My Husband Thinks I Forgot I Was a Demon novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Veil
Ji-han fakes forgetting at his own wedding, and the veiled Alliance Leader puts his thumb on the tattoo he is hiding.
Ji-han had been pretending to forget for ninety-one days, and he had gotten good at it.
On the first day he forgot his own name, and the Alliance physician gave it back to him on a card.
He forgot the Black Lotus Cult, its red lanterns, and every face he had ever bled beside.
He forgot how to hate the Nine Sects Alliance, which was easy, because the Alliance kept serving him plum wine.
Now he stood in Iron Peak Hall in borrowed celadon silk, about to pretend he had forgotten the biggest thing of all.
He was getting married today, and he was supposed to act like a man who had no idea why.
Four hundred guests watched him walk down the red carpet.
They didn't clap.
They whispered, and Ji-han let them, because a man with no past was supposed to be whispered about.
The council had decided he was harmless, and he was working very hard to stay that way.
At the end of the carpet stood the Alliance Leader, Jin Hyeok-ryeong.
He was a wall in indigo robes, a head taller than Ji-han, with a black-gauze hat that hid his face down to the collar.
Everyone knew why he wore it.
Cult fire had burned him at fifteen, and the public had never seen his face since.
Ji-han had seen that veil once before, across Dragon Gate Pass, at dawn.
He had watched a veiled man climb out of the gorge where the Lotus Lord had fallen.
He had watched that man hold the rope bridge until Ji-han's side broke and ran.
Now Ji-han was being married to him.
He decided he would find that funny later.
"Kneel to your husband," said the Vice-Leader.
Hyeong Jeong-seok had a white goatee, a jade rosary, and the soft voice of a man who prayed for other people to die.
He had been smiling at Ji-han for ninety-one days.
Ji-han knelt.
The Leader knelt across from him, and his knee hit the floor with a quiet thud.
Their cups were filled.
Then Hyeong's hand slid across the table, quick and neat, and made a small shape with two fingers.
It was the Black Lotus sign for halt and obey.
Every cult soldier knew it, and every cult soldier's spine answered it before he could think.
Ji-han felt his own spine start to answer.
He didn't move.
He looked at Hyeong's fingers, and he tilted his head.
"Are you ill, Vice-Leader?" he asked. "You're doing something with your hand."
A laugh broke out near the back of the hall.
Hyeong's smile stayed exactly where it was.
"A habit," he said. "I beg your pardon."
Ji-han drank his cup, and his hand didn't shake.
He would have liked that noted.
The ceremony ended with bows and a lot of incense, and then they handed him off to the Cedar Court.
The bridal room smelled of pine and candle wax.
Red silk hung on the walls.
A lacquered bed took up half the floor, and someone had scattered dried jujubes across the quilt.
Ji-han sat on the edge of the bed and stared at them.
The door closed behind the Leader.
For a long moment the Leader only stood there, with the candles making his veil glow.
Then he reached up and lifted the hat off his head with both hands.
Ji-han had prepared for a monster.
He had heard the stories, and he had pictured something melted.
The Alliance Leader was just a man.
He was big, heavy through the chest and shoulders, with a tan face, thick brows, and a round jaw with a dimple in the chin.
His dark hair hung to his shoulders, half pinned up with a plain wooden pin.
His eyes were brown and heavy-lidded and very tired.
There wasn't a burn on him anywhere.
Ji-han kept his face blank, and it cost him.
"They told me you didn't want to see my face," the Leader said.
His voice was lower than Ji-han had expected, and rough at the edges.
"They told me you didn't want me to see yours," Ji-han said.
"Then we're both disappointed in the council."
"I don't remember enough to be disappointed."
The Leader almost smiled.
He crossed the room and sat down on the bed beside Ji-han, and the whole mattress tipped toward him.
He was warm, and he smelled of cedar and soap.
"I won't ask you to remember," the Leader said. "I'd like you to know that first."
"All right."
"I won't touch you tonight, either. Not unless you want it."
That was not in the plan.
Ji-han had expected fear, a stern husband, and a lot of silence.
He looked at the Leader and could not think what a man with no memory would say.
So he said nothing, and the Leader took his right hand.
The Leader's hand was enormous and callused, and Ji-han's whole fist vanished inside it.
The Leader turned Ji-han's hand over and slid the black bracer down his wrist with one slow thumb.
The black lotus tattoo lay bare in the candlelight.
It was the one thing Ji-han had never found a way to forget.
The Leader's thumb settled right on it.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked quietly.
Ji-han's pulse jumped under that thumb.
He knew the Leader could feel it.
"No," Ji-han said.
The Leader's thumb moved once across the petals.
"Then we'll find out together," he said.
Heat rushed through Ji-han's whole body.
He wanted to say something clever, and all that came out was a breath.
Something white slid under the door.
They both looked.
It was a folded note, in a handwriting Ji-han didn't know.
The Leader got up, picked it up, and read it, and his face went very still.
He passed it to Ji-han.
The Right Protector of the Black Lotus Cult arrives at tomorrow's wedding feast, it said.
And she knows your face.
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