Page 163 of Somno Slave

My cheeks burn.

The anger dissipates into blind-hot fear.

I release the microphone button sharply, and stagger backwards, almost knocking the chair and myself over. I scramble upright, heart thrashing against my ribcage. Nausea rises high. For the first time in days, I feel sober. Adrenaline slices through the fog. Sharp. Insistent.

I hold my breath. I wait for Peter’s dismissal.

Deogal doesn’t move. At first.

Then—slowly, deliberately, he lifts his head. His eyes find mine. A smile touches his mouth, slow but coy.

“You got me,” he says softly.

The words crawl through the room like a living thing.

Nobody breaths.

But everyone heard it too.

Chapter Forty-Six

Rheda

Heat moves first. A slow, invasive climb up my spine, like something has found a seam in me and is working its way through it. My breath follows, shortening without permission.

I can’t look away from Deogal. The angle of his jaw is too set. The fractional flex of his fingers against the restraints occurs too precisely, like a signal sent rather than a reflex. The spaces between his blinks feel timed.

I should not feel like this.

I should not feel anything.

And yet my body has already reorganised itself around him.

Peter goes still for a moment. From where I’m sitting, I can only see the straight line of his back, the slight tilt of his head as he studies him. When he speaks, his voice is calm, but there’s something darker sitting underneath it.

“There you are,” he says. “I was beginning to think we’d brought the wrong monster in.”

Silence answers. The air feels heavier immediately. I’m painfully aware of my heartbeat slamming against my ribcage.

Then, Deogal speaks. “I want to talk to her.”

His attention alone is enough to strip the heat from my blood.

“You’re here to answer my questions,” Peter says evenly. “Not make requests.”

“She made a request of me,” Deogal says, voice low and deliberate. “It would be rude not to answer it properly.”

“No.” He answers without hesitation.

Amused, Deogal leans back slightly in the chair, the chains shifting with a quiet metallic drag, but his eyes hold Peter now. Something in the room changes with it, subtle and ugly, like two animals standing too close to the same piece of ground.

“You have no control here, Deogal.” Peter says cruelly. His hands rest flat on the table, controlled enough to almost hide the tension sitting in his shoulders.

Deogal tilts his head, just slightly, like he’s listening to something the rest of us can’t hear.

“Everyone in this room wants me dead.” He says it so simply it makes my stomach turn. “At least give me one person who might hesitate before handing me over to the injection.”

Peter’s whole body hardens. “And what makes you think she’d be that person?”