The perfume was supposed to make remembering easier.
It did not make the memories kinder.
The scented vapor spilling from Crysha's bottle thickened around the campsite, winding between the trees before settling around the log where Lenora sat. The fragrance was soft—almost comforting—but Lenora's body understood what it was calling back.
She leaned against the log as tears slipped down her face.
"You know, Auntie…" Lenora's voice cracked. "I wasn't ready to leave home."
Crysha remained seated across from her, listening.
"I was always trying to do everything perfectly. I wanted Mother to be proud of me. I wanted you, Jinxi, Volkra, and everyone else to believe I was ready."
Lenora wiped her face, but more tears followed.
"I hated how everyone was obsessed with keeping the bloodline pure. The families would gather and decide which rabbit should leave Carrot Field to see what the outside world was like. They chose me, but no one asked what was supposed to happen if the outside world changed me."
Her fingers tightened around the fabric covering her knees.
"What if I came home carrying someone's child?" she asked. "What if I fell in love and became the queen of another kingdom?"
Crysha lowered her eyes.
"You know how the factions would react."
Lenora looked at her.
Crysha repeated the judgment Carrot Field would have passed.
"Her bloodline has been tainted." "She betrayed her family." "Banish her."
Lenora's ears sank.
"With Mother being as terrifying as she is, would she accept that child? Would you? Would Jinxi and Volkra love a child that came from outside our bloodline?"
Crysha did not answer immediately.
Lenora waited, afraid that the hesitation had already given her the truth.
Then Crysha moved closer.
"I would love that child unconditionally," she said. "If the factions banished you, I would come and find you. I would visit you and your child. I would not abandon either of you."
Lenora studied her aunt's face.
There was no uncertainty in Crysha's answer.
"So you really have been watching me since I left?"
Crysha's expression changed.
"You knew when I entered the first kingdom," Lenora continued. "The kingdom that disappeared."
Crysha released a quiet breath.
"Yes."
"You saw me go inside?"
"I knew you crossed its gates," Crysha answered. "But I could not see what happened beyond its walls. Then the entire kingdom vanished."
A thin layer of frost spread beneath Crysha.
"One moment, it was there. The next, there was nothing but an enormous crater. I knew you were responsible, but I never understood why."
Crysha looked directly at her niece.
"What happened inside that kingdom, Lenora?"
Lenora watched the scented vapor curl around her hands.
"Well," she whispered, "I suppose that is where I should begin."
The fragrance thickened.
The trees surrounding them faded.
The memory opened.
"I wandered and wandered and wandered."
That was how Lenora remembered the beginning.
After leaving Carrot Field in the middle of the night, she travelled without knowing where she was going. She followed roads until they ended and rivers until she found places shallow enough to cross. She slept beneath trees and ate the food her family had packed for her.
Every morning, she told herself that she had been chosen because they trusted her.
Every night, she wished someone had followed and brought her home.
Then Lenora found the first kingdom.
Its walls towered above her. Human guards stood outside the gates wearing armor decorated with symbols she had never seen.
Lenora approached with her travel bag over one shoulder and her long crimson hair blowing behind her.
The guards raised their weapons.
"Halt, beast scum!"
Lenora stopped.
She had spent her entire life surrounded by rabbit gods. She understood judgment. She understood arguments between families and the obsession with preserving their bloodline.
She did not understand human racism.
"Hello, sir," Lenora said politely. "Have I done something to upset you? If I have, I'm terribly sorry."
Her ears drooped.
The guards stared at her.
One stepped forward and pointed his weapon at her chest.
"Turn around and go somewhere else."
More guards arrived. Their insults grew harsher as they attempted to force her away.
"Filthy animal."
"No beasts inside the walls."
"Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of."
Lenora remained confused.
When the guards surrounded her and prepared their weapons, she assumed she had finally understood.
They wanted to spar.
Perhaps this was how human kingdoms tested visitors before allowing them inside.
