Page 100 of Somno Slave

The ceiling doesn’t change. The room doesn’t change. Everything holds steady in a way that feels almost deliberate.

At some point, the light outside starts to shift but the memory of him stains.

You did well.

My jaw tightens hard enough that it aches. It doesn’t stop churning in my mind. Three words with a meaning I can’t understand.

How could he have known?

“Stop,” I say quickly. “Stop it.”

My body moves on autopilot without needing instruction. If I keep moving, I don’t have to sit in it. If I keep moving, I don’t have to decide what it means that I didn’t fight him harder.

That I—

No.

I pull my hair tighter than necessary, the tension at my scalp grounding in a way nothing else has managed to, and step back from the mirror.

The question is already there.

Do I go back?

It settles low and heavy, threading through everything else, impossible to ignore.

If I don’t go, it stays like this. Unanswered. Loose beneath my skin. Something that doesn’t make sense but still exists. Something that could visit me again tonight.

But if I go—

My throat tightens.

Who would I even tell?

Peter.

The thought lands and is rejected just as quickly.

There’s no version of that conversation that doesn’t end with him looking at me differently.

What would I even say?

He came into my room. He knew what you were going to do before you did it. I didn’t stop it fast enough. I didn’t...

My chest tightens violently.

No.

There’s no way to say it without it turning back on me, without it becoming about my judgement. My control. My failure.

I’m the one who obeyed him. Turned the dial off.

Olivia flickers at the edge of my mind, softer, safer, but the same problem follows. She would listen, but she wouldn’t believe me. And even if she did, she can’t fix whatever the fuck is happening.

My heartbeat presses against my throat.

Because there’s something else underneath all of it. Something worse than fear.

Iwantto see him.