's obvious. A cursed pillow. Adel, find the maid. Bring her here."
He turned sharply to Nimor:
"Who else had access to Biana's room? Besides Sunny?"
"No one," Nimor replied. "I personally checked it once a week. All was quiet."
"A dark shadow…" I whispered, not at once realising I had spoken aloud.
An instant, and everything froze.
I lifted my eyes.
"A DARK shadow," I repeated. Clearly. Loudly.
No one spoke.
"Impossible," Adel cut me off. In an icy, dry tone, as if trying to sever me with the phrase itself.
"But I saw it," I blurted. "Yesterday. In the kitchen. A knight. He… he was strange. When Ada came in, he muttered: 'You weren't supposed to be here.'"
He said it as though he knew.
"That's why you were told not to leave your room," Blake interrupted. Hard. Sharp. "You know nothing and remember nothing of magic in this world. Do you?"
"But I saw," I swallowed with difficulty. "He vanished. Vanished right before me. And in his place was… a shadow. Black. Alive."
"Impossible," Adel repeated, now with irritation. Almost challengingly.
"I SAW IT!" I snapped. My voice shook, but rose loud, almost to a cry. "Why won't you believe me?!"
I wasn't shouting for drama. I shouted because I felt everything inside boiling.
I wasn't insane. It happened. It was real.
"First," Blake began, his voice low, honed, edged with cold fury, "the entire castle is under protection. The stones do not admit anyone tied to dark magic. There are only a few exceptions. And that knight was certainly not one of them."
He burned me with his gaze, steel, silver, without a drop of doubt.
"Second. Knights do not possess magic. Not one. If you truly remembered the structure of the magical army, you would know that. You couldn't tell a Blessed from an ordinary mage. A Dark Lord from Avoddon. You can't distinguish them because you know nothing." He exhaled slowly. "One thing is to curse a pillow. Quite another to be a dark mage."
The words struck like slaps. He spoke not as if instructing, but as if delivering a sentence.
As if he wanted to wipe from me everything: dignity, certainty, sense.
"You mean to say I'm insane?" I breathed, no longer holding back my anger. "That my eyes lie to me? That I imagined it?!"
I threw him a look, sharp, angry, painfully honest.
Adel looked as if she didn't know whose side she was on.
And Blake's eyes flared.
Cold silver. Anger. And something else. Something dangerously personal.
"Let's all take a breath," Nimor interjected, calm, as though all this heat between me, Blake, and Adel were nothing more than a misunderstanding. "Biana, calmly. Listen. If everything you've said is true, then we have a dark mage on the grounds. And that means at least one stone of the ancient warding is broken."
I froze. Inside something clicked. A stone. Broken.
"These stones were created through pure, primeval magic. To lift their protection is not a mere wave of the hand. It's no petty spell. Destruction takes years. Sometimes decades. And if one of them truly had fallen… we'd already see an invasion."
He spoke calmly. Without accusation. Without condemnation. Simple facts. A voice like water.
But every word pressed upon what I did not know. And therein lay its strength.
I swallowed. Everything inside me argued, I had seen the shadow. But logic… was on their side.
"I think we should be more cautious," Nimor added. "And be more attentive to small things. Especially with the High Priestess of the Temple arriving soon."
"All right. Step by step." Blake's voice turned to command again. "Adel, bring Sunny."
She nodded in silence and almost instantly vanished through the door.
I hadn't even caught my breath before Blake turned to me. His gaze, sharp, cold, like a sword of silver.
"Now about you, Biana."
Again that "about you," as if I were a dossier, not a person.
"Until you remember everything. Or at least learn it anew, you do not leave the inner walls."
"Inner walls?" I blinked. What was that supposed to mean?
He caught my confusion and, of course, chose to explain in the style of "I order, you listen."
"The territory beyond the river is the outer zone. You remain inside. You do not leave the bounds. Under any circumstances."
He paused. Then added, as if flinging it in my face:
"And you have no right to wander the main keep. Especially before the Priestess arrives. Is that clear?"
His voice was ice. Command. There was no crack to slip a "but" into.
He had already decided for me.
"May I… go to the river?" My voice came out softer than I intended. Uncertain. Almost childlike.
On Blake's face, weariness. As though in one day I had wrung the last of his patience from him. He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds… and still relented.
"Yes. But only to the river." As if conceding not to me, but to my pestering. "And remember: to everyone, you are my Keeper at Vetarion."
I opened my mouth, to do what? Object? Ask?
"But I…" And then it hit me that I didn't even know what these Keepers did.
According to Ada, they were some sort of Blessed mages. The ones who heal warriors, mend people, weave light into wounds.
I was nothing like them. I had no magic at all.
"Yes," Blake nodded, as though he had already known my thoughts. "But outwardly, you fit. Height, face, all matches. And magic can be recognised only by Blessed wizards of the Temple. Such as Nimor or Solemir." He grew even darker. "Or those who serve the Priestess."
He fell silent. Then added, curtly:
"So stay away from the main keep. The templars glance in there. They don't come here. The barracks don't interest them. As long as you're here, and you don't go where you shouldn't, all will be fine."
Fine.
So my new life is silence, pretence… and a river.
Splendid.
I pouted.
Like a little girl scolded for something she hadn't even had time to do.
His words, "don't go where you shouldn't," struck harder than I wanted to admit.
I hadn't yet done anything. Not a single mistake. Not one act of defiance.
And he was already looking at me as if I were a problem. A two-legged danger.
And then it struck me.
He had known me from the very beginning. He had seen me then. The "other" Biana.
And if he was warning me this insistently… if from the start he had been trying to hold me back, control me, direct me…
…it meant that in the past I had already managed to blow everything to pieces.
It meant I really did know how to make chaos. Even if I didn't yet know it myself.
"Nimor will be with you," Blake said, lowering his voice. "He'll give you lessons. Magic, structure, what's happening in the kingdom now, everything. Perhaps it will wake some memory in you. You need to understand who you're speaking to. And who stands before you."
He narrowed his eyes, studying my face. I knew I looked upset. I didn't hide it.
Let him look.
Let him see what it's like, to wake in a world where you bear a label, but no one will tell you who you were while you slept.
"If you want to go farther than the river…" He tilted his head slightly. "You'll first have to understand where you are."
I nodded. Slowly.
"All right."
My voice came out soft. Too soft.
As though I had yielded.
As though he had got exactly what he wanted from me.
And strangely… his gaze softened.
The cold didn't vanish. It simply became… steel. Cold, but not cutting.
"I'll be living one floor below for now," Nimor said calmly, as if it were about polite neighbourhood, not surveillance.
"Tomorrow after breakfast I'll come for you. We'll start with the basics."
He had already turned toward the door when a knock sounded.
And at once Adel entered, as always direct, swift, without a single wasted movement.
"There's a problem," she reported, as though on the field of battle. "I found Sunny. Dead. In bed."
A flicker of genuine surprise crossed Nimor's face, sharp, unguarded, alive.
But Adel wasn't done.
"And that's not even the strangest part." She spoke without emotion, but in her voice there was a barely restrained anger. "From the first signs… the body has been dead for several weeks."
I exhaled, not because I wanted to. Because the air leapt from my chest on its own.
"Several weeks?.." the words whispered themselves. My lips barely moved.
In my head, noise. My heart seemed to stop.
Sunny had been beside me all this time. Spoke. Fed me. Helped…
Who had been beside me all this time?