It was strange, but everything outside Carrot Field was strange.
Lenora drew her weapon.
The first guard attacked.
She disarmed him before his blade reached her. The second lost his weapon when Lenora struck his wrist. She swept the legs from beneath the third and stepped around the fourth before knocking his spear away.
She never cut them.
She never tried to kill them.
Once every guard had been disarmed, Lenora sheathed her weapon and bowed.
"Thank you for the spar."
Then she walked through the gate.
The guards were too stunned to stop her.
People stared as Lenora wandered through the streets.
"A beastfolk?"
"Is she royalty?"
"She must be important. How else did she get past the guards?"
"There shouldn't be a beast inside the kingdom."
Lenora tried to ignore them.
Then she smelled something wonderful.
Her ears rose as the sweet aroma drew her through the market. She followed it until she found a stall covered with carrots, pastries, and beautifully decorated carrot cakes.
The seller stood with his back turned.
"What can I get for you, dear customer?" he asked.
Lenora leaned closer to the cakes and breathed in their aroma.
"Could I try one of these lovely things you're selling? It smells wonderful."
"Of course. Two silver coins."
Lenora opened the money pouch her family had packed.
She searched through it.
Gold coins.
Platinum coins.
Not one bronze or silver piece.
"Kind sir, would one gold coin be enough?"
"That would be far more than—"
The seller turned around.
He saw Lenora's ears.
Then her crimson hair and the weapon at her side.
His welcoming expression disappeared.
"One gold coin is worth fifty silver," he said cautiously. "Seeing as you are beastfolk, I will charge you twenty silver and return thirty."
Lenora tilted her head.
"But you told me the cake cost two silver. Why are you charging me more because I offered gold?"
The seller glanced toward the gate.
Several guards were watching.
He took out a piece of paper and quickly wrote something before sliding it beneath the cake.
Lenora read the message.
Because you are beastfolk, I cannot accept your money without appearing to cheat you. They are watching me.
Lenora read it again.
She still did not completely understand this kingdom, but she understood the fear in the seller's eyes.
"You may keep the gold coin," she whispered. "Could I have two slices of carrot cake and a bag of carrots?"
The seller hurriedly prepared her order.
He placed the cake and carrots into a bag before pushing it into Lenora's arms.
Then his face hardened.
"Get out of here, beast scum!" he shouted. "You're fortunate I don't call the guards!"
He grabbed several tomatoes and threw them.
One struck Lenora's shoulder. Another burst beside her feet.
Lenora backed away, clutching the bag against her chest.
The seller's voice sounded cruel.
His hands were trembling.
Lenora sat alone in an alley and ate one of the cake slices.
"This kingdom is weird," she told herself.
The cake was delicious.
The guards had been strange. The seller had been even stranger. He had tried to cheat her, warned her that he was pretending, given her the food, and then thrown tomatoes at her.
Lenora could not decide whether he was kind or cruel.
Perhaps humans were simply difficult to understand.
When she finished eating, Lenora looked toward the street again.
There was still so much she had not seen.
Eventually, she noticed a pub.
Laughter and music poured through its open doors. Humans sat around crowded tables, drinking and speaking loudly. Several stared when Lenora entered, but no one immediately reached for a weapon.
She approached the bar.
The man behind it smiled.
Lenora paid him for a drink. It was the first alcohol she had ever tasted, and the bitterness made her nose wrinkle.
The bartender laughed.
"It is rare to see beastfolk in this kingdom," he said. "What business brings you here, fair lady?"
Lenora looked down into her cup.
"My business?"
She hiccupped.
"I'm travelling. My family chose me to see what the world is like."
She smiled uncertainly.
"So far, it has been very confusing."
The bartender extended his hand.
"My name is John. And you are?"
Lenora was already drinking from a second cup.
"Lenora."
Another hiccup escaped her.
"My name is Lenora."
For the first time since entering the kingdom, someone was looking at her without obvious hatred.
