#(but the drama potential outweighed medical accuracy)

[fictionadventurer]

Prompt: fairy-tale heroine of your choice wakes up with amnesia. (Maybe her husband has to explain how they got married?)

Purity of Mind

Dora looked so innocent, asleep on her bed. The fresh white bandages binding her crown looked more like a mark of holiness than disaster. The doctor claimed she'd fallen from a balcony and hit her head upon a stair rail. Adam thought it seemed too suspicious an accident. A disaster on the one day he'd left the house? His sure-footed little wife wouldn't have stumbled like that--not unless she were nearly out of her wits. Perhaps fleeing from some great terror.

"She'll wake soon," the doctor assured him. "Her body's healed enough, but with a head injury like that, there's no telling what state her brain will be in."

The state itself, Adam thought, would be telling enough.

As if roused by the doctor's words, Dora's eyelids fluttered. She sat up, pale and trembling. Her gaze landed upon Adam, and she started to scream.

"Who are you?" she shrieked, gathering the bedclothes to cover herself. "What are you doing in my room?"

Adam had steeled himself for the usual accusations, but this left him off-balance.

Finally, he managed to say, "Dora, it's just me. Adam. Your husband."

"I have no husband!"

"We wed six months ago."

"Liar!" she shrieked. "I'd never marry a man with such an awful beard!"

Adam stroked his blue-black whiskers, neatly trimmed for his homecoming. A deep chuckle rumbled in his throat; after months of her tiptoeing around him, her frankness was amusing. "I paid your parents richly for the privilege."

Dora paused at that. The mercenary child of mercenary parents--the tale would ring true, no matter her objections to his facial hair. Yet the bewilderment didn't fade from her face. "I've never seen this house before."

"You've been mistress here six months."

"I don't believe you."

"Whether you believe me or not, it's true. You fell from a staircase and hit your head."

Her eyes were fire. "I'll bet you pushed me!"

"I was away from home. I only just returned." He would never have opted for such an impersonal death. It was much more satisfying to feel the life draining away beneath his fingers.

The thought brought him back to reality. No need to wrestle with her delusions; only one truth mattered.

"Dora," Adam asked. "Where are the keys?"

"What keys?"

"I left the keys of the house in your keeping. I'll need them returned."

"I never had any keys!"

Adam looked to the doctor, who said, "We've found no keys on her person."

Missing? Impossible. Adam stormed from the room and set the servants searching for the keys. Nothing in her wardrobe. Nothing in the rooms. Nothing in the gardens.

The door on the third floor was locked, with no signs of entry.

Adam returned to the sickroom as the sun was setting. Dora sat quietly on her bed, having been calmly convinced of her new reality, completely unaware of the turmoil she'd thrown his life into.

He could have torn her limb from limb right there, but he had no proof yet she was deserving of it. For the moment, his strategy was gentleness.

He sat on the bed beside her. "Dora, my dove, think. Can you remember where the keys might be?"

"I can't even remember you."

Adam examined her in every detail--the tips of her fingers, the whites of her eyes, the curl of her lips. No signs of deception.

"You truly can't remember anything?"

Tears glittered in her eyes as she shook her head.

She looked as innocent as a newborn babe. The timid little fool he'd married couldn't fake such total ignorance. If she'd peered behind the door, she'd lost the memory of what she'd seen. If she'd disobeyed, he had no way of knowing.

A new twist to the game--a second chance.

Adam left the room in a state of contentment. He could get new keys made. His secret was safe--locked away either behind the door or in his wife's blank mind.

And if her memory returned? If she had memories of that bloody chamber?

He could always kill her later.