Free After the War: A Novella of the Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney

explained to Joaquim and Marina their plan for the next day. He didn’t need to ask where either of them stood on this issue. They didn’t like the risk, but understood his desire to have his memories back.
    Serafina kept her thoughts to herself. She spent much of the evening playing with the children. And later that night, once they were alone in their room, she distracted him from his questions in the way she usually did.
    Afterward, Alejandro tried to catch his breath. Enough light came in through the window from a streetlight outside that he could see her features clearly. She laughed softly, and Alejandro felt his chest tighten. He stroked Serafina’s curls back from her forehead. “I love you.”
    Her laughter fled. She turned her face away, toward the window.
    His stomach went cold. No woman hated being told that, he would have thought. Not by her husband, at least. “Serafina, what is it?”
    She sniffled. “You’ve never said that before.”
    He shifted on the bed and sat up halfway so he could see her face. “Never?”
    She shook her head, still looking away from him. “All it took was your forgetting everything you knew about me.”
    “I would never have married you if I didn’t love you, Serafina.”
    “You didn’t have much choice, Jandro. I know that.”
    Was this why she’d been so uncertain about their relationship? Had she actually trapped him in some way, as Markovich had said?
    “Serafina, look at me.” He waited until she turned her head to gaze up at him, tears shining in her eyes. “Why would I marry you if I didn’t want to do so?”
    “After we lay together, you didn’t have any choice.” With a catch in her voice, she added, “And you didn’t have much choice about that, to be honest.”
    Alejandro felt his brows rise. No choice about whether to lie with a beautiful young woman who was clearly in love with him? Did she use her call on me? Would that even work, since he was only half-human? “Why would you say that?”
    She turned her head toward the window again. “When I came to the house that morning, I wanted to prove to you that I’d grown up, so . . .”
    She would only have been sixteen or so when he left for Angola, while he’d been twenty-one. When he came back from Angola, she would have been eighteen. Grown up, indeed.
    “How did you prove it?” He couldn’t see her face, but her throat flushed. Her gills fluttered slightly, a sign of her agitation. He tried again. “What did you do?”
    “You’ll hate me for it,” she whispered.
    “I’m unlikely to hate you for anything , Serafina. I love you. I promise.”
    She remained silent for a moment. “I just . . . I waited until I knew your family would be gone to Mass, and I came to the house and to your room and . . . and you were still abed, so I . . . I joined you there.” She finished on a whisper, as if that was too horrible to say aloud.
    Alejandro sat back. “Why would I hate you for that, darling?”
    She shifted to look at him, her dark brows rumpled. “You told me you weren’t ready to marry. You had responsibilities. You were so angry with me.”
    Angry? And he hadn’t recanted that sentiment during the three subsequent days he’d apparently spent in a hotel room with her?
    What kind of jackass was I?
    He’d told Markovich he’d felt trapped into marrying her.
    And he could see now how it must have looked to her .
    “Mother said you intended to marry me only because you foresaw it,” she added, “not because you loved me.”
    He drew her back into his arms. Had he actually thought that? Surely not . “Tell me, darling. If I didn’t want to marry you then, why not simply attend Mass with my family? I would have known you were coming to find me, wouldn’t I? I could have locked my bedroom door, or arranged to be elsewhere. Instead I was there waiting for you.”
    That wasn’t quite true. It was entirely possible for a seer not to know. He wasn’t going to point that out, though.