John had called her a lady.
Not a beast.
Not an animal.
A lady.
Lenora felt some of the fear leave her chest.
She finished the second drink and pushed herself away from the bar.
"Well, John, it was nice meeting you. Thank you for the drinks—and for not being weird."
Her legs collapsed beneath her.
Lenora struck the floor.
She stared at her hands, but her fingers would not move.
"Huh?"
Her tongue felt heavy.
"My body feels… numb."
John walked around the counter.
"That would be the paralyzing agent in your drinks."
Lenora looked up at him.
She tried to ask why.
Her mouth would not obey her.
John crouched in front of her.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "If they discovered you were here, they would kill me."
Lenora wanted to tell him that he could have asked her to leave.
She would have understood.
She would have thanked him for the first drink and walked away.
John watched as her eyes closed.
The last thing Lenora remembered was wondering why the first human who had called her a lady had been the one to poison her.
When Lenora awakened, she was chained to a bed.
She did not know where she was.
She did not know how many days had passed.
Her throat was dry. Her wrists were raw beneath the restraints, and entire pieces of time were missing from her mind.
Her senses returned before her strength did.
There were unfamiliar human scents clinging to her fur.
Scents belonging to several men.
Her body carried the memory of things her mind had not been awake to witness.
Voices came from nearby.
"That beast girl is different from us, but everything else is the same as a human woman."
Someone laughed.
"I wonder what a child would look like if a human got her pregnant."
"Shut up. If the guards hear about this, we'll be in trouble. They'll take her away from us."
Lenora lay completely still.
She tried to convince herself that she had misunderstood.
The scents.
The restraints.
The missing time.
She wanted to believe there was another explanation.
There was not.
"Wait."
Crysha's voice tore through the memory.
The scented vapor shuddered around them.
"You were…"
Crysha could not finish.
"Humans in that kingdom did that to you?"
Lenora looked away.
"Yes, Auntie."
Crysha crossed the space between them and pulled Lenora into her arms.
The Ice Empress cried.
Not carefully. Not quietly. All the discipline she carried broke as she held Lenora against her chest.
Crysha had watched Lenora enter that kingdom.
She had seen the walls.
She had never seen what those walls concealed.
Now she held the woman who had survived it, as though embracing Lenora tightly enough might somehow reach the young rabbit who had been trapped inside.
Lenora's tears returned.
"I need a moment," she whispered. "Telling this memory is hard."
Crysha did not release her.
Twenty minutes passed.
When Lenora finally lifted her head, her eyes were red and swollen.
"I can continue."
"You don't have to."
"Yes," Lenora whispered. "I do."
She drew an uneven breath.
"It happened repeatedly. They drugged me whenever I became difficult to control. They used me, and when I woke, they did it again."
Her hands shook in Crysha's grasp.
"Eventually, I woke somewhere else."
There was no bed.
No chain.
No body.
Lenora floated inside an endless space filled with wandering souls. Some drifted silently through the darkness. Others gathered around distant seams of light, hoping to find a path back to somewhere they still remembered.
Lenora understood without being told.
She had died.
A red chain erupted from the darkness.
It wrapped around her and dragged her through the Soul Seam.
Lenora fought against it, but she had no strength there. She was pulled through the wandering souls until four pairs of eyes opened ahead of her.
The first figure stepped forward.
He was a rabbit.
His face appeared young, but his eyes carried something far older.
"Young rabbit," Rabbit Derpy said, "they violated you, and they killed you. Do you seek revenge against those who wronged you?"
A second figure emerged from the darkness.
Harpy wings opened behind him.
"Do you wish to return to the living?" Harpy Derpy asked.
The third figure was a wolf.
"Or do you wish to accept your death and find your place here in the Soul Seam?" Wolf Derpy asked.
Lenora thought about Carrot Field.
She thought about her mother.
Crysha.
Jinxi.
Volkra.
All the people she had been trying to make proud.
She had left home believing she would return with stories about the outside world.
