~Kaida Orion POV~
I lost a memory, not a small one, not the color of a shawl or taste of a winter soup. I lost the first time I spoke Lupus's name after we married....the first naming that sealed us in private before witnesses saw the public rite, I know it happened. I remember the lantern light, I also remember my hair still pinned and his robe half unlaced because we were laughing and clumsy with wine. I remember leaning close to whisper, then....blank. A white seam where meaning should be.
The green‑robed Vine Scribe woman tossed that bead and smiled, now the gap aches like a tooth root.
Lupus sits across from me at the long table in the north study, his wounded arm is wrapped fresh, the dark crawling ink gone, but I still see where it spread. He watches me turn our old keepsakes over: the wedding comb; the red sleeve knot; the slip of bark where we wrote joke names before the real one. I am trying to trick the memory back, but nothing returns.
