Chapter 23 Dante
My heart pounds so violently it climbs up my throat, choking the air and making each breath a struggle.
It stutters out of me like the faltering engine of some old, dying machine.
Heat blooms across my body, roaring in waves of scorching warmth that leave blazing traces across my skin.
I can’t see it, but I can feel every pulsing surge.
A shaky exhale quivers through me, shuddering from the deepest corners of my body. I try to look down, to lift my hands, to anchor myself—but paralysis grips me like an iron vice, coiling tight over every inch of me.
Zings of electric pain shoot through me, short-circuiting my brain, igniting scorching streaks of agony. Hot, sticky blood begins to stream down my skin, forming rivers that burn as they flow.
I try to blink, but darkness swallows everything.
My bloodstream is flooded with adrenaline, my heart hammering against my ribs, yet I cannot locate the source of this chaotic torrent of feeling.
Sweat breaks free, coating me entirely, mingling with the blood, and the scent rises to choke the air around me.
Panic claws up from my chest, making each breath shallow and ragged. I attempt to move, only to discover I am trapped in an invisible cage, its walls sealed tight with no doors, no escape. Something wet drips down my cheeks, and I flinch.
Tears?
I can’t allow them. I can’t be so weak.
My mouth opens in a silent scream, the soundless roar inside me rising.
A ringing pulses through my skull, vibrations smashing against the walls of my mind, draining me, piece by piece.
I want to crawl out of my own body just to stop it, to claw at my skin and tear it away.
My nerves are taut, strings stretched to the breaking point, ready to snap.
My pulse thunders in my ears, drowning everything else. My vision narrows to a tunnel, and I teeter on the edge of blacking out under the weight of my own sensations.
This isn’t the kind of fear Estella ever elicited—none of the sharp, electric hunger she commanded with her blade, none of the searing traces of passion she left branded on my skin.
No, this is raw, untamed terror, the kind that consumes everything.
Sweat and blood pour over me in rivers, sliding across every inch of skin, and I gasp for air. My eyes snap wide as a face draws closer, its features blurred and indistinct, the outline of something menacing pressing at the edge of my perception.
I know who it is—somewhere deep in the back of my mind, the realization spins like a warning caught in a cyclone.
But no matter how hard I reach for it, the face stays out of focus.
I can’t shape the features, can’t force the blur to break apart long enough to form something real, something solid.
It slips through my grasp again and again, taunting me.
A muffled voice drifts into my ears, threading through the ringing and the thunder of my pulse. I try to clamp my hands over my ears, to shut it out, to bury myself in silence, but the paralysis holds me still.
I can’t block it. I can’t escape it.
That familiar sensation coils around my bones, tighter and tighter, until the thorns sink deeper—not just into muscle, but into organs, puncturing places I never learned how to protect.
I know what comes next. I can taste it already. Despair gathers on my tongue like a film of acidic ash, the bitter residue of what’s about to swallow me whole. Soon, there will be nothing left but hollowness, the familiar echoing void I’ve been running from all my life.
It’s not the flames that terrify me. Fire is loud, violent, visible—it gives warning before it devours.
It’s the cold that follows afterward, the cold that settles into every crack inside me once the burning stops. The cold that seeps beneath the surface and stamps itself into my soul, refusing to release me.
Refusing to thaw.
A soft drag of fingers glides across my face, pulling me up from the depths and coaxing my eyes open. The blur dissolves slowly, sharpening into the contours of a face that carries with it a spiraling sense of ease.
A trembling exhale ghosts across my cheek as her arms slide around me, gathering me in, fitting her body to mine so seamlessly it feels as though the world reshapes itself around the outline of us. There’s no separation, no fracture—just one complete thing held together by touch.
Our hearts beat against each other, each thrum echoing back, merging into a single rhythm that sounds like longing, like sorrow, like something wordless but painfully familiar.
Reality filters in by degrees. My gaze sweeps across the room, washed in silver moonlight. Slowly, the memories of our night rise again, pushing back the nightmare’s remnants, clearing the residue of terror that clings to my nerves.
I swallow, and it feels like forcing down a throatful of rust and nails. The edges of the dream slice through me on their way down, carving lines of ache beneath my ribs. I’m still bleeding somewhere inside, but it feels faint now, almost like background static.
Whispers linger at the edges of my mind, dark laughter curling through the shadows behind my eyes—like a sudden storm blooming out of nowhere on an otherwise bright day.
I inhale, steadying myself against the tightening paralysis still gripping my muscles, and push my arm around Estella, pulling her closer until her body molds fully into mine.
Her heat sinks into me like the first touch of sunlight after a long, punishing winter. She thaws something deep, something buried in frost and fear, and for a moment, we both fall into stillness.
It takes a few long minutes before my mind unknots enough to comprehend what just happened. For the first time in years, I had a nightmare—not a fleeting bad dream, not the kind that evaporates the second consciousness kicks in.
This one rooted itself in my bones. It felt lived-in. Real. Too real. Like I’d sleepwalked straight into a pit of old horrors. My limbs had been dead weight, useless, while something shoved at my back like a violent gust of wind.
And underlying it all was that same thread of familiarity I keep failing to name.
It’s as if every conversation with Estella has chipped away at the sealed-off corners in my mind, cracking open a hidden chamber I didn’t know existed.
As if we pried open a Pandora’s box and brushed our fingers over a version of me I was never meant to meet.
Now I have to teach myself how to breathe again.
