Page 12 of Demon Daddy's Hidden Son
Tolle and Marnai exchange glances loaded with meaning I can't decipher. He disappears into the back room and returns with a basin of water, clean cloths, and a collection of small bottles that clink softly as he sets them on the table.
"Hold still." His hands are surprisingly gentle as he cleans the blood from my hair, his touch clinical but not unkind. "Might sting a bit."
The antiseptic burns, but the pain is clean and immediate—easier to bear than the throbbing confusion in my skull. While he works, Marnai bustles around the kitchen area, ladling something that smells like heaven into a wooden bowl.
"What's your name, child?" she asks, setting the bowl in front of me along with a spoon and a piece of bread still warm from the oven.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes. The question hits the same blank wall as all the others, leaving me staring at two strangers who are showing me more kindness than I can remember receiving from anyone.
Marnai's expression softens. "That's all right. Happens sometimes with head injuries. But let's see if we can't find some clues."
She reaches for something at my throat, and I flinch away instinctively before realizing she's only touching a chain aroundmy neck. When did I put that on? I have no memory of it, but her fingers work at a clasp I can't see.
"There's an inscription." She holds up a pendant, angling it toward the firelight. "Kaleen. Pretty name for a pretty girl."
Kaleen. The word resonates through me, not quite memory but a sense of rightness, like a key turning in a lock I didn't know was there.
"Kaleen," I repeat, testing how it feels in my mouth. It fits.
"Well then, Kaleen." Marnai settles the necklace back around my throat with gentle hands. "Eat your soup before it gets cold. Tolle's broth could raise the dead, and you look like you need raising."
The soup is rich with vegetables I can't name and seasoned with herbs that taste like comfort itself. Each spoonful sends warmth spreading through my chest, easing some of the bone-deep chill I hadn't fully noticed until now.
"Are you the only one?" Tolle asks as he applies something that smells sharply medicinal to my scalp. "Or should we be watching for others?"
Others. The word brings a flutter of—something. Fear? Hope? I can't tell.
"I don't know." It's becoming my standard response to everything, and the frustration makes my eyes burn. "I woke up alone in the forest. I don't remember anything before that."
Marnai nods as if this explains everything. "Well, you're safe now. Veylowe doesn't get many visitors, but we take care of our own."
Veylowe. Another word that means nothing to me, though the way she says it suggests home and safety and belonging—things I'm not sure I've ever had.
Over the following days, more villagers drift through Marnai's cottage to catch glimpses of the stranger who appeared from the mountain mist. They bring offerings—fresh bread fromsomeone who must be a baker, soft wool blankets that smell like lavender, healing tonics that numb the persistent ache in my head.
A woman named Derri arrives on the third day with ink-stained fingers and kind eyes, carrying a leather-bound book under one arm. She asks gentle questions about what I remember, writing down my fragmentary answers with careful script.
"Sometimes memories come back gradually," she says, not looking up from her writing. "Like a dam that's been damaged—just a trickle at first, then more."
But the trickle never comes. Days pass in a haze of carefully crafted routine. I help Marnai with small tasks around the cottage, learning the rhythms of village life without ever feeling like I truly belong to them. The other villagers are kind but cautious, watching me with the wariness of people who've learned to be suspicious of strangers.
It's Derri who notices the changes in my body before I do.
"You're looking peaked," she mentions one morning as I help her sort through supplies for the village school. "More tired than someone your age should be after a head injury that's mostly healed."
I pause in my counting of slate pencils, suddenly aware of the bone-deep exhaustion that's been plaguing me for days. And the nausea that strikes at random moments, usually when someone's cooking something that should smell appetizing. And the way my clothes have started feeling tight across my chest and waist, though Marnai's generous meals should account for that.
"It's probably just?—"
"When was your last bleeding?" Derri's question is gentle but direct, the kind of practical inquiry from one woman to another that cuts through polite pretense.
My last... The question hits that familiar wall of nothingness, but this time there's something else. A flutter of awareness, like recognition at the edge of consciousness.
"I don't remember."
But even as I say it, my hand drifts to my stomach of its own accord. The gesture feels familiar, protective. Like something I've done before.
Derri sets down her pen and really looks at me for the first time in days. Her gaze is knowing, experienced—the look of a woman who's delivered enough babies to recognize the signs without needing confirmation.
