Every Time I Die, He Remembers

CHAPTER THREE

Every Time I Die, He Remembers

Apparently, dying was not enough to make them leave me alone.

I woke with my teeth clenched, my fingernails digging into my palms, and the unmistakable feeling that someone had just finished screaming inside my head.

For several seconds, I couldn’t move.

I knew the room before I opened my eyes.

The cold stone beneath me. The narrow window. The broken chair. The metallic smell of blood.

I knew all of it.

And that was the problem.

I rolled onto my side and retched.

Nothing came out.

My body was empty, but my mind was full of things that had never happened and memories that felt too real to be lies. White walls. Glass breaking in the wrong direction. Girls with my face. A man with black gloves marking something on a clipboard.

Another failed iteration.

I pressed both hands over my mouth.

“No more,” I whispered.

The room offered no answer.

I forced myself upright, half expecting to find another dead girl waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

Instead, I found the dagger.

It lay beside my knee.

I stared at it for a long time before picking it up.

The blade was clean.

No blood. No fingerprints. No evidence that it had ever been used.

Yet the moment my fingers closed around the handle, a voice whispered inside my skull.

You should have stayed dead.

I threw the dagger across the room.

It struck the wall and landed point-first in the floor.

I scrambled backwards.

“Who said that?”

Silence.

I waited, breathing hard, until the absurdity of asking an empty room for answers became almost funny.

Almost.

Then someone knocked on the wall.

Three times.

I froze.

A pause.

Two more knocks.

I remembered those sounds.

Not from the white room. Not from the staircase.

From somewhere deeper, somewhere that belonged to me.

Before I could decide what to do, a narrow section of stone shifted aside, revealing a passage I was certain hadn’t existed before.

A woman stood inside it.

She was perhaps my age, dressed in black trousers and a dark red blouse, with a silver chain around her neck. Her hair fell in loose waves around her face, and she held a small pistol with the casual confidence of someone who had used it before breakfast.

Her eyes moved from my face to the dagger embedded in the floor.

Then she sighed.

“Well,” she said, “at least you haven’t killed anyone yet.”

I stared at her.

“Who are you?”

She lowered the pistol.

“That’s a terrible way to greet someone who has spent three nights trying to keep you alive.”

“Three nights?”

Her expression changed.

Only slightly, but I noticed.

“You’re not supposed to ask that.”

“Apparently, I’m not supposed to ask a lot of things.”

For the first time, she smiled.

It was a small, crooked smile, irritatingly attractive and entirely inappropriate for someone holding a weapon in a secret passageway.

“You’re getting better at this.”

“At what?”

“Being difficult.”

She stepped into the room.

I immediately reached for the dagger.

Her gaze followed the movement.

“Careful. You don’t want to point that at me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I happen to like you.”

The answer came so easily that I forgot what I was going to say.

She seemed to notice.

Her smile deepened.

“That was quick.”

“What’s quick?”

“Nothing.”

She walked past me, retrieved the dagger from the floor, and examined its blade.

For a moment, the playful expression disappeared from her face.

“Did you hear anything when you woke up?”

I hesitated.

A voice.

A scream.

The sound of a man saying begin again.

I shook my head.

She studied me, apparently unconvinced.

Then she held out the dagger.

“Keep it with you. Whatever happens, don’t let anyone take it.”

“Why?”

“Because the last time you did, half the city forgot you existed.”

My fingers closed around the handle.

I looked at her.

“What is my name?”

Her expression softened.

For one strange moment, I thought she might cry.

Instead, she reached towards me and gently brushed a strand of hair away from my eyes.

“You really don’t remember anything, do you?”

I shook my head.

Her hand lingered against my cheek a second longer than necessary.

Something fluttered in my chest, unfamiliar and inconvenient.

She was beautiful. I had established that already.

But there was something about the way she looked at me that made beauty seem like the least dangerous thing about her.

“I wish you did,” she whispered.

Before I could ask what she meant, a sound came from the passage behind her.

Footsteps.

Slow.

Measured.

The woman’s entire body went rigid.

She snatched the pistol from her waistband and pointed it towards the opening.

“Get behind me.”

I didn’t move.

“Who is it?”

She looked at me.

And for the first time, I saw genuine fear in her eyes.

“Someone who should have stayed buried.”

A shadow appeared in the passage.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in black.

A hood concealed his face.

My breath caught.

The memory came back so violently that my knees nearly buckled.

A garden beneath a pale moon.

A gloved hand reaching for mine.

Blood running down a silver blade.

And a voice whispering, You weren’t supposed to wake up.

The hooded man stopped at the entrance.

He looked past the woman with the gun.

Straight at me.

Neither of us spoke.

Then he lifted his hand.

The same gesture.

The same impossible familiarity.

My fingers tightened around the dagger.

The woman beside me whispered something under her breath.

I barely heard her.

Because the man had finally spoken.

“Hello, darling.”

My heart lurched.

I hated him immediately.

I hated the way that one word made my chest ache. I hated the strange, desperate part of me that wanted to cross the room and put my hands against his face just to find out whether he was real.

Most of all, I hated the way he looked at me.

Like he had loved me.

Like he had lost me.

Like he was already preparing to lose me again.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

His head tilted slightly.

“No,” he said.

A pause.

“Not anymore.”

The woman beside me raised her gun.

“Take one more step and I’ll shoot.”

He didn’t even look at her.

“You’re welcome to try, Mara.”

Mara’s finger tightened around the trigger.

“Don’t call me that.”

For the first time, his gaze shifted to her.

Something cold passed between them.

Then he looked back at me.

“Have they told you what happens when you remember?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He took one step into the room.

Mara fired.

The gunshot tore through the silence.

I screamed.

But the bullet never reached him.

It stopped in midair, inches from his chest, spinning slowly as though caught in invisible fingers.

The man’s eyes never left mine.

“Now,” he said softly, “we have very little time.”

The bullet dropped to the floor.

Mara stared at it.

I stared at him.

And somewhere beyond the walls, a bell began to ring.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The hooded man extended his hand towards me.

“Come with me.”

I should have refused.

I should have demanded answers, demanded his name, demanded to know why the sight of him felt like remembering a home I’d never lived in.

Instead, I looked at his outstretched hand.

And my own hand began to rise.

Mara seized my wrist.

“Don’t you dare.”

I looked at her.

There was something in her expression I couldn’t bear to examine too closely.

Fear, yes.

But beneath it, something more painful.

Something that looked suspiciously like jealousy.

The hooded man lowered his hand.

His voice, when he spoke again, was almost unbearably gentle.

“She’ll tell you I’m the reason you’re suffering.”

Mara said nothing.

“She’ll tell you that I’m dangerous. That I lie. That everything you’ve ever felt around me is a trick.”

He paused.

“She won’t tell you what happened the last time you chose to stay with her.”

My stomach turned.

I looked at Mara.

She was pale.

“What happened?” I whispered.

She released my wrist.

The silence that followed was worse than any answer.

The man in the hood stepped backwards into the passage.

“Ask her about the garden,” he said.

Then he disappeared.

The bell stopped ringing.

For several seconds, neither Mara nor I moved.

Finally, I turned towards her.

“What garden?”

She closed her eyes.

And when she opened them again, the woman who had smiled at me moments earlier was gone.

In her place stood someone who looked as though she had just watched a grave open.

“There’s something you need to understand,” she whispered.

“What?”

She swallowed.

“The man you just met has been looking for you for a very long time.”

I waited.

Mara’s gaze dropped to the dagger in my hand.

“And the last time he found you…”

Her voice broke.

”…you begged me to kill you before he could touch you again.”