Page 33 of Ashen Souls

Harper grimaced. “On the plus side?”

“Please tell me there’s a plus side.”

“If he’s real,” she said, “at least he’s good in bed.”

A fractured laugh scraped out of my throat. “God, I want him to be real.”

She didn’t tease me. That frightened me more than if she had.

“Okay.” Harper stood up. “New rules. No summoning rituals. No making deals. No chanting his name into candles like some gothic Pinterest board.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Good. Because if your hot demon boyfriend tries to steal your soul, I’m legally allowed to stab him.”

She tossed the empty coffee cup into the trash and headed for the door. “Come to the kitchen when you’re ready. Your mom made enough food to feed a small village.”

The moment her footsteps faded down the hall, the isolation rushed back in. My eyes dropped back to my left wrist.

I didn’t want to become completely unhinged, unable to tell the difference between dreams and reality anymore.

Because if it wasn’t a hallucination… then what exactly was waiting for me to go back to sleep?

The days dragged into a second week of recovery, burying me in a blur of offensive normalcy.

Mornings arrived unremarkably, and the nights followed with equal predictability. My body knit itself back together precisely the way a human body should. The headaches receded into a dull background pressure before disappearing entirely. The bruises along my ribs turned yellow, then faded to nothing. Even the dizziness let go of me, leaving behind nothing but exhaustion and a careful avoidance of sudden movements.

And yet, through all of it, the nights stayed empty.

When I closed my eyes, there was no chamber waiting to swallow me. No silk sheets. No trace of Daeren’s lips and tongue. Just dead, uneventful darkness.

A part of me was relieved.

Another part did not.

It felt strangely like waking up to find a lover gone from the bed beside you. My skin ached for the rough friction of his body. My lips were still tender, carrying the memory of being devoured.

I hated how much I missed a ghost.

Of course my brain had conjured someone like him. It was just the unfortunate side effect of being an English major who spent too many years reading morally questionable fantasy novels.

He had burned through my mind and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a void.

Almost.

Because the mark on my wrist never faded.

I checked it every morning, the same way you prod a sore tooth just to confirm it still hurts. The skin remained starkly discolored: pink now rather than red, but present. It still curled in the same distinct pattern, too precise to be random and too deliberate to dismiss.

I kept it buried under long sleeves and careful lies. After everything my parents had already been through with the crash, I refused to give them another reason to panic.

Other than Harper, I only showed it to my doctor.

He hadn’t found it particularly interesting.

“Probably a minor abrasion,” he had said during my follow-up appointment. “You could have gotten it during the crash. Adrenaline masks a lot in the moment.”

Everyone had an explanation. None of them satisfied me.