Chapter Forty-Two
Rheda
The second night is worse.
I do not even pretend I am trying to sleep.
The lights are off, the apartment drowned in the kind of silence that feels deliberate.
Everything looks the same as the night before—the same curtains half-drawn, the same weak lamplight slipping through the gaps in thin gold lines, the same ceiling I have spent too many hours staring at—but the quiet has changed.
It feels heavier tonight. Closer. Like something breathing softly in the corner of the room, patient enough to wait forever.
I lie on my back and watch the strips of light stretch across the ceiling.
Waiting.
It is pathetic, really.
I hated when he was here. I hated the way he forced himself into every thought, every dream, every private part of me I had spent years keeping locked down. I hated the humiliation of it. The helplessness. The way my own body betrayed me.
So why does this feel worse?
Why does his absence feel like punishment?
My throat tightens.
I should never have said enough.
The words haunt me more than the dreams do. They sit ugly in my chest, replaying over and over, sharper every time. I said it like I had the right, like I was the one being wronged, like I was the wounded party.
But he had been showing me pieces of himself. Ugly ones. Intimate ones. Pieces that still bled.
And I shut the door in his face.
Maybe that was the moment he decided I was not worth returning to. Maybe he left because I made him.
The thought makes something deep in my stomach twist.
If someone watched me hand them the worst parts of myself, and they recoiled—if they looked at my pain and called it too much—I would never forgive them.
I would make them regret it.
Maybe he will, too.
My phone glows softly on the bedside table.
2:13 a.m.
The numbers move like they are mocking me. Every few minutes I check again, hoping time will have skipped forward, that sleep might have taken me without permission. It never does.
I turn onto my side and stare at the wall.
“Fine,” I whisper into the dark. “Don’t come.”
The words leave my mouth and shame follows immediately. Childish. Desperate. Worse—true.
If he is here, if he is watching the way I sometimes think he is, then he knows exactly what this silence is doing to me. He knows I am waiting for him. That I am lying here with my body tense and traitorous, trying to chase sleep because sleep is the closest thing I have to him.
I press my face into the pillow, irrationally embarrassed by the thought of him seeing me like this. Reduced to this.
Because the truth is worse than loneliness.
I want him to come back.
I want his hand in my hair, cruel fingers tightening at the root.
I want him to force my head back and make me look at him.
I want that terrible stillness in his eyes when he sees straight through me.
I want every flinch noticed. Every lie pulled apart.
Every trembling no met with the quiet certainty that my body means yes.
I want him.
And that truth sits in me like sickness.
Sleep tries to pull at me eventually, pressing down on my limbs like gravity changing its mind. My bones ache for it. My body begs for rest. But my mind will not stop.
Every few seconds, a memory flicks through it.
The market square he showed me. His father’s hands tugging his collar higher to hide something. The whispering guards. The Friars.
And then—the bracelet.
I lift my wrist slowly into the dim light. It glints faintly.
I still haven’t taken it off. I tried to earlier, but the clasp refused to budge like permanent teeth sinking into its own tail.
Perhaps, if I’d tried harder, I could have broken it off. Found a hammer. Something heavy. Or used the nail file I confiscated off a patient half a year ago and mindlessly slipped into my trouser pocket. I might have been able to free myself.
But I didn’t.
I left it on because it was too pretty to break.
This is the lie I’m going with. Because the truth that I left it on as a reminder of him, feels too painful to swallow.
I can’t confess that I need it. Something real and tangible and cold, something that mirrors the dreams. Something that reminds me I’m not losing my mind. That this is real. He is real.
That he’ll come back soon. That we will resume from where we left of.
But now it sits cold against my skin.
I run my thumb over the etched pattern circling it. The design is strange. The lines weave into each other like tiny vines.
The clock reads 2:33am.
Still nothing.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand. The floor creaks faintly beneath my feet as I walk toward the kitchen. The apartment is colder tonight like a heart has stopped pumping blood into the walls.
I pour a glass of water and drink it slowly.
The silence follows me from room to room.
I lean against the counter and stare at the dark window above the sink. My reflection looks back at me. Pale. Eyes shadowed. Hair falling messily around my face, knotted and tangled from where I brushed it with my fingers instead of a brush earlier.
My lips are swollen, too. Red-raw, plump, as though I’ve been kissed by something I don’t remember. I move to touch them, to soothe the ache and try to remember a pressure that once was, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
I stare at my reflection and wait for it to blink first.
I immediately feel silly.
Get a fucking grip, Rheda.
I look away quickly. I can’t bear to see the person I’m becoming. Or rather, the person I’m losing.
I return to the bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed again.
The clock creeps past three.
Still nothing.
No dreams.
No voice.
No sleep.
No him. The most painful realisation.
A strange ache blisters across my chest. The absence feels like a hole carved straight through my ribs.
“Where are you?” I whisper into the dark.
There’s no reply. But I wait anyway. Just in case.
Silence responds.
Eventually the sky outside the window begins to lighten. Grey creeps into the room. Morning again.
My body feels hollow, like something important drained out of it overnight.
I stare at the wall and try to remember the last time I felt rested. It seems like weeks ago or even years. Time doesn’t seem to obey me in a linear pattern. Even when he was forcing dreams onto my mind it didn’t feel like rest. It felt like hard work.
The alarm goes off again. The noise drills straight through my skull.
Lurching in its direction, I slam my hand onto the button until it stops. I stay there for a long moment as though frozen in time, before forcing myself to stand.
Work.
Routine.
Normal life.
But the shower helps less today. The water feels too hot and too loud.
It pummels onto my sensitive skin. I feel shaky, sick.
My hands refuse to still when I cake myself in makeup, a desperate attempt to hide the red rings staining my eyes.
I force colour onto my cheeks. Blush. Contour.
Anything to disguise the paleness, but it doesn’t seem to work.
The makeup sits on top of my skin like a translucent mask. I look dead.
I don’t bother with breakfast either today. The thought of food is enough to make my head spin, and my stomach churn. I don’t trust that I’ll be able to keep it down. I leave hastily. The only thing moving my body forward is the knowledge that he is there.