'!'
Lira's foot faltered—just slightly—but enough to make the ladle at her waist jingle against her apron. Her breath hitched. She didn't turn.
Silence stretched, taut as a drawn string.
"I... I..." she tried to speak, but the syllables dissolved on her tongue. Her lips parted again.
"I-I d-don't..." she whispered, the words barely formed, tumbling out like a child's first attempt at sound. "I d-don't kn-know y-you..."
Cruxius's eyes narrowed. He saw the way her shoulders curled inward, how her hands gripped the fabric of her apron—wringing it like a soaked cloth.
What confirmed it for him even more were the breaks in her words, the syllables coming in pieces, revealing to him a habit he was oddly familiar with—one that surfaced whenever she was overwhelmed by emotion, especially anger and fear.
'So, she did have memories', Cruxius thought, observing everything. Lira did, indeed, retain her future memories.