My lungs drag in air like they’ve forgotten the mechanics, my chest still locked tight, as if the nightmare hasn’t fully released its hold.
I look down and find nothing wrapped around me—no wire, no constricting thorns, no phantom claws slicing into my skin. Just reality.
Just her.
Estella’s head rests on my chest, her arms looped around me with quiet certainty. My sweat clings to her skin in a slick sheen, but she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. She holds me as if the mess of me doesn’t matter. As if she doesn’t even notice.
I lift a hand to her shoulder, fingers gliding over the texture of her scars. I follow each line with a softness I didn’t know I could offer. She doesn’t ask anything of me. No questions, no explanations demanded.
She just… listens. Listens with her body pressed against mine, with her breathing syncing to my uneven rhythm, with the way she lets our hearts find each other’s beat.
My fingers continue their slow exploration of her scars, drawn to them by something deeper than curiosity. The moonlight pours across her body in a turquoise glow, conjuring memories with a force strong enough to push the nightmare back into the shadows where it came from.
Good, warm memories drift back—Estella barefoot in the kitchen, making fries; my stupid question and the way her lips felt when she said yes without needing words; her being in my arms, weightless, as I carried her to the window to kiss her under the moon.
And now here she is again, dragging me from the edge of the abyss, holding me together with nothing but her warmth and the quiet, unspoken promise of her presence.
I look down at her, and a thought slips in. A thought I’ve never let myself consider before.
I don’t want this to end.
This moment. This quiet. This impossible peace.
I want to exist here with her, as if time could be tricked into stopping. And I know that neither of us would ever grow tired of it.
Because this kind of calm, this gentle stillness, is something neither of us has ever been allowed to have.
Not once. Not until now.
“We’ve talked about my scars,” I say, my voice low, the words barely breaking the silence. “But you never told me about yours.”
She opens her eyes slowly, lashes lifting as she blinks up at my hand tracing her skin. “What do you want to know?”
“How did you get them?” I ask cautiously, tasting the lingering bitterness of the nightmare, feeling it fade slowly as I focus on her.
She inhales sharply, a shaky breath that makes her chest rise and fall with fragile tremors. “I was in some places before The Order found me,” she says, her words tight, strained, carrying the weight of memory.
I weave my fingers through her hair, savoring the softness that seems almost unreal against the raw tension coiled in her body.
“My mom convinced the judge that I needed more than a simple prison sentence,” she continues. “She used to say she could feel the darkness inside me, that I needed mental help. So after I killed my dad, I went to prison first, and from there they transferred me to the local asylum.”
She shifts slightly, but her body remains pressed to mine, leaning into the comfort of my touch without hesitation.
“The shithole I lived in had nothing to boast about, except for that place—and only for the methods they used,” she explains.
“They contained psychopaths from all over the globe. On the outside, it looked legal. Everyone thought they were following advanced methods to treat hard cases. But in reality, the owner just had the right connections. Nothing was legal. They used electroshock therapy, metrazol, insulin shock—anything to make us obedient.”
A shiver crawls down my spine as her words wash over me. I had suspected that the asylum wasn’t the pristine sanctuary it claimed to be, but hearing it from Estella makes it tangible.
“They made everyone believe that these methods were only for hopeless cases,” she continues, voice low, almost haunted.
“But it wasn’t true. The doctors were obsessed with turning us into obedient vegetables.
They didn’t care about healing anyone. Some patients had their brains scrambled by lobotomy. ”
I tighten my hold on her, pressing her closer, refusing to release even an inch.
“We were experimented on. My scars are proof of that. Whenever we were granted a shower, guards stood there and watched us, making sure we didn’t snap and hurt anyone.
” She pauses, breath hitching. “I remember their eyes tracing the map of my fresh scars. They admired the ugliness they’d carved into me.
And one time, I managed to get a pen into my cell. And then I just—”
A sudden sob tears through her, and she clears her throat hard. I pull her even closer, my arms wrapping around her with enough certainty to anchor her, to tell her without words that I’m here.
“I just cut them out myself,” she finally forces out. “I stabbed the pen into the fresh wounds, sliced them back open, watched myself becoming uglier. It felt better knowing the pain and the ugliness came from my own hand. It brought me comfort.”
“I understand,” I whisper. “It’s unorthodox, but it feels better.”
“With time, I stopped hiding them,” she goes on. “I stopped wearing long sleeves during hot weather. I forced myself to show my skin and trained myself to look away from what I hated. Eventually, I stopped noticing the ugliness—I just ignored it.”
I tilt my head, looking at her with a certainty that settles into my bones.
“Your scars are anything but ugly, Estella. I know why you feel the way you do, and I know I can’t undo years of your thoughts or make you suddenly see them differently.
But I want you to know what I think about when I look at them. ”
I fall silent, letting my words settle between us.
“Every time I look at them, they remind me of spider lilies,” I murmur. “Their blooms rise on naked stalks in late summer or fall, with the foliage appearing only afterward. The flowers seem to appear out of nowhere and endure, strong and impossible to ignore. Just like you.”
My voice drops even quieter. “Breathtaking, born from a place bare and raw. A force that bloomed into beauty despite everything that tried to bury it.”
I feel the anxiety inside her begin to loosen its grip. It recedes, step by step, until her body softens against mine.
Grief leaks out of both of us, slipping through the fractures we’ve learned to hide. It pours between us like two pillars collapsing in unison, each unable to stay upright without the other.
And as she breathes into me, I understand one thing with absolute clarity.
The next time I fall back into the nightmare, I won’t be falling alone.