SanClare Black (The Prince of Sorrows) by Jenna Waterford

figure out what was going on before revealing this fact to his...
    C aptors? Rescuers? Where am I now? And how did I get here?
    Biting his lip, Nylan tried to sit up and found his left arm weighing him down, heavily bandaged and in a sling. His movement awoke all of his injuries at once, and his arm throbbed from shoulder to fingertips.
    Opaque, white curtains tented him in with two strangers. They wore long, white coats which seemed to blend in with the curtains. One of the men wore round, wire-rimmed spectacles and the other had a fastidiously-trimmed handlebar mustache a few shades redder than his slicked-back hair.
    Nylan ’s shattered memory balked at both of these things, his first reaction being that they looked old-fashioned. Even their clothes were entirely unfamiliar, plainer and stiffer than the rich fabrics, colors, and needlework to which he was accustomed.
    “ You shouldn’t move, child,” Spectacles was saying, a hand exerting gentle pressure on his right shoulder to keep him from continuing his struggle to sit up. “You’ve been through the wars, by the look of you.”
    “ Yes.” Mustache’s frown deepened, making his mustache stick out even more prominently. “Be a good boy, and stay in bed.”
    They stood on either side of him, twin towers surrounding his narrow cot. He’d been dressed in a plain white shift and tucked beneath crisp sheets and a thin blanket, also white. All unfamiliar.
    “ Do you have a name, child?” Mustache asked.
    “ What a question, Morley! Of course he has a name!”
    So, Mustache is named Morley. I wonder what Spectacles’ name is.
    Morley leaned in closer, his frowning face quite close to Nylan ’s. “Your name ,” he said loudly, as if he thought the boy might be deaf.
    My name , Nylan thought. Of course. They want to know my name. But at that moment, he realized this was one of the many things he’d forgotten. Biting down even harder on his lip, he shook his head.
    “ Hmm. This is a pretty mystery,” Morley muttered.
    “ He’ll have to be reported in the Sentinel ,” Spectacles said. “And JhaPel will have to be contacted if no one claims him.”
    “ He’s absolutely lovely,” Morley said to himself. “And he has a look about him...I don’t know. Doesn’t seem the sort to be abandoned. Surely, someone will come for him.”
    Spectacles shot a sidelong glance at the boy and ushered his associate outside the curtain. Nylan could no longer make out even the occasional words he thought he understood, and he gave up as the men walked away, still talking.
    Nylan lay motionless on his bed, his good hand hugging the least-painful part of his hurt arm as if he had to physically hold himself together or lose his grip on the last thread of sanity.
    He had no idea what his name was, though he knew he did have a name. He had no idea how he’d arrived here in this place, though he remembered falling through the night and landing on the hard, wet ground somewhere beyond these white curtains. He had no idea what this place was. He had no idea who he was. Tears brimmed in his eyes, and he bit his lip harder to try to keep them at bay, tasting blood. For some reason he also couldn’t remember, crying was not a good reaction to the situation. He needed to be strong and brave.
    A slim, angular woman wearing a long white dress and a dark blue apron swept in through the curtains and smiled at him. Her light brown hair was pinned back but a few soft curls escaped to frame her pleasant, pretty face.
    “ The healers said you were awake.” She sat down on the edge of his cot and gently pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “Awake and alert, that is. At last,” she added, still smiling. “I was beginning to worry your fever would last the year.”
    The moment she touched him, her thoughts and emotions became as clear to him as his own, and he flinched away from her as if she ’d burned him.
    “ I’m sorry.” She drew back at once. She smiled at him, and he