Recognition

♥ AZALEA'S POV ♥

He's tall — tall enough that he has to duck slightly under the doorframe — with a build that suggests he's spent real time training rather than just looking the part, dark hair pushed back like he ran a hand through it one too many times. And when he smiles at me, easy and warm, something in my chest does a small, humiliating flip.

There's someone more beautiful than Elias.

The thought arrives before I can stop it, and right behind it comes the familiar, exhausting wave of self-consciousness — the awareness of the hospital gown swallowing my frame, the IV taped to my arm, the fact that I probably look like something dragged out of a river. 

"Hi," I say instead, voice still rough. 

"I'm Raymond." He steps closer, hands tucked into his pockets like he's trying to take up less space in the room. "I'm glad you're awake."

“Thank you, Raymond," I repeat, testing the name, searching my memory for it and coming up empty. "I'm so grateful for your help. I'm sorry, have we — do I know you?"

"You don't recognize him?" Martha's jaw actually drops. "Azalea. Look at that face. How do you not recognize that face?"

"I don't know what to tell you," I say, weak laugh catching in my throat. "He looks familiar, but I can't place it."

"It's been two years," Raymond says, something gentle in the way he says it, like he expected exactly this. "And I've changed a bit since then. Do you remember — two years ago, a little girl, another territory. Some men who meant to hurt her."

The memory surfaces slow, then all at once — a dark stairwell, a girl's terrified scream, the taste of copper in my mouth from a split lip I didn't feel until hours later.

I gasp. "That was your—"

"My sister," Raymond finishes, something thick in his voice now. "Jasmine. We've been looking for you ever since."

I don't know what to say to that. Two years of being searched for, and I never knew.

"I should let you rest," he says before I can find words, already stepping back toward the door. "I'll come back in the morning."

The door clicks shut behind him, and Martha rounds on me so fast I nearly flinch.

"Okay, no. Absolutely not. You do not get to sit on a story like that for two years." She grabs my hand, eyes wide. "Details. Now. All of them."

"It's not that big a story."

"Azalea."

"Fine." I sigh, settling back against the pillows. "It was one of those errands the Queen used to send me on — the difficult ones, the ones no one else wanted. I was in the neighboring territory delivering something for her, and I heard screaming near a stairwell. I went to check. There were men, and a girl, and I—" I gesture vaguely at my own memory of the night. "I got her out. I got hurt doing it. But I didn't stay. I couldn't. I had a deadline to make it back to the palace, so I left the second I knew she was safe."

"And you made the deadline?"

"I did." My mouth twists. "The Queen barely looked up from her desk. Said the errand 'wasn't as pretty as she'd hoped,' whatever that meant. I don't think she ever even noticed I was limping."

Martha goes very still, the particular stillness of someone gathering the energy for a proper explosion. "Why do I not know this story?"

"Because I knew exactly how you'd react," I say. "You'd have marched into that palace and said something that would've gotten you charged with treason before sunrise."

"That's — okay, that's fair, I probably would have." She exhales hard through her nose, then her eyes drop, cataloguing me properly for the first time since I woke up. Her expression shifts. "Azzy. Have you looked at yourself?"

I glance down. My hands look different — thinner, the bones of my wrists more visible than I remember them being in years. I press my palm flat against my own stomach, half in disbelief.

"I don't—" I don't know how to finish that sentence.

"You've lost weight. Like, visibly. In days." Martha's voice softens. "There's a doctor, by the way. Cute one. Said he needed to see you the second you were up."

As if summoned, a knock sounds at the door, and it swings open before either of us can answer.

Forrest leans into the doorway, grinning and waving with far more enthusiasm than I've ever seen out of a hospital physician in my life.

"There she is!" he says, like we're old friends reuniting instead of a doctor greeting a patient he's never actually spoken to while conscious. "The woman of the hour. Let's talk about everything happening inside that very interesting bloodstream of yours."