Chapter Thirteen
Rheda
I wake all at once, like something has just let go of me. Air tears into my lungs in a sharp, uneven inhale. My eyes are already open, staring into the dark, but it doesn’t feel like waking should feel. There’s no gradual return—everything is already there, too close.
My throat tightens.
I push myself up too quickly, the movement clumsy, disjointed, like my limbs aren’t fully under my control yet. The mattress shifts with me, dragging against my back, and the contact sends a strange, sharp awareness through my body that makes me freeze halfway upright.
Because for a second, just a second, it isn’t the duvet.
It’s something else—something that had weight, that knew exactly where to go. The path of it, slow and deliberate, something trailing down the length of my spine like it knew where I would feel it most.
My back lifts before I can stop it, my body answering something that isn’t there anymore.
Then it hits.
Dampness.
Between my legs.
Wet heat clings between my thighs in a way that feels horribly fresh. My thighs clamp shut instinctively. Horror floods me so fast I nearly choke on it.
“No,” I breathe, but it comes out thin, like I don’t believe it myself.
My thoughts tear frantically at the edges of it, trying to force everything back into something logical, something explainable, but there’s nothing solid to grab onto. No memory. No sequence. Just the lingering feeling of being touched too much in places that still ache from it.
It has to be a dream.
It has to.
But my body hasn’t caught up with that yet.
My body feels handled. Used.
I swallow hard. My thighs tighten instinctively, smearing the wetness over my skin.
Oh God.
No.
The realisation crawls over me slowly enough to make nausea rise with it.
My body finished.
In my sleep!
I drag the duvet back over myself too quickly, like it can undo it, like it can hide it from me even though I already know it’s there. The movement drags my attention to a tickling sensation by my shoulder.
My hair is down.
I never sleep with my hair down.
What the—
A sharp pain stabs me in the nipples so suddenly it makes me gasp. I grab at my breasts instinctively, cradling them against the ache, but the tenderness only deepens beneath my touch. They feel bruised in a way that makes no sense.
My throat tightens painfully. I cannot stop feeling touched.
I hold myself there for a second too long, trying to soothe the ache and hating that part of me still feels warm beneath it.
“You make such pretty sounds in your sleep.” The words slide through me like fingers hooking beneath skin.
Heat twists violently low between my thighs before horror catches up to it, sudden and humiliating enough to make my stomach turn.
“No,” I say again, sharper this time, like I can cut the thought off before it fully forms. “No, that’s—”
That’s not possible.
I was asleep.
Alone.
Nobody was here.
Nobody should have been here.
My head snaps up.
I lunge for the lamp. Light detonates across the room so violently it makes my eyes water.
My eyes rip around the room. The corners first. The space beside the bed.
The chair by the window. The crack behind the door.
My pulse hammers so hard I can hear blood moving in my ears as my eyes keep snagging on shadows that almost look like bodies before resolving into furniture again.
If someone had been here, there would be proof.
A broken lock.
Footprints.
A mark on my body.
Something.
But there’s nothing. No sign the room has been touched at all.
But every few seconds another pulse tears through me low and heavy, like my body is still trying to finish something. My nipples ache. My breathing keeps catching every few seconds like my lungs are waiting for a hand to close around them.
My fingers curl slightly into the duvet. Pressure presses against the place that’s throbbing, waiting, and the realisation turns my stomach so violently I nearly gag.
“No,” I gasp. “That’s not...”
I shoot out of bed. The cold floor hits harder than it should, sharp enough to almost feel like punishment, and I welcome it, lean into it, because it’s clean, it’s mine, it doesn’t linger the way everything else does. I move through it frantically—clothes, teeth, keys.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
The mirror catches me mid-step. I pause. My reflection looks inhabited in a way that feels wrong. There’s something slightly misaligned, like I’ve been returned wrong. I hold my own gaze longer than I should, searching for something I can’t quite define.
There are no bruises, no fingerprints. There’s no proof that anybody touched me at all and the lack of it makes something inside of me come apart.
I move toward the door, and another pulse rolls through my body without warning. I nearly stumble. My fingers tighten around the doorhandle.
And then—“You make such pretty sounds in your sleep.”
The voice moves through my head like it belongs there now.
It steals the next breath from me, sharp and tight like an invisible hand yanking hard beneath my ribs.
I tear open the door. And I leave before whatever’s left inside me has the chance to answer.