Star woke gasping in the dark.
The cottage room was silent except for Elandor's steady breathing beside him. Moonlight striped the quilt through the half-open window. Everything looked normal.
But something was wrong.
He sat up slowly, heart hammering for no reason he could name. His chest felt hollow, like someone had scooped out a piece and left the edges raw. He pressed a hand to his birthmark; it was cold, lifeless.
Elandor stirred, instantly alert. "Star?"
"I don't know," Star whispered. "Something's… missing."
He tried to grab the feeling, pin it down. A warmth that used to live in his chest when he thought of home. A smell. A sound. Gone.
Elandor sat up, pulling him close. "The second moon rose tonight. Cassian."
Star nodded against his shoulder. "He took something. I just don't know what."
They didn't sleep again.
At dawn they rode out with the small company: Duchess Calera grim in her riding armor, Lila pale but determined, Thorne silent as ever. The western road wound through hills turning gold with autumn. No one spoke much. Everyone felt the new weight in the air.
On the third night they camped in an abandoned watchtower. Star volunteered for the last watch, needing the quiet.
He sat on the broken parapet, staring west where Cassian waited. The stars looked colder tonight, farther away.
A soft step behind him. Elandor, carrying two cups of weak tea.
"Thought you might need this," he said, settling beside him.
Star took the cup but didn't drink. "I keep trying to remember what he stole. It's like chasing smoke."
Elandor was quiet a moment. Then he said, very gently, "Tell me about the farm."
Star's throat tightened. "I… can't."
The words hung between them, terrible and true.
He tried. He reached for the smell of turned earth after rain, the low of cows at dusk, his mother's voice calling him in for supper. Nothing. A blank space where those memories should live.
Elandor set his cup down and took Star's hands. His voice was steady, but his eyes were wet.
"Then I'll tell you," he said.
He spoke softly of things Star had once shared in passing: the way Star's father taught him to whistle with a blade of grass, how his little sister used to steal his apples and leave the cores on his pillow as "payment," the summer storm that flooded the lower field and turned it into a mirror for the sky.
With every word, the hollow place in Star's chest ached more, but it also filled a little, like water seeping into cracked earth.
When Elandor finished, Star leaned into him, shaking.
"Thank you," he whispered. "For remembering for me."
Elandor's arms tightened. "I'll remember every single thing until you take them back yourself. And then I'll make you tell them to me again, just to hear your voice say them."
Star laughed, a broken sound. "You're ridiculous."
"I'm yours," Elandor corrected. "That's all."
They stayed on the parapet until the sky paled. When the company rode out at dawn, Star rode with his hand resting on Elandor's thigh, a silent anchor.
Five nights left until the third moon.
Five memories Cassian could still steal.
But now Star carried something new: the knowledge that love could hold memory even when magic tried to take it away.
And that was a weapon Cassian had not planned for.
Far in the west, Cassian opened his void eyes and felt the echo of their bond across the miles.
He smiled, slow and sharp.
"Interesting," he murmured to the empty dark. "Let's see how long that lasts."
The game continued.
But the rules had just changed.