Chapter Thirty-Four
Rheda
I don’t move straight away.
My lungs drag air in too sharply, like they don’t trust it’s going to stay. My throat aches violently. I press my fingers there, and the tenderness blooms instantly beneath the touch. The heat presses me back.
I don’t know when we moved but suddenly, I’m aware of my duvet sheets beneath me. His weight anchors me to the mattress, his forearms braced on either side of my head. The heat of him sinks into me, his breath brushing against my cheek in slow, steady exhales. My body aches beneath him.
“Say something,” I whisper.
My voice comes out thinner than I expect. He doesn’t move. The silence stretches, and something tightens in my chest.
“Out loud,” I push, the words catching slightly. “Where I can hear it.”
His mouth doesn’t open, not even slightly, and still...
“You already can.” The voice lands inside my head again, smooth and invasive, threading through my thoughts like it belongs there. My stomach turns at the familiarity of it, at how easily it settles.
“No,” I shake my head, sharper now, breath uneven. “That’s not the same. If you’re real, speak out loud.”
The corner of his lip tips up. “And that would prove I’m real?”
“Please.” My eyes search his face, desperate for something to give—any break, any tell, any sign that this is something I can understand. This time, something shifts. His gaze changes like he’s looking through me now instead of at me, studying. My breath falters under it.
“I’m very much real, Doctor.” His eyes move over mine with slow precision, searching, stripping—like he’s pulling apart every flicker I haven’t managed to hide. The tension in my jaw. The way my breath won’t steady.
I feel it happening, the way he’s reading me, and I can’t stop it.
“What are you?” It stutters out, barely audible.
His thumb drags once across my cheekbone.
“I used to be a man,” he says slowly, “before they stripped me of my mortality.”
I stare at him through the dim light, trying to force sense into the shape of him.
Bruised mouth. Split lip. Chains pulled tight enough to bite into skin.
Everything about him should look human. It does look human.
And yet something beneath it keeps slipping sideways every time I focus too hard, like my mind can’t hold him still properly.
“What does that even mean?” My voice comes out quieter than I want it to. “Mortality isn’t something you can strip away.”
For the first time, something shifts faintly in his expression. His eyes lower briefly, almost thoughtful. “You can if you try hard enough.”
The room feels smaller suddenly. I swallow hard, my attention snagging helplessly on the movement of his throat as he speaks.
“You expect me to believe people made you into...” I hesitate. “Whatever you think you are?”
A soft metallic sound breaks the silence as the chains shift slightly with his movement. “I don’t particularly care what you believe, Doctor.”
The words land strangely soft. Tired almost. Like he’s had this conversation before and already knows how it ends.
I stare at him. The dark bruising beginning to yellow beneath one eye. The slow rise and fall of his chest beneath the restraints. Sweat dried faintly at his throat. Tiny details. Human details.
My brain clings to them desperately, cataloguing each one like evidence.
Real people breathe.
Real people bleed.
His chains leave indentations in his skin when he moves. My gaze catches on the movement of his throat as he swallows. He’s too real.
My stomach twists.
But if he’s really here, then every night comes crashing back wrong.
Every time he touched me while I lay trapped inside sleep.
Every time my body reacted before I could stop it.
Every time I woke up aching and terrified and convinced I’d done it to myself because that was easier than believing someone had really been there.
And all the while, he knew. He let me sit there unravelling, questioning my own mind, while he looked me in the face and let me believe he was only a fantasy.
“Fuck,” the word breaks out of me too fast. “How could you—"
My breathing starts coming apart properly now in sharp inhales.
Mike.
The interrogation room.
The CCTV.
“You spoke to me.” My voice sounds wrong. Thin. “You—you talked to me in front of Mike and then it—”
My throat closes violently. I can still see Mike staring at me like I’d lost my mind. The empty footage. Nothing there except me speaking into silence.
Cold spreads through my chest so fast it hurts. Because if he’s telling the truth, then it wasn’t silence.
My body starts trembling underneath him.
God.
Oh God.
“No,” I whisper again, weaker now. “No, that’s not possible.”
The mattress shifts softly behind me. I flinch. His hand finds my jaw before I can pull further away, fingers settling there firmly enough to stop me shaking apart completely.
“Rheda.” The sound of my name nearly undoes me. “Stop looking at me like that. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it already.”