She did not want her story to end chained to a bed in a kingdom that hated her.
"Yes," Lenora answered.
She looked at Rabbit Derpy.
"I want revenge. I want to wipe that kingdom from the map."
Then she turned toward the Harpy.
"I want to return to the living. I want to see my family again."
The fourth figure stepped forward.
A dragon.
"You understand that returning carries a price?" Dragon Derpy asked.
Lenora looked at the four beings surrounding her.
"Do I have a choice?" she asked. "This is your kingdom."
The four Derpys laughed.
Not cruelly.
The sound moved through the Soul Seam as if Lenora had unknowingly spoken an old truth.
They began walking toward her.
Rabbit merged with Harpy.
Harpy merged with Wolf.
Wolf merged with Dragon.
Their bodies joined and grew until an enormous Dragon-Wolf towered above Lenora. He was larger than any living creature she had ever seen, yet he lowered his head until his eyes met hers.
"Unfortunately, I have not been physically born yet," the Dragon-Wolf explained. "For now, we reside here."
His enormous tail moved behind Lenora.
Its tip touched her lower back.
"It may happen soon. It may happen now. It may happen later."
His voice travelled through the Soul Seam.
"It may never happen at all. But if I am ever brought into the physical world, you will be there for me—no matter what."
A burning sensation spread across Lenora's lower back.
A crest formed beneath her fur.
"Consider this your entrance into my faction," the Dragon-Wolf continued. "I believe that is what your clan would call it."
The burning intensified.
"You will return with greater power. The crest may also affect the bloodline of any child you have. One day, that child may inherit traits belonging to dragons."
Lenora tried to look behind herself.
"And when your next death comes, you will become something else."
Lenora stared up at him.
"What does that mean?"
The Soul Seam vanished before he could answer.
"You died?"
Crysha's voice pulled Lenora out of the memory again.
"You died, and then you came back?"
"Yes, Auntie."
Lenora touched her brown hair.
"That is why my hair changed. It was crimson before I died. When I returned, it was brown."
Crysha stared at her.
For forty years she had assumed the color was a technique. Something Lenora had learned. Something she put on.
It had been a scar.
"And this is why you destroyed the kingdom."
Lenora lowered her hand.
"Yes."
The scented vapor moved again.
The memory continued.
Lenora awakened in the same room where she had died.
The chains still surrounded her wrists.
Her body had returned.
Her crimson hair had not.
Brown strands fell across her face.
Voices came from elsewhere in the room.
John was shouting at one of the men who had kept her captive.
"You complete idiot! The slave traders were coming in a few days!"
John's anger did not come from grief.
It came from lost profit.
"We could have sold her, but you strangled her while satisfying yourself! Now she's dead!"
The man struck John across the face.
John fell beside a heavy shelf.
Lenora watched them from the bed.
She remembered John smiling at her.
What business brings you here, fair lady?
She remembered believing he was kind.
The man who had killed her turned toward the bed.
Lenora looked at the chain securing her to the wall.
One word remained from the Soul Seam.
Revenge.
She pulled.
The chain tore free from the stone.
The man barely had time to turn before Lenora struck him with it.
The blow threw him across the room.
He tried to stand.
Lenora reached him first.
She hit him again.
And again.
Every blow carried another missing hour.
Another scent on her fur.
Another moment when she had awakened and realized she was still inside that room.
She did not stop until there was no face left that she could recognize.
Lenora looked down at her hands.
The power inside her had changed.
It was greater than before her death.
Far greater.
A weak voice came from beside the shelf.
"Help me."
Lenora turned.
John reached toward her. Blood ran from his mouth.
"Please."
Lenora searched the room instead.
Her travel bag, weapon, and money pouch had been thrown into a corner. She gathered everything that belonged to her.
John continued reaching.
"Why?" Lenora asked.
John stared at her.
He offered no answer.
He had been afraid of the guards.
So he had drugged her.
