Page 71 of Finding Her (Lore of the Fields #1)

My eyes fell to where taupe gray hair scattered across the hospital gown.

Did Graysen know? He had told me I couldn’t leave the house without dyeing it.

“ Save your energy for your own healing ” he’d said when I instinctively reached for his wound.

The word choice was too precise. He knew.

Why hadn’t he told me? If I knew I was something different, something endangered, I would’ve been more cautious. Right?

I thought back to the version of myself that was lost, confused, and disoriented.

A damaged woman suffering from amnesia, and certain she had a life to return to on Earth.

What would I have done if he’d told me the truth?

That my human life was gone. That I was trapped in a foreign world, forced to face the strange and horrifying pieces of my history without a happy memory to call my own.

Would I have let myself believe him, even if it risked my sanity?

Could I really have just thanked him for the information and moved on happy and healthy?

“Did you say our origin was Earth? Do we have a past there?” I wasn’t sure if it even mattered anymore. I had a new life, one that I felt connected to. Still, I was sick of not having all the pieces to my own puzzle.

“You probably spent a miserable childhood there until your adult demigod body couldn’t tolerate the air pollution anymore and you got generously zapped by our mother to some random ass field in the dazzling world of Trebianna,” she sang sarcastically, her voice filled with venom.

“Our egg donor hardly has the best taste in sperm donors. Paternity has proven to set most of us up for failure on Earth. I’m sure you aren’t forgetting anything worth remembering there,” she said as if the notion should be comforting.

“It’s a lot to wrap my head around,” I breathed, trying to weave a tapestry of my life that felt increasingly like a net trapping me with every added thread.

“What do you remember?” A flick of empathy appeared, and immediately vanished again.

I swallowed. “I just remember being injured in the woods, then Gray—somebody found me and told me I wasn’t on Earth.

” The memory of Graysen’s rescue caused tears to pool in my eyes.

I wanted him here to save me now. I wanted to be in that carriage, wrapped in his smoke, processing everything out loud while he listened patiently and intently until I made sense of it all.

“You didn’t remember anything from before that? Nothing about Trebianna?” Her voice softened once her eyes tracked the tear that trickled down my cheek.

I shook my head.

Dia took in a deep breath. “Faeryn, right? I don’t know what to tell you about your past. If you don’t remember Trebianna, you probably weren’t here for more than a few seasons before getting captured.

Some other escapees I’ve talked to remember the concept of this world existing, just not what they were doing in it. ”

“I also don’t remember anything that happened on Earth.”

“Amnesia is complicated.” She shrugged. “None of the other pod women had life memories either.”

Brief or not, I had lived on Trebianna. My heart ached.

I knew I’d lost my memories from Earth, but it never occurred to me that I had lost a life here .

My mind raced. Everything that Graysen taught me, had I known it before?

Did I have a place in this world? I might have even had relationships, a real life …

And now it was all gone. Just out of reach, on this very planet.

I had spent so long trying to get back to what I thought was home, when it had been here all along.

It wasn’t a galaxy away; it was right next door.

And I had no way of recovering those chapters.

“Did you forget anything?” I sniffled and tried to cut off my rampaging thoughts. I was finally getting answers, and didn’t want to waste another moment in ignorance. It was time to focus on what I could learn instead of what I could never recover.

“They never successfully hooked me up to a pod. I remember everything .” Her voice was pained, like she would have preferred amnesia.

“And they won’t get me into one. I’d rather die than give them a single drop of my life force.

” It struck me that her desire to stay autonomous seemed more driven by spite than a desire to live.

“The pods, when do they—”

“Once we’re healthy, they’ll take you to them,” she stated factually, as if she had seen it happen before.

“Then why the fuck did you tell me to take that injection?” I snapped, my eyes wide. I wasn’t trying to accelerate my way back to amnesia before I could get out of here. What if I forgot Graysen?

“You were getting the injection either way. I just spared you being knocked out again.”

My pulse was accelerating. Now that she was the calm one, my rage was eager to take its turn. “What now?”

She examined her hand. “I figure every time I’m almost healed, I’m gonna break a few fingers to prolong the process until I can escape.” She passively wiggled her digits, considering which would be the first sacrifice. “You should do the same.”

“Is that what you did last time?” I tucked my hands between my thighs, subconsciously protecting them.

“Last time they didn’t get me in a cage,” she said dully. “Any more questions? I try to sleep post-injection to keep myself on some sort of schedule.”

“Right.” I offered a half smile in the name of decency. “You go ahead.”

She made her way to the corner farthest from the acrylic cutouts and reclined against the solid wall. “If you need me, you know where to find me.” Her curls fell over her eyes as she tucked her chin to her chest.

There was no way in hell I could sleep at that moment. Maybe that was for the best? I wasn’t sure there was much purpose to someone taking watch, but it couldn’t hurt.

Dia was evidently a hardened survivor. She’d breached security once and freed me and an unknown number of my half-siblings.

Somehow, she'd weathered the predatory forest, possibly for as long as I had been forming a life in Virylan.

She was fully prepared to break herself physically in the name of remaining independent.

I could never match her in bad-assery, but I felt in the depths of my soul that I would do whatever was necessary to get back to Graysen.