Chapter 60
NADIA
There’s blood everywhere.
It coats the floor, the sheets, my skin - too much red to make sense of. I know it’s mine, but it doesn’t feel real anymore. The pain should be unbearable, but it isn’t. The drugs have eaten it whole. What’s left is a strange, hollow calm - like my body’s already halfway gone and forgot to tell me.
I think I’m dying.
And I don’t know if I welcome it or fear it.
Part of me whispers that death means peace - that maybe I’ll see Lucian again, maybe I’ll stop running from ghosts. But another part, the part that still remembers the way Jude looked at me like I was worth saving, isn’t ready to say goodbye. Not yet. Not when we never really got our beginning.
Kellerman’s voice cuts through the fog, muffled and sharp, like a scalpel scraping bone.
I can’t catch the words, but I know his tone.
Detached. Clinical. Triumphant. He’s done something to me - I can feel it in the way my insides throb like a dull engine.
Did he save me, only to destroy me again?
Did he cut something out, or put something in?
His shadow passes across my vision, dark and moving. My head lolls to the side; I try to focus, but the world swims. My tongue feels thick, my lips cracked. I can hear myself mumbling something, maybe begging, maybe cursing, but it’s all just noise - a sound trapped in a dying body.
Then comes another prick in my arm. There’s a sharp sting, and a burn that spreads fast.
Heat floods through me like liquid fire. My pulse kicks. My breathing hitches. The room tilts and fractures, the edges glowing too bright, colors spilling over each other. My heart is flying and falling all at once.
Euphoria hits like a wave.
I’m weightless - lighter than breath, lighter than thought. The blood on the floor turns into pools of light. The ceiling bends open into a sky I don’t recognize. I reach for it, for anything, for the freedom that feels so close I could drown in it.
I’m laughing - or maybe I’m screaming. The sound blurs until I can’t tell which it is. My limbs move without order, fingers clawing at the air, chasing something just out of reach.
I’m flying. I swear I’m flying.
My hair fans out like wings. My body arches, suspended between fever and euphoria. The world spins faster, the edges melting into color - red, white, gold - until everything becomes nothing but motion.
There’s no pain now. No straps. No Kellerman. Just light and noise and the wild rush of release.
I think of Jude - his voice, his rough hands, the way he touched the very core of me. His face flashes behind my eyelids, soft and sharp all at once, and I reach for it, for him.
But when I open my eyes, it isn’t Jude I see.
It’s Lucian.
And then it’s Jude again.
Their faces blur and fold into one another, like two versions of the same man. I can’t tell them apart - can’t tell if the man I loved is gone, or if he’s been standing right in front of me all along.
The high carries me higher, until thought dissolves. The world becomes one endless pulse, one aching breath.
Then, somewhere beneath the haze - a whisper of clarity.
It slips through me like glass.
Maybe they’re the same man after all.
And with that, the light devours me whole.
The world tilts, and suddenly I’m standing beneath a single, blinding light.
A stage stretches out beneath my feet - polished wood, endless black around it. I can’t tell if I’m dreaming or dying, but it feels good. Warm. Weightless. Music hums from nowhere, low and slow, crawling up my spine like silk.
I move without thinking.
My hips sway to a rhythm that doesn’t belong to this world.
My body glows in the spotlight, skin slick with light.
Each movement feels exaggerated - languid, deliberate, a worship.
The fabric clings, slides, falls. I peel it away like shedding a second skin.
The heat in the air thickens until it’s almost touchable.
There’s only one man in the audience.
He’s sitting back in the dark - maybe eighteen rows out - a shadow of hunger and restraint. I can’t make out his face, only the glint of his eyes when the revolving spotlight catches him.
It’s Lucian. No, no. It’s Jude.
The light plays tricks on my mind, shifting across him, changing the shape of his jaw, the cut of his mouth, the slope of his shoulders.
One moment, I see Lucian’s calm, cruel intensity - the man who once owned my soul.
The next, Jude’s rough devotion bleeds through, his chest rising in time with my movements, his hunger written in silence.
The music slows, but my pulse doesn’t. It’s a savage thing that claws its way up my throat, beating against my ribs like it wants out. Each note drags, heavy and sultry, but my body keeps moving - restless, desperate, chasing a rhythm that doesn’t belong to the song anymore.
It belongs to him.
To the man in the shadows who watches like he owns the air I breathe. His stillness is a challenge, a command. Every breath I take, every slow turn of my hips feels like an offering to that unseen hunger between us.
The lights blur. The world narrows. All I can hear is the blood in my ears and the whisper of fabric sliding against skin. My heart doesn’t care about the music - it’s moving to something older, darker, more dangerous.
A language written in the space between us.
I slide a hand down my throat, over my chest, the movement almost reverent. The air shivers with tension. It’s not just performance anymore; it’s confession - the kind you make with your body when words don’t work. I move closer to the edge of the stage, bridging the gap between us.
The spotlight sweeps the audience again. Empty chairs. Shadows. Then his outline sharpens - a dark figure, elbows on knees, eyes fixed on me like I’m the only thing keeping him alive.
Lucian. Jude. Both. Neither.
I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. They merge in the light - one heart, two ghosts, the past and present colliding in the fever dream of my mind.
The music fades, but the rhythm doesn’t stop. It’s inside me now, low and steady. I take one more step forward, bare feet against the wood, breath catching in my throat.
“Who are you?” I whisper.
No answer. Just the echo of my voice across the empty theatre and the faint rise of a man’s shadow - standing now, walking toward me, slow and certain.
The light flickers.
And for a heartbeat, I think I see both faces - Lucian’s smirk, Jude’s grief - layered perfectly over each other.
I don’t know which one I want to reach for.
I only know I want him.
The spotlight flares. The music drops.
And the dream breaks open.