Forgotten Read Online Free Page B

the second night.
    He could forget, while they sat with their backs against the wall. Her head would be on his shoulder, their son would sleep in her arms, and they would talk about nothing important. The cell faded away. He could even forget about Kissa and the Namer. Things were so simple, so perfect. Kaie’s anger slid further every night. He could almost be content with their life together.
    The days were harder. There wasn’t enough to do. Keegan spent most of the time sleeping. Peren was out running food and messages all over the estate. There was too much time for him to think about the ugly white lines branded into her right shoulder. They were supposed to look like half of a leaf, but all Kaie saw was the way it ruined her soft skin. The Mistress did that, the same one who made her run deliveries. Everything in their small little room was tainted by the shadowy figure of that woman, and it made him half mad thinking about how she could take everything from him.
    Vaughan’s visits helped. The boy was meek and irritating, but Kaie was grateful for the distraction. The kid offered to tell him about his past, which Kaie refused, and so they spent an hour or two nearly every day talking about the empire that enslaved them.
    Months passed with Kaie hardly noticing. Even the hardest days faded from his mind when her hair draped around his head, hiding him away from everything except her eyes. She would look at him, see right through him, and she would smile. He lived for that smile.
    The crisp, cool wind of fall grew heavy with the promise of snow. Kaie learned to cook and used a small knife to carve himself a flute. It took a lot of failed attempts and more advice than he wanted, but he liked making music. Keegan loved it too. On the rest days, after they finally crawled out from beneath their blankets, Kaie would make breakfast and Peren would tell a story. Fai tales and myths, mostly. She claimed he told them to her once. They were all new to his ears. Then he would go for a walk around the shanty neighborhood called West Field. The walks gave him time to come back to himself, free of distractions.
    He still wasn’t sure what to do with this life he was thrust into. He prepared himself for hatred and violence, instead finding himself a piece of this unaccountably happy family. It was changing him. He wasn’t the man who wrote promises to invisible jailors in his own blood anymore. Almost, he could imagine growing old and content in this house.
    That thought stuck in his teeth like a string of meat that refused to be dislodged. This was not his life. Not really. The girl who spent each night in his arms, the baby cooing softly in her lap, they belonged to a boy erased a little less than two years ago. He was borrowing them, but it wouldn’t last. It wasn’t freedom. There was always a Hollow standing still as a statue, just outside the house to remind him every time he felt himself forgetting. Guarding him or against him. Not even Vaughan seemed to know which. They were more constant than sunrise, following him on his walks.
    Walks that often turned to runs. Past the twelve shacks of West Field, with their happy children playing in the small drifts of snow and bright colors, around a barren stretch of land he figured was used to grow crops in warmer seasons, to the twelve shacks of East Field. There, things were not nearly so pleasant looking. There were some specks of color in the windows of the shacks, and a child or two could be spotted peering out from behind the hide doors, but the place was miserable. He thought about asking Vaughan about it almost every day, and decided against it each time. Something told him that he didn’t really want to know why the two were so different.
    One of the Hollows was always behind him, never outside arm’s reach. No amount of shouting chased the thing away. Kaie even resorted to throwing stones once, but the creature didn’t even seem to notice when one connected with its