Chapter 112: "Never Trust Women!"
The sky outside had only begun to pale, but Cyrus had already lost any chance of sleeping again.
He got out of bed, turned on the desk lamp, and sat cross-legged before the narrow table with a notebook, a pen, and the ring on his hand held under the light.
The ring was wrong.
That much no longer needed guessing.
Cyrus opened the notebook and forced himself to write down what he had discovered before the fading dream could turn into another vague discomfort he dismissed as nerves.
His memory had always started earlier than most people’s. He should have had scattered images from when he was around three: fragments, colors, voices, rooms, the shape of someone’s hand, the edge of a window, the feeling of cold floor under bare feet. They did not have to be complete memories to exist. They only had to be there.
Now, whenever he reached for them, a fog settled over everything.
Old memories were supposed to be blurry. That part was normal. What was not normal was the way they seemed to blur more the harder he tried to recall them, as if a layer of frost had formed over glass he once could see through.
Cyrus bent over the page.
He began listing ages.
Seventeen years of memory should have left enough material to fill the notebook with disorder. Recent events came easily. Grayhaven, St. Alder, The Full Moon Lounge, Malcolm, Helena, Faye, Daphne, Audra, the apartment, the suppressants, the rent, the first hot meal he bought with his own money, the first night he locked his own door and realized nobody would open it without permission.
Those memories remained clear.
Too clear, perhaps, because they all belonged to the life after escape.
He moved backward.
The farther he went, the less his hand wrote.
When he reached the years before ten, the page slowed to almost nothing. Not because the memories were unimportant. Not because his life then had been full of changes too numerous to sort. Those years had been repetitive enough that he should have remembered at least the repeated shape of them.
A boring year was still a year.
Even if one day resembled the next three hundred and sixty-four, the sameness itself should have left marks.
Cyrus stared at the blank space beneath the number nine.
Nothing solid came.
A numbness he had not felt in a long time spread through him.
The ring had not stolen his life.
It might be stealing something else.
Memory.
Or perhaps it was not stealing anything directly. Perhaps the longer he wore it, the more distant pieces of himself became. Either way, considering who had put the ring on him, Cyrus decided to assume the worst.
Isolde was taking his memories.
That explanation made the most sense because it was the most annoying.
Cyrus pressed the pen hard enough to dent the paper.
Where had she found something like this?
Isolde’s position among the Frostborn had always been high. She had resources, authority, knowledge, and enough people willing to help her call control by prettier names. Even so, a ring that could not be removed and might erase his past should not have been lying around for her to use.
It was cheating.
There was no other word for it.
If the ring truly stole memories, what was Cyrus supposed to do? Every plan he made could be taken from him. Every route, every warning, every ally, every reason for running could be emptied out until he no longer understood why he had fought so hard to leave.
No wonder Isolde had shown no panic after he escaped.
She had waited because waiting still worked for her.
Was everything after his escape still inside her arrangement?
The thought made his jaw tighten.
A vivid shape surfaced in his mind: a woman too beautiful to belong anywhere safe, white and cold and patient in the way only someone who believed the ending had already been written could be patient.
Cyrus looked down at his hand.
The ring sat plain and fixed on his finger.
He considered the obvious solutions.
Cutting off the finger.
Cutting off more than the finger.
His expression twisted.
People who could casually sacrifice a body part for freedom were not ordinary humans anymore. They were terrifying legends, and Cyrus had no interest in becoming one before breakfast.
He wanted a normal life.
A normal life generally included all ten fingers.
Besides, he did not even know whether damaging himself would remove the ring. If it stayed attached somehow, he would have lost a finger and gained nothing except a worse handwriting problem.
Freedom was important.
Becoming incomplete for a guess was too much.
Cyrus leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.
Hopelessness pressed in for several seconds, dull and heavy.
Was the ending simply waiting to be caught?
If Isolde took enough of his memories, he might become someone who could be deceived by her again. Worse, he might forget she was dangerous while she remembered exactly how to smile, how to speak, how to make captivity sound like home.
When he had known what she was, she had still managed to keep him moving in circles.
Without memories, he would be easier than a dog on a leash.
That image made the helplessness turn into anger.
People really should not joke carelessly.
He had used fake amnesia at the lounge because the lie was convenient. It discouraged flirtation, explained the ring, and sometimes made customers tip more out of pity. He had never expected the universe to take the joke personally.
Now real memory loss might be coming for him.
Cyrus lowered his head again.
No.
He could not decide the conclusion so quickly.
First, he needed records.
If his memory could be stolen, then he would make memory external. Paper did not rely on his mind, and a notebook could remind him of what he no longer knew. Even if future Cyrus became useless, future Cyrus could at least read.
Cyrus pulled a fresh notebook from the drawer.
On the first page, he wrote in heavy, dark strokes:
Never trust women!
He looked at the sentence.
Then he wrote it twice more beneath the first line.
Never trust women!
Never trust women!
The page looked much safer after that.
He tapped the pen against the paper.
Helena could probably be trusted.
Faye could definitely be trusted, at least more than most people.
That complicated the rule.
Cyrus considered writing a list of exceptions, then decided the first page should remain simple. Future him could handle nuance after surviving the headline.