He had been afraid of being punished.
So he had sold her.
His fear had mattered more to him than her life.
"No," Lenora said. "You can lie there and die."
She placed both hands against the shelf.
"It is scum like you who take advantage of innocent beastfolk because you believe no one will care."
John's eyes widened.
"Go fuck yourself."
Lenora pushed.
The shelf toppled onto him.
Then she climbed the stairs and stepped outside.
Sunlight touched her face.
It had been days since she had seen the sky.
Lenora stood in the street and imagined how differently everything might have happened.
John could have remained kind.
He could have warned her.
He could have helped her escape.
Perhaps they could have travelled together.
Perhaps he could have become someone she loved.
The truth was too painful for Lenora to carry.
So her mind began covering it.
John had not drugged her.
John had protected her.
John had travelled with her.
John had loved her.
None of it was true.
Her mind made it true enough for her to survive.
The room, the chains, and John's betrayal disappeared beneath the false memory. The real events sank somewhere deep inside her, where even Lenora would eventually struggle to reach them.
The lie did not need to be large. It only needed to cover one room and one man, and there would be no one left alive to contradict it. By the time she walked out of that kingdom, there would be no kingdom either — no pub, no bar, no stairs, no shelf. Nothing standing that could ever ask her to check.
Her brown hair began changing.
Crimson spread through every strand.
Two blood-colored swords formed in her hands.
Lenora did not know the name of the power consuming her. She did not know that others would eventually call it Blood Lust.
She only knew that the kingdom had taken everything from her.
At that moment, she could no longer separate the people who hated her from those who had been too afraid to help her. She did not see homes, families, or frightened merchants.
She saw one room multiplied across an entire kingdom.
"Unknown form," Lenora whispered because she had no other name for what she had become.
The crimson swords began spinning.
"Attack… no name yet."
Bloodlike wind gathered around her.
"Let me wipe this kingdom from the map."
The swords became a crimson storm.
The tornado expanded through the streets. It swallowed the pub, the market, the towers, the soldiers, and the walls.
Stone shattered.
Buildings disappeared.
The entire kingdom vanished inside the blood-colored wind.
When the storm ended, nothing remained.
No streets.
No walls.
No kingdom.
Only an enormous crater.
The memory faded.
Lenora sat beside Crysha again, surrounded by the scented vapor.
For a long moment she did not speak.
Then her hands began to shake.
"There was a man who sold me carrot cake."
Crysha looked up.
"He was the only person in that kingdom who tried." Lenora's voice had gone very quiet. "He wrote me a note. He hid it under the cake so the guards wouldn't see. He gave me the food and threw tomatoes at me so they would think he'd chased me off."
Her fingers curled into the fabric over her knees.
"His hands were shaking the whole time. He was terrified. And he did it anyway."
Crysha reached for her.
Lenora did not take her hand.
"The market was inside the storm, Auntie."
The fire moved between them.
"I killed the guards who hated me. I killed the men who held me. And I killed the one person in that whole kingdom who was kind to me, because by then I couldn't tell the difference between somebody who wanted me dead and somebody who was too frightened to say so out loud."
She finally looked up.
"I have never once let myself think about him. Not in forty years." Her jaw tightened. "I don't even know his name. I never asked."
Crysha said nothing, because there was nothing that could be said that would not have been a kindness Lenora had not asked for.
"Then I took one breath and continued my journey," Lenora whispered.
Her eyes remained fixed on the ground.
"Because walking was easier than remembering why."
Crysha looked at the crater in her niece's story and understood that it was not the worst thing Lenora had shown her tonight.
The worst thing was that she had walked out of it alone, invented a man who had loved her, and carried him for forty years because the alternative was carrying the truth.
"Lenora."
"Mm."
"Whatever comes next in this story." Crysha's voice was quiet. "However many years it covers. I am not leaving this fire until you have finished it."
Lenora's ears lowered.
The scented vapor curled once between them and went still.