(Lina’s POV)

I woke up to a headache and a ceiling I didn’t recognize.

Everything felt slightly wrong the way things felt after sleeping too long or not long enough.

I blinked.

The bed was enormous. Soft in a way that felt almost offensive after...after what, exactly. I couldn’t finish the thought.

Did I become a princess?

The idea lasted about two seconds before I noticed the person sitting in the chair beside the bed.

A boy. Dark hair. Asleep with his arms crossed and his head tilted at an angle that was going to hurt his neck when he woke up. He looked like someone who had sat down for a moment and lost the argument with exhaustion.

Who is he?

I sat up slowly, careful not to make noise.

Did he bring me here?

I looked around the room. Large. Well-furnished. Not a hospital, not a ruin, not anywhere I had context for.

The last thing I remembered clearly was the summoning. A high-rank spirit contract. I remembered the circle. I remembered the pull. I remembered the moment it tipped past the point of return.

After that,

Nothing.

Or not nothing. Something. But when I reached for it the memory moved away like it was deciding whether to let me have it.

What happened to me?

I looked at the boy in the chair again.

He wasn’t going to wake up on his own anytime soon.

Should I wake him.

I didn’t.

Instead I pulled my knees to my chest and waited, watching the light come through the curtains and trying to piece together something from the fragments I had.

He woke up about twenty minutes later.

His eyes opened and he was already present, already scanning the room before he had fully straightened.

They landed on me.

"You’re awake."

"Yes," I said.

He studied my face for a moment, then reached over and poured a glass of water from the table beside him. Held it out without comment.

I took it.

"How much do you remember," he asked.

"The summoning," I said. "And then nothing. Or something, but I can’t reach it."

He nodded like that and answered a question he already knew the answer to.

"You were injured when I found you," he said. "In the forest. Head wound. Leg injury. You’d been there a while by the look of it."

"The forest."

"Deep forest. The kind nothing lives near voluntarily." ..."You were crying."

I didn’t know what to do with that information so I said nothing.

"I brought you back to the estate. Had the maids sort out the rest." He leaned back in the chair. "That was about a week ago."

"A week."

"Give or take."

I looked down at my hands. They looked fine. No visible damage. Whatever had happened to my leg had healed cleanly.

"What’s your name," I asked.

"Kael."

"Kael," I repeated. "You’ve been sitting in that chair for a week?"

"Not continuously."

He didn’t answer that directly. Just looked at me with an expression I couldn’t fully read, the way people looked when they were deciding how much to say.

"What happened to me," I said. "After the summoning. Do you know?"

"Some of it."

"Tell me."

He was quiet for a moment.

"The contract pulled more than you had," he said finally. "High-rank spirits don’t take partial payment. You gave everything you had and it took the rest." He paused. "Your memories went with it. Not permanently they come back. But it takes time."

"How much time."

"Depends on the person." He glanced toward the window. "You’ve been recovering. The fact that you’re asking coherent questions is a good sign."

There was something in the way he said it, like he was giving me the outline and keeping the details for later.

"You’re not telling me everything," I said.

He looked at me.

"No," he said. "I’m not."

"Why."

"Because some of it isn’t mine to tell. And some of it..." he stopped. Started again. "Some of it will make more sense when you have more of yourself back."

I wanted to push. But his face made me not.

"Okay," I said instead.

He stood.

"There’s food if you want it. The maid will bring anything you ask for." He moved toward the door. "Rest. Don’t go anywhere alone until you recover your memories."

"Kael."

He stopped.

"Thank you," I said. "For finding me."

His expression changed. Brief, unannounced, gone before I could name it.

"Don’t mention it," he said.

And left.

The door clicked shut.

I sat with the quiet for a moment.

Then, from somewhere near the window a sound. Like wind moving through a space too small for wind to be moving through.

A presence settled beside me on the bed. Invisible to the eye but not to anything else.

I knew this feeling.

"Sylph," I said quietly.

The wind stirred.

You remembered my name, the spirit said. Not in words more like the shape of words, carried on something that moved through the room without touching anything. That’s a good sign.

"What happened to me?"

A pause. The curtains shifted slightly.

You pushed past the limit of the contract, Sylph said. The high-rank bond requires full spiritual presence as collateral. You didn’t have enough and you offered it anyway.

"I know that part."

You collapsed in the transit space between the summoning circle and the bonding plane. I pulled you out. Mostly. ....The forest was the closest point of return I could find.

"You left me in a forest."

"I left you somewhere you could be found," Sylph said. "I calculated correctly."

I thought about the boy in the chair. A week of coming back to sit beside someone who didn’t even know his name.

"He found me."

Yes.

"What else aren’t you telling me?"

"And he still brought me here."

Yes.

"Why."

I don’t know.

....

"Can you tell me about what happened"

I also don’t have much memory because our bond was weak but... Yeah you were like Koala.

"Koala....."