Daphne crossed his mind next.
If he collected enough leverage against her, perhaps he could make her work for him. A teacher with giant-blooded strength, housing access, and a terrifying fixation could be useful if properly restrained.
The idea collapsed almost immediately.
If he actually lost his memory, Daphne would not become a loyal guard dog. She would eat him.
Cyrus crossed that option out before writing it down.
Dragging other people into this might also be wrong. Faye had siblings. Helena had Malcolm and her own life. Owen was normal enough that putting him anywhere near Isolde would be cruel. Audra had the glamourkin ring, but Audra herself was currently a problem wearing a school uniform.
Could he ask for help openly?
The thought arrived with surprising force.
Daphne had taught him something useful without meaning to. If an alarm could make a stronger person hesitate, then outside attention could become protection. Cyrus did not need to beat everyone alone if he could make the situation public enough that acting against him became costly.
Someone official would be better.
Detective Rhea Maddox appeared in his mind.
A public servant.
A woman with authority, resources, weapons, records, and the ability to make certain kinds of danger difficult to ignore.
Also a woman, which weakened the first-page rule.
Cyrus stared at the notebook.
If he could build a decent relationship with Rhea, perhaps she could become a shield when Isolde appeared. The problem was that protection from Rhea might come with its own leash. Police attention had doors, files, tracking, questions, and enough authority to become another cage if handled carelessly.
Even so, it was an option.
Options mattered.
Cyrus tore out the first page and set it aside.
The warning remained useful, but it did not belong at the front of an emergency record. A future memory-damaged version of himself needed more than suspicion. He needed facts.
Cyrus began again.
Starting from age ten, he wrote down everything he could remember.
He wrote about the Frostborn settlement in broad strokes where details allowed. He wrote about the parts he was certain were true and marked the parts that were already blurred. He wrote about Isolde, the ring, the fake amnesia story, his escape, Grayhaven, The Full Moon Lounge, St. Alder, his apartment, suppressants, the black room, and the people whose names mattered.
He wrote carefully enough that a stranger could understand the danger.
Then he read it from the beginning.
The result made him feel strange.
All the years before Grayhaven seemed thin compared with the last hundred days. Those hundred days had been crowded with rent, food, work, school, bad decisions, women he should avoid, women he could not entirely avoid, strange rings, strange dreams, and the occasional small cake bought because he wanted one.
Life before escape had lasted longer.
Life after escape felt more real.
If Isolde eventually managed to steal his recent memories, he would need to run again before she arrived. He would have to leave notes somewhere he could not miss, gather money, prepare a bag, and find a way to move before forgetting why.
Before that, he needed to speak with Audra.
Her glamourkin ring might be dangerous, but it had effects he could understand. If she could be persuaded to lend it, or at least explain it, the ring might give him a way to resist Isolde’s approach.
He still had a chance.
Probably.
Cyrus rested his forehead against his knuckles.
If Isolde really was stealing memories, then she was playing unfairly at a level he could not respect.
In another city, inside a government office that smelled of paper, coffee, and stale air conditioning, Detective Rhea Maddox sneezed.
The male colleague at the next desk looked over immediately.
"The weather is getting colder, Detective. You should add another layer before you get sick."
"I am fine."
Rhea’s voice stayed flat as she turned the page in front of her.
Her desk was covered with files from the rare-blood case her unit had been handling for nearly two weeks. A reference book lay open beside the report, its marked pages comparing known glamourkin traits with the testimony she had spent days extracting.
The arrest itself had been simple enough.
Everything after that had been paperwork.
The glamourkin they caught had refused to speak for hours at a time, answered half the questions with technically useless truths, and corrected official terminology only when doing so made the interview more irritating. The interrogation had taken far longer than it should have, and organizing the details into a report had stolen the rest of Rhea’s week.
Now the key points were finally marked.
Glamourkin could induce a deep-sleep-like trance through eye contact.
While the target remained in that state, the glamourkin could manipulate the subconscious and make the target obey commands.
Their survival required vital essence from living beings.
Taking too much at once could endanger the victim’s life.
Rhea tapped her pen against the paper.
Most of the findings matched the rare-blood field guide almost exactly. That made the verification process feel redundant, but official reports did not accept "the book was right" as evidence. She had needed testimony, incident records, medical observations, and cross-checks.
The glamourkin had made each step difficult.
Rhea leaned back in her chair.
Were glamourkin inherently dangerous?
No.
The answer irritated her because it was true.
A species need did not automatically equal criminal intent. Circumstances, access, consent, desperation, and the rules of the human world all mattered. Some rare-bloods adapted. Some did not. Some were given no clean way to adapt and became everyone else’s emergency once damage had already happened.
Rhea’s job was not to rewrite the world.
She could record what the suspect claimed, verify what could be verified, and submit the report through the proper channels. If the glamourkin could not live within the rules, the outcome would be obvious enough without Rhea adding emotion to the file.
She signed the next section and placed it in the finished stack.
Two more days of work should close the case.
After that, she could return to Grayhaven and rest properly.
Rhea glanced at the rare-blood field guide, then at the cold coffee on her desk.
A drink at The Full Moon Lounge sounded good.