Chapter 25 #2
“No,” I rasped, and it came out more like a broken breath than a word. “No. Stop.” I tried to jerk away. Tried to wrench my head free. Tried to bite. Tried to claw. My body surged once, pure instinct, pure panic. Pain answered immediately. Not from a strike.
From inside.
A pressure that snapped tight behind my eyes, like invisible hands had hooked into the soft parts of my brain and pulled. My vision stuttered. The room doubled, blurred, then snapped so violently it felt like the world had edges made of glass.
I made a sound I didn’t recognize, something animal and humiliating.
The man chuckled softly. “Oh, don’t do that. You’ll make it messy.”
Messy. Like this wasn’t already a butcher’s work. His fingertips moved, minute adjustments, as if he were turning a lock. The memory of that fateful moment flared again, bright and cruel. Marisella’s voice. Calm. Certain.
You will pretend to be Aeliana.
The trap. The moment it all snapped shut around my life.
The moment my consent stopped being a question and became a weapon they used against me.
I clung to it like it was a railing over an abyss.
I tried to hold onto the exact tilt of her mouth, the exact cadence of her words, the cold in my blood when I realized what she was asking.
Because that was proof.
Because that was the truth.
Because if I lost that, I lost the only thing that mattered.
My chest heaved but no air came. My lungs locked down like they’d decided oxygen was optional. “Stop,” I gasped again, louder, desperation shredding the word. “Please. Stop.”
The man laughed, and it wasn’t cruel in the obvious way.
It was worse.
It was casual.
Like my suffering was dull enough to be routine.
“Hush now,” he murmured.
His voice became a thread.
I felt it slip into my skull, delicate and invasive, winding tighter with every syllable. A tug behind my eyes. A twist at the base of my spine. A sickening pull through the center of my head, as if my thoughts had roots and he’d found them.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly, breath hot against my ear. “You won’t even miss it.”
I thrashed again, weaker this time, my body already failing.
The soldiers’ grips tightened. One hand pinned my shoulder, another pressed against my chest. The table’s metal bit into my cheekbone. Cold kissed my skin like mockery.
I tried to scream. Nothing came out but a strangled sound that scratched my throat raw.
The man’s fingers pressed harder. The pain turned into something surgical. Not a headache. Not dizziness. A blade sliding through the delicate places in my mind, separating memory from meaning, truth from anchor, like he was filleting me from the inside out.
The memory began to warp.
Marisella’s face smeared at the edges first, her expression pulling apart like wet ink on parchment. Her voice stretched, slowed, then fractured, the words losing their shape mid-syllable. I tried to repeat it to myself.
You will pretend to be Aeliana.
I tried to chant it inside my skull like a prayer. But the phrase kept slipping. Each time I grabbed it, it tore. Like my own mind was covered in oil. I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw screamed. I tasted blood where I’d bitten my tongue earlier, metallic and hot, grounding me for half a heartbeat.
Then the man pulled again.
The pressure behind my eyes spiked, and my vision went white.
I felt something rip.
Not flesh.
Something worse.
Something foundational.
A sudden lurch of emptiness, like stepping on stairs you thought were there and finding air instead. My stomach dropped so hard I gagged. I heard myself crying out, but it sounded distant, like it came from another room. Like it belonged to another person.
The memory collapsed in on itself. Marisella’s face became a blur of pale shapes. And in its place was nothing but a bright, violent absence. The kind that makes you claw at your own mind because your instincts know something is missing even when you can’t name it.
“No,” I whispered, smaller now. Broken. “No, no, no…”
The man’s voice drifted through the haze, satisfied. “There. Much better.”
I tried to reach for it again.
Tried to pull the moment back by force.
My mind surged forward, desperate, clawing.
And found only empty air.
Panic detonated inside my chest. My heartbeat stumbled, then sprinted.
My skin went cold and hot at the same time.
I couldn’t tell if I was breathing. I couldn’t tell if I was alive.
The man’s fingers lifted from my temples, gentle now, like he hadn’t just carved out a piece of me.
His breath brushed my ear one last time.
“Good girl,” he murmured, like he was praising obedience and not survival.
I wanted to spit. I wanted to bite. I wanted to rip his throat out with my teeth.
I couldn’t even lift my head.
The room tilted.
The light overhead stretched into a long smear.
Sound warped into a low roar, like the ocean had flooded the dungeon and I was sinking under it.
My own name felt far away.
My own body felt far away.
I felt my mind searching, searching, searching for what had been taken, for the shape of the missing truth.
And the harder I reached, the emptier it became.
The last thing I saw was the man’s pale eyes, calm and pleased, watching me come apart as if he’d simply completed a task.
Then the world folded.
And everything went black.