Page 56 of Somno Slave

I don’t move from the shadow.

I let her look.

I let her feel the shape of it without understanding where it’s coming from.

The girl beside her pulls her into a loud, careless hug, the moment swallowed up by noise and laughter and everything that pretends this is normal. Rheda leans into it slowly. There’s hesitation in her still.

I sit back into the dark, finally allowing the smallest shift in my posture, the tension in my body easing just enough to hold instead of strike.

She let someone else touch what I’ve already claimed.

And tonight, my Doctor will learn a very fucking important lesson.

Chapter Nineteen

Rheda

Something has a hold of me in my sleep.

Again.

I know it before I know where I am.

It’s like a poisoned cloth pressed up against my lips: sweet at first, then choking. My head spins in a slow, nauseating circle, throbbing as if my skull has been packed too tight. The world tilts. Forward. No—back. I can’t tell. My body won’t agree with itself.

Am I lying down?

Am I upright?

Everything is muffled, muted, as though I’ve been dropping into a soundless chamber, wrapped in cotton and shadow. I open my eyes but they don’t budge.

I feel the darkness intensify. My limbs don’t answer, either. I try to breathe deeply and fail—each breath shallow, clipped and wrong like I’m borrowing them from someone else’s mouth.

And then—stillness.

A silence so complete it feels deliberate. I settle into my sheets. The bed beneath me is hard and solid, and all too wrong, but my mind recognises it as home.

Something presses down on my chest.

And then that familiar smell, oak and honey dragged through fire. Warm. Smoky. Intoxicating. It slides down the back of my throat and lingers in a way that swallowing refuses to budge.

“Doctor.”The word flares in mind like a headline, bold, urgent, and then fades as if someone has turned a dial and drained it of meaning.

Deogal.

It hits me before I can consider the consequences.

It’s impossible.

I don’t know what he sounds like. He’s never spoken to me before. And yet...my mindknowsit’s him.

I jolt. My body doesn’t obey.

Panic blooms.

I force my eyes open. They stay shut, and that’s when I feel someone straddling me. The heat of them bleeds through whatever thin barrier still exists between us, weight pinning me effortlessly, perfectly balanced, like they’ve done this before, like they know exactly how much pressure to keep me trapped, without crushing me.

A sound tears out of my throat. A broken, useless cry.