My breathing breaks apart. “You already did. You used me while I was asleep. Multiple times!”
The corner of his mouth shifts faintly. “Your body never treated me like an intruder.”
Heat floods through me violently. “Stop!”
“You reached for me before you even understood what I was.”
“Stop.”
His thumb drags slowly beneath my jaw, forcing my attention back toward him.
“You can hate me for it,” he murmurs. “But don’t lie to yourself about what I felt in you.”
My eyes squeeze shut, my mouth suddenly dry. I rasp. Wheeze. Everything suddenly feels too hot, too tight.
“Calm down,” his voice drags through my mind. “I’m not going to hurt you, Doctor. I need you.”
His hand slides slowly from my jaw into my hair, fingers threading carefully through the strands like he already knows the texture of them.
“Need me for what?” I splutter.
“You want the truth,” he murmurs. “Even now. That matters to me.”
I shake violently.
His eyes search mine so intensely it almost hurts to hold his gaze. Wide. Desperate in a way I’ve never seen before. And for one brief, terrible second, moisture gathers there. His expression tightens around it immediately like he hates the weakness of it, but I still see it.
Tears.
“I don’t care about dying,” he says quietly. “I care about being misunderstood.”
Something twists painfully beneath my ribs.
“You’re the only one who can help me.” His voice drops lower now, roughened slightly around the edges. Strained. “Please.”
“Help you?” I rasp. “I can’t help you. You won’t even speak to us!”
“I can show you the truth.” His thumb shifts to my throat.
“How? I don’t even want—"
“Don’t lie, Doctor.” His voice cuts through me like a blade. “Stop lying. I know you need to know more. I know you will understand me.”
He searches mine for an answer. I soften. I really try not to, but I do. My breath catches on the exhale and it betrays me.
“Close your eyes. I’ll show you what really happened to me.” He whispers.
“What do you—”
I barely get the words out before his hand settles over my face.
I flinch hard beneath it, but the movement never finishes properly.
The room bends strangely around me instead, the mattress seeming to tilt beneath my body as a heavy pressure drags through my head.
My stomach drops sharply. Blood rushes loud through my ears, thick enough to drown the room beneath it, while something cold unravels slowly behind my eyes.
I stumble, body half crumpling over as my arms windmill fast to keep me upright. I snap backwards, catching myself just at the last minute, and tear my gaze around.
I am alone. It’s the first thing I register. Not the cold, nor the stench of damp earth and straw, but the isolation, a vast green land with clusters of dandelions and stinging nettles dotted around.
The ground trembles, a low growl, as though it’s alive, and then things start moving.
A small hut falls like someone has tossed it from the sky, landing squat.
The walls are uneven, roof heavy with thatch and straw spills from the doorway in untidy clumps.
I can’t shake the scent of wood sap and smoke staining the back of my throat.
It smells old, of sickness, even in spite of the large, leafy forest sprouting from the ground.
The trees stretch their branches up and out, smacking into one another as they grow, curling around other trees like spindly fingers pushing and shoving.
I stagger backwards, breath caught in the back of my throat.
I notice almost immediately that this hut is old, too rough and too-lived in. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
And then, there he is.
Deogal.
But I recognise immediately that something is off. It’s not him in the way I know him. It’s not the man behind the glass, not the one who finds me when I sleep.
This one is younger, his arms are smaller like he hasn’t filled out his body properly yet. His hair is shaggy and unkempt, and it looks as though it hasn’t been brushed in months. His hands are bare, red-knuckled, gripping an axe that bites into a log with brutal precision.
Thud.
The sound vibrates through my bones.
I take a step forward without thinking.
He doesn’t even notice me. He brushes past, with his log, dropping it in a wicker basket. He’s close enough for the heat of his sweating body to touch mine, but he’s totally oblivious. And I can’t help the ridiculous feeling of loss curling in my stomach.
“What am I doing here?” I whisper as though something might answer back. The wind cuts through, thick and cold, dragging across my skin until it seeps deeper, forcing my arms tight around myself in a useless attempt to hold onto what little warmth I have left.
I turn, watching him return to the chopping block, the wooden axe handle resting on his shoulder. He tosses a log onto the block, his movements automatic and practiced, like routine bleeds into his bones. He lifts the axe, aims, and starts his swing.
Then—a shout, sharp, panicked.
He freezes.