Chapter 38
The Flame
I woke to movement.
At least, I thought I did.
The room around me was dark, the kind of darkness that made it impossible to tell whether my eyes were open or closed, whether minutes had passed or hours, whether I was still in the same bed I had collapsed onto or somewhere else entirely.
For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was.
I couldn’t remember why my body ached, why my throat burned, why every breath seemed to scrape against something raw and bruised inside me.
My entire body felt heavy. Like it didn’t belong to me. I couldn’t command it to do anything. I tried to force my head to lift, to pay attention to the movement near me, but it didn’t obey. My hands wouldn’t rise, wouldn’t push me up off the mattress.
I felt sluggish. Dazed.
Then a hand brushed my hair away from my neck. My body tried to tense, but nothing happened. I should have panicked. I should have felt something. But all that came was a strange, heavy distance from myself, as though my body belonged to someone else and I was only observing it from very far away.
A small pinch to the side of my neck got my attention. I groaned in protest, wanting to bat the annoying prick away, but my hands remained useless on the bed. Then a burning pain followed the sharp scratch. It felt familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
A hand held my hair to the side, and I heard the satisfied grunt. I wanted to ask questions but my lips felt too heavy to move, my tongue too thick. I wanted to shove them away and scream.
Instead, warmth spread beneath my skin, slow and terrible, pulling me down before I could decide whether I had ever truly woken at all.
The next time I surfaced, my phone was vibrating.
The sound was close. Irritatingly close.
It was somewhere near the bed, maybe on the bedside table, maybe in the hand of whoever had just picked it up.
I couldn’t turn my head enough to see. I could only stare through the thin slit of my half-open eyes at the dark figure standing beside the bed, furiously typing a response to my messages.
For one confused second, I thought it was Silas. Every shadow in this house belonged to him in some way. Every silence carried his shape. But why would Silas be replying to my messages? Who had tried to contact me?
No one.
No one knew where I was.
Did they?
The phone buzzed again, and I tried to lift my hand. I tried to ask for the phone. But nothing happened. The darkness threatened to wash over me again, and it took all of my strength to keep my eyes half-way open.
The figure looked down at the screen, waited a moment, then pressed something with their thumb. The buzzing stopped.
A hysterical little thought drifted through my mind.
Maybe it had been Adrien. Maybe it had been my father. Maybe help had finally tried to reach me, and I had been lying there too drugged to answer while one of Silas’s people decided whether or not I was allowed saving.
The figure set the phone down again, screen facing the wood, and moved away.
I wanted to cry, but even that felt too difficult.
When I woke again, someone was touching my legs.
Their movements weren’t rough, but they were firm enough for me to notice. Whoever it was moved with methodical care, lifting one leg at a time, smoothing warm water over my skin, dragging something from my ankle to my knee with a gentleness that made the whole thing feel somehow worse.
What was that?
I heard the splash of water, and then whatever it was came back to my leg, running along the length of it again.
Was that a razor?
I looked at the ceiling in confusion, the room spinning. I vaguely registered that this was not the ceiling from the room I had collapsed in.
Where was I?
Had they carried me somewhere else? Had I walked there myself? I couldn't remember.
The person lifted my other leg and began again. I focused on the rhythm—scratch down my leg, splash in the water, scratch again.
It was definitely a razor.
And then my legs were opened, and a cool gel was applied to my genitals.
I wanted to pull my legs shut. I wanted to turn away from the touch. But then the razor was placed against me, and they gently shaved me whilst I was powerless to stop it.
What was happening? Was this even real? And was that leather I felt holding my legs apart?
The thought floated through me, distant and dreamlike, before disappearing beneath the weight dragging me back under.
At some point, someone brushed my hair—and that was the moment that almost broke me.
Because it was such a tender thing. Such a motherly thing.
Such an ordinary, intimate, harmless little act, except my mother wasn’t here.
No one who loved me was here. I was alone in a stranger’s room while unfamiliar hands worked through the knots in my hair, smoothing out the evidence of the forest, the evidence of what had happened, the evidence of me falling apart.
The brush moved from root to end again and again until my scalp ached.
I wanted to ask them to stop.
I wanted to ask them why.
I wanted to ask what they were making me beautiful for.
But my mouth wouldn’t open, and some ruined part of me already knew the answer.
They were preparing me for Silas—I just didn’t know why.
The next time I woke, Silas was there. I knew it before I saw him.
The room felt different with him inside it. He carried silence the way other men carried weapons, and even through the heavy fog clouding my mind, I recognised the shift in the air. The quiet became deeper. More focused. As though the entire room had drawn itself still in deference to him.
He stood beside the bed, looking down at me.
His mask was gone.
That should have meant something. Once, it would have meant trust. Vulnerability. A gift. Now all I could think was that he had taken off the monster’s face and somehow looked no less monstrous without it.
I tried to move away from him, but once again my body didn’t listen.
Silas lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress, and I felt the bed dip beneath his weight. For several seconds, he did nothing but look at me. His gaze moved over my face, my hair, my throat, lingering there in a way that made something cold twist inside me.
Then he reached out and stroked his knuckles along my cheek. The touch was almost reverent. That was the worst part.
If he had grabbed me, I could have continued hating him.
If he had hurt me, I could have filed him away with every other violent thing he had done and let the fear make sense.
But there was something devastating about the softness of his hand, about the way his fingers brushed over my skin as though I was precious to him.
And I was so starved for attention, so desperate for affection, that I welcomed his touch.
His thumb moved beneath my eye, catching a tear I hadn’t realised had fallen.
I wanted to tell him I hated him.
I wanted to tell him he had ruined everything.
I wanted to tell him that whatever had existed between us before the woods, before the tracker, before his hands and his mask and the blood, he had killed it.
Instead, my eyelids fluttered, the darkness consuming me once more.
The last thing I saw was Silas leaning down. His lips brushed my cheek, lingering there with a possessiveness so quiet it felt almost worse than violence. A promise pressed into my skin. A claim.
Then his mouth moved closer to my ear, and for a moment I thought he might finally speak. I thought he might explain, or apologise, or threaten me, or give me something I could hold on to besides the endless, suffocating silence.
But Silas gave me nothing.
He only stayed there, breathing against my skin, until the drug pulled me under again.
When morning finally came, I didn’t wake all at once.
I surfaced slowly, painfully, dragged back into myself by the ache in my muscles and the soreness in my throat.
My limbs felt heavy. My skin felt too clean.
My hair lay brushed and smooth around me, and beneath the lingering fog in my head, a terrible understanding waited patiently for me to be strong enough to face it.
Someone had washed me.
Someone had shaved me.
Someone had brushed my hair.
Someone had taken my phone.
Someone had made decisions about my body while I drifted somewhere between sleep and waking, close enough to know it was happening and too far gone to stop any of it.
I stared at the ceiling for a long time.
Then came the knock at the door.