Chapter Forty-Six
Rheda
Heat moves first. A slow, invasive climb up my spine, like something has found a seam in me and is working its way through it. My breath follows, shortening without permission.
I can’t look away from Deogal. The angle of his jaw is too set. The fractional flex of his fingers against the restraints occurs too precisely, like a signal sent rather than a reflex. The spaces between his blinks feel timed.
I should not feel like this.
I should not feel anything.
And yet my body has already reorganised itself around him.
Peter goes still for a moment. From where I’m sitting, I can only see the straight line of his back, the slight tilt of his head as he studies him. When he speaks, his voice is calm, but there’s something darker sitting underneath it.
“There you are,” he says. “I was beginning to think we’d brought the wrong monster in.”
Silence answers. The air feels heavier immediately. I’m painfully aware of my heartbeat slamming against my ribcage.
Then, Deogal speaks. “I want to talk to her.”
His attention alone is enough to strip the heat from my blood.
“You’re here to answer my questions,” Peter says evenly. “Not make requests.”
“She made a request of me,” Deogal says, voice low and deliberate. “It would be rude not to answer it properly.”
“No.” He answers without hesitation.
Amused, Deogal leans back slightly in the chair, the chains shifting with a quiet metallic drag, but his eyes hold Peter now. Something in the room changes with it, subtle and ugly, like two animals standing too close to the same piece of ground.
“You have no control here, Deogal.” Peter says cruelly. His hands rest flat on the table, controlled enough to almost hide the tension sitting in his shoulders.
Deogal tilts his head, just slightly, like he’s listening to something the rest of us can’t hear.
“Everyone in this room wants me dead.” He says it so simply it makes my stomach turn. “At least give me one person who might hesitate before handing me over to the injection.”
Peter’s whole body hardens. “And what makes you think she’d be that person?”
Something shifts at the corner of Deogal’s mouth, not quite a smile, something worse. Slow. Knowing. His gaze drags from Peter to the glass, to me, and even through the barrier it feels like being touched. Every nerve in my body pulls tight.
Don’t. The plea hits me so suddenly it makes me lightheaded. Don’t look at me. Don’t say it. Don’t make it real.
He keeps me trapped under his attention as though every passing second feeds something within him.
“You want a monster because monsters are easier to bury,” he finally says. “but she listens like she still believes there might be something left worth saving.”
My stomach drops.
Peter turns toward the glass this time, fully, and I feel it immediately—that shift in his attention, sharp and suspicious
Deogal’s shoulders shift, almost lazy. “She has a pretty voice. The pretty ones are always nicer.”
Heat crawls violently up my neck.
Peter’s expression hardens.
“No,” he says, sharper now. “You don’t get to choose your audience.”
Deogal barely reacts.
“You want a confession?” he says. He leans forward just enough for the chains to shift against the table. “Bring her in.”
Peter’s jaw tightens, just once, and the silence that follows feels dangerous. He exhales slowly through his nose. He’s swallowing anger instead of speaking it. Then his attention cuts toward the glass, toward me.
“Come here,” he says quietly.
The words land low in my stomach, heavy and wrong, like a hand closing there from the inside.
For a second, I don’t move. Something in me pulls back on instinct, fast and violent, the same animal panic that makes your skin crawl before your brain catches up and tells you why. But hesitation is its own kind of confession.
So, I move.
My body takes over, straightening automatically. I force calm over my face like makeup over a bruise, like that’ll steady the violent shaking of my body.
The door opens. And the second I step inside, I know I’ve made a mistake because the air is different in here—hotter, close enough to feel against my throat. It clings. It catches in the back of my throat, the oxygen going stale as if it’s already been breathed by someone else.
There’s a heavy click behind me as the door seals shut, and I’m suddenly aware of how vulnerable I am because there is no barrier now.
No glass.
No separation.
I stop beside the table, and for a second, I think I’ve misjudged the room. My eyes flick once, then again.
The spare chair has gone.
Vanished.
I stand there a beat too long, cheeks darkening, sweat pooