Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rheda
I don’t sleep.
Not properly.
I lie here with my eyes closed for long stretches, my body heavy enough to pass for rest, but my mind doesn’t follow. It keeps circling back, replaying, tightening around the same points until they feel worn and sharp all at once.
Every time I shift, the memory moves with me. His voice, quiet in my mind like it belonged there.
You did well.
My throat tightens, the words sitting differently now than they did when he said them. Not praise, not exactly. Something closer to recognition, like he knew what I would do before I did.
My skin feels wrong. Every point of contact lingers—the fabric at my thighs, the pressure of the sofa cushions beneath my back, the place at my throat where I could still swear I feel fingers if I let myself think about it for too long.
I turn onto my side.
Then onto my back again.
The ceiling doesn’t change. The room doesn’t change. Everything holds steady in a way that feels almost deliberate.
At some point, the light outside starts to shift but the memory of him stains.
You did well.
My jaw tightens hard enough that it aches. It doesn’t stop churning in my mind. Three words with a meaning I can’t understand.
How could he have known?
“Stop,” I say quickly. “Stop it.”
My body moves on autopilot without needing instruction. If I keep moving, I don’t have to sit in it. If I keep moving, I don’t have to decide what it means that I didn’t fight him harder.
That I—
No.
I pull my hair tighter than necessary, the tension at my scalp grounding in a way nothing else has managed to, and step back from the mirror.
The question is already there.
Do I go back?
It settles low and heavy, threading through everything else, impossible to ignore.
If I don’t go, it stays like this. Unanswered. Loose beneath my skin. Something that doesn’t make sense but still exists. Something that could visit me again tonight.
But if I go—
My throat tightens.
Who would I even tell?
Peter.
The thought lands and is rejected just as quickly.
There’s no version of that conversation that doesn’t end with him looking at me differently.
What would I even say?
He came into my room. He knew what you were going to do before you did it. I didn’t stop it fast enough. I didn’t...
My chest tightens violently.
No.
There’s no way to say it without it turning back on me, without it becoming about my judgement. My control. My failure.
I’m the one who obeyed him. Turned the dial off.
Olivia flickers at the edge of my mind, softer, safer, but the same problem follows. She would listen, but she wouldn’t believe me. And even if she did, she can’t fix whatever the fuck is happening.
My heartbeat presses against my throat.
Because there’s something else underneath all of it. Something worse than fear.
I want to see him.
My stomach twists at it, the reaction sharp and immediate, too close to guilt to ignore.
A part of me wants to know if it would feel the same again. Would he look up at me again? Would he put on another show for me?
Heat pulls low before I can stop it.
“God,” I mutter under my breath, dragging a hand down my face, trying to push the thought away before it settles.
I need to see him.
To observe.
To confirm.
If there’s anything in his behaviour, anything that suggests awareness beyond what should be possible, I’ll see it. I’ll recognise it. I’ll be able to pull this back into something clinical. Something structured. Something I understand.
My jaw tightens.
That should work. It has to.
I MOVE THROUGH THE building, letting the familiarity carry me where I need to go. The corridors, the doors, the quiet hum of systems running behind walls that never quite feel like they belong to the surface.
Everything is exactly as it should be.
That helps, a little.
By the time I reach the viewing room, the others are already here. They don’t look up to greet me; their attentions are locked onto the monitors.
My gaze goes straight to the glass.
I don’t hesitate.
I don’t give myself time to think about what I’m looking for.
I just—
The lights are off.
The room beyond the glass is darker than I’ve ever seen it, the usual brightness gone completely. The shape of him is still visible, just barely, a silhouette more than a person. The lines of his body are reduced to outline and shadow, his head lowered, his posture unchanged.
The monitors beside Peter flicker with data.
Vitals.
Movement tracking.
My ribs pull tight like my body is bracing for impact.
“What’s this?” The question leaves me before I can stop it.
Peter doesn’t look at me straight away. He adjusts something on the console first, his focus still on the screens, then leans back slightly.
“New approach,” he says.
Something in the way he says it makes my stomach drop.
“Withdrawal.” Peter smiles. “Complete sensory deprivation. No light, sound. Minimal interaction.”
My fingers press into the edge of the desk. “For how long?”
“Seventy-two hours at a minimum.”
My face burns.
“That’s—” I stop myself, recalibrate. “That’s extreme.”
“That’s the point,” Peter replies, his tone even. “We’ve tried pressure. We’ve tried escalation. He’s not responding to it.”
He gestures slightly toward the monitors. “This will.”
I watch the screen. The small fluctuations in his vitals. The steady rhythm of something that hasn’t changed yet.
“No food,” Peter adds, almost as an afterthought. “No water. We’ll monitor for safety, but otherwise...nothing.”
“He’ll hallucinate,” I say.
Peter nods once. “That’s the idea. People break quickly in there.”
My gaze fixes on the outline of him again.
“You’re sure about this?” I ask, quieter now.
Peter’s gaze lingers on me for a second too long. Then he turns back to the monitors. “Yes.”
The conversation ends there.
I stand there for a moment longer than I should, my body still, my attention fixed on the dark shape in the chair.
I came here to see if he would look at me. If there would be something. Anything that confirmed what I can’t explain.
Now—there’s nothing to see.
No eyes.
No movement.
No way in.
Something tightens low in my chest, sharper than I expect, and I shift slightly.
It shouldn’t matter.
This is better. Safer.
And yet it doesn’t feel like relief. It feels like something has been taken, like I’ve been cut out of it completely.