CHAPTER 6: Say Her Name

POV: Imani

The exam room felt painfully cold, but it wasn’t just the temperature.

Someone walked in with me, guiding me by my elbow. I didn’t resist because my legs were already feeling weak and unsteady, like they were lagging a few seconds behind my mind, just like that first night on the transport. There was dried blood between my fingers, but it wasn’t mine. I stared at it, noticing the rusty brown lines that were etched into my knuckles, and for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to wash it off. Because doing so felt like it might erase the last twenty minutes, and I wasn’t ready for that. Too much had happened in those twenty minutes, and I still hadn’t figured out where exactly to put any of it in my head.

The room had its own story to tell. It had a real exam table; the vinyl was cracked and patched with brittle duct tape. A cabinet with a glass front sat nearby, half-empty, and strewn with various bottles that someone had taken the time to relabel in a neat, careful handwriting. The air was thick with the smell of stale antiseptic, mixed with woodsmoke, as if it had settled into every surface of this area over the years. Above the table, a single bulb buzzed and flickered, too bright against the backdrop of a night spent around a cozy fire. I flinched away from it, my shoulders tightening, as if the light had dragged the courtyard back into the room with me. I could still see the creature’s face, still hear the sound it made when it said my name, and no matter how many times I tried to tell myself I was inside and safe, my body wouldn’t just catch up with that fact yet.

I took a seat on the edge of the table because I was told to, not that I would have argued my way out of it though. My hands rested between my knees, and I kept rubbing my thumb over the dried blood on my knuckles without realizing that I was doing it.

“My lord,” a young aide said, lingering by the door, her hands was twisting nervously, clearly searching for a gentle way for her to express her thoughts. “It might be best if you wait outside. It’s not really appropriate for you to be here during the examination, especially not…”

“I’m staying,” he said flatly, without even bothering to look at her.

He pulled a stool next to the table and sat down, signaling that the conversation was over. The aide opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it back like she thought better of it. Zane didn’t look at her again. His attention was fixed on me, and when our eyes met for a brief second, there was something in the way his expression was that made me look away first. It wasn’t the controlled stare he had given me during the ceremony. It was more direct than that, more unsettled, as though he was still seeing the creature reaching for me every time he looked in my direction.

Watching him, I felt a confusing warmth stir beneath my ribs, a flicker of empathy for the man I had just decided I disliked intensely hours earlier. I didn’t want to feel anything for him. I had spent the entire day reminding myself that he was the man who had taken me into this place because of a debt I had never agreed to owe and had no control over. He was the man I had been bound to without either of us choosing it. Yet here he was, sitting beside me with blood on his hands because he had chosen to throw himself between me and a strange walker that had called my name. My feelings seemed to be at odds with each other, and I hated how little control I had over that.

The lady who I learnt to be Dr. Kovac entered, without much of a knock, letting the door close behind her. She was older, with short gray hair that looked kind of practical, and her hands were already pulling on a pair of gloves that had probably seen better days. Without greeting me or checking in on how I was feeling, she just reached for my uninjured hand, turned my palm up under the harsh light, and paused. Her stillness lasted only a moment, maybe just a couple of seconds. Yet, after my years of experience, I could sense when someone’s expression shifted from calm to something that was more complex. I noticed how her thumb stopped moving against my skin, and also how her breath caught before she quietly let it out. Then, in a heartbeat, she covered it up so fast, smoothing her features back into an indifferent mask.

“Interesting,” she said casually, as if she was discussing a change in the weather.

“That’s not what your face said a moment ago,” I said.

Her eyes shot up to meet mine, sharply and attentively. “You’re observant.”

“I’ve had practice,” I replied, nodding my head.

She didn’t respond to that. Instead what she did was that she leaned in closer to me, tilting my hand toward the light again. And for the first time since the binding happened, I really looked at my palm, my stomach tightening in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the pain from earlier.

There was more than just a scar there. The mark had taken on an entirely new shape, faintly visible beneath my skin, and spreading out in thin, deliberate lines that seemed more like a drawing than a wound. It radiated from the center of my palm in a pattern that didn’t resemble any healing injury I’d stitched or treated in my eight years of experience. It almost resembled frost on glass or misaligned veins, except there was something too deliberate about it, too precise.

“That’s not normal,” I blurted out, slightly taken aback. “Or is it?”

