Page 14 of Ashen Souls

“Everywhere,” I admitted. “But also… not in the places where it should be.”

“You keep cutting your eyes toward the door, Aves. Like you’re expecting a guest.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah. Like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or for the person wearing it to walk in.”

I looked away, focusing on the dying sun stretching shadows across the linoleum floor.

Because part of me was waiting.

And the other part of me was already drafting a confession I could never give a psychologist: that every real man I’d ever touched had left me cold. Yet a single, impossible voice in the dark had nearly unmade me.

They gave me something for the pain that night. The nurse warned me it would make the world feel distant, softening the corners of the room, wrapping my thoughts in cotton.

The hospital room faded by degrees. A slow shift, as though the world had lowered its volume. The overhead lights lost their sterile glare, and shadows pooled along the walls, growing thick but quiet. Even the beeping of the machines flattened into a distant drone I could finally ignore. The pain retreated to a settled heaviness, no longer keen enough to dictate every breath.

I lay there, watching the medication seep through my blood. The tension from the crash unspooled, strand by strand, until I could almost believe I was secure in my own skin again.

This wasn’t the usual drift toward sleep. Logic didn't fray or dissolve into random, fragmented images. Instead, I felt collected.

As if I were being gathered.

Something invisible reached for me, dragging me from the bleached walls. It drew me toward something distinct from the night or the city outside—a current that was older. Familiar in a way that made my skin crawl.

I opened my eyes to a heavy heat. The dry chill of the hospital was gone, supplanted by an air so dense it felt like stepping into a greenhouse. A potent scent hung around me, one that had no business in an antiseptic corridor. I stayed motionless, letting the sensation ground me before the panic of the crash could return.

I was sinking into a mattress that felt flat and too soft.

My fingers twitched, brushing the smooth weave beneath me. Cool, slick silk.

I turned my head. Massive black drapes fell from a ceiling hidden in darkness, walling the bed in. Dozens of candles lined the curved stone walls in precise arcs. They burned low, the flames still, untouched by any draft.

But they weren't pointing straight up. Every single flame bent inward, angled unnaturally toward the center of the room.

Toward me.

The scent rolled through the chamber again. Smooth, charcoal smoke mixed with the sharp sweetness of smoldering resin.

And beneath it was something unmistakable.

A presence.

He didn't just fill the room; he consumed all the empty space in it. Watching.

My body reacted without my permission. My breathing deepened, drawing in the scented air, and my pulse dropped into a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Every nerve was alert, registering the exact line where the fabric met my skin.

I looked down. I was dressed, but just barely.

A slip of wine-red silk clung to me. It didn’t feel sewn; it felt poured on. The neckline plunged, leaving my throat and collarbones exposed to the open room. The back was entirely bare. The material bunched around my upper thighs, a stark slash of red over the black sheets. The ambient air brushed my legs, confirming what the silk couldn't hide: underneath the thin cloth, I wore absolutely nothing.

“You’re awake.”

The voice came from the blackness, somewhere beyond the reach of the candles. Low and rough.

I hadn’t looked at him yet, but my body recognized the sound before my brain could catch up.

I pushed up on my elbows, palms sinking into the bedding. “Where am I?” My voice cracked, swallowed instantly by the sheer size of the room.