“Binding marks can differ,” Kovac replied. And something in the way she did felt wrong to me, as if it was a standard response she had rehearsed, like she was deciding that I didn’t need to know the full truth.

Zane’s stool scraped against the floor as he leaned in closer. His eyes dropping to my hand, and I watched his jaw tighten when he caught sight of the mark. His hand moved slightly, almost as if he was about to reach for mine, but then stopped himself.

“Petra.”

“I need to run tests before I say anything conclusive,” Dr. Kovac insisted.

“That’s not an answer either,” Zane shot back, clearly annoyed at her withdrawal.

His voice was sharper than it had been with the aide from earlier, and I could feel the tension gathering between him and Kovac. He didn’t take his eyes off my palm, though. Something about the way he looked at it made me wonder if he had seen something similar to this before, or if he was just as unsettled by it as I was.

Before she could respond, the door swung open again. Naomi stepped in without hesitation, moving into the room as if she owned it, which, I was beginning to suspect that she probably did.

“I’ll take it from here,” she said, reaching for my chart on the counter. “You should both get some rest. It’s been a long night.”

“No,” Zane replied as he stood up, his calm demeanor slipping away.

There were no dramatic gestures, or even shouting, yet the air in the room seemed to have shifted when he rose, freezing Naomi’s hand where it was. He looked at her with the same hard focus I had seen in the courtyard, and something in the way his posture was, made it clear he wasn’t going to let her brush this aside.

“You said ‘the last one,’” he pressed, his voice coming out steady but firm. “Out in the courtyard. In front of my guards, in front of Imani, and in front of half this compound. You can’t just say something like that and then retreat to your office while deciding what I’m allowed to know about it.”

“Zane, this isn’t the place for…” Naomi began, and I sensed the unspoken tension that was starting to tighten between them, making my breath hitch.

“It’s exactly the right place.” He said, his voice coming out low, but there was something rigid underneath it. It was the same thing I’d recognized earlier when he had that intense moment where he tore that thing off its feet in the courtyard. He had looked at that creature with nothing but fury in his eyes because it had come for me, and now he was looking at Naomi with that same refusal to back down. “You work for me. You’ve been working for my father and then me for longer than I’ve been alive. I’ve allowed you to manage things because you’re good at it. But you don’t get to know something about my wife’s life being in danger and decide, on your own authority, that I don’t need to hear it right now.”

Hearing the word “wife “ hit me hard in the chest, and for a split second, I could feel the weight of that single word sitting between us. It sounded strange coming from him, especially after everything that had happened between us. I looked at him before I could stop myself, and the moment his eyes met mine, something shifted in my chest again. But I didn’t have enough time to figure out what it was before the scene around me continued to play out.

Naomi’s expression changed. Her face had gone tight, carefully keeping her composure, and for the first time since stepping into that big hall, I saw her think through what she wanted to say instead of just rattling off a response.

“There was another woman,” she said slowly and with precision, like she was placing each word down carefully so that they couldn’t be turned against her later. “Years ago. Before your father died. She had a reaction similar to this one during her own binding. That’s all I’m ready to share with you tonight, Zane.”

The room became eerily silent. Kovac who was beside me stiffened again, and this time she wasn’t hiding how tense she had gone. I looked between them, my pulse starting to pick up as the pieces refused to fit together. Another woman. Another binding. And a reaction that was similar to mine. And Naomi had already known exactly what she was talking about when she called that creature the one who had found the last one.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said. “That’s just the first sentence of one.”

Naomi’s gaze shot to me in the blink of an eye, coldly and calculating, the same way she had looked at me earlier when she pointed out I was thinner than what the reports suggested.

“It’s the only answer you’re getting tonight,” she replied. “There’s no time for a proper discussion, and this isn’t the place for it. You’ve both had a long day. We’ll talk again when there’s more to say.”

She turned to leave, the chart tucked under her arm as she reached for the door.

“The archive will know,” Kovac said softly. “If it’s still there.”

Naomi paused, her hand frozen on the door handle as she slowly turned her head around to look at Kovačlc. The expression on her face was completely different now, not cold, also not composed. There was something closer to concern there, a brief loss of control that made my attention heighten. It was as if Kovac had just said something she wasn’t supposed to say while there were still witnesses around.

No one bothered to explain what the archive was. And nobody made a move to explain who the last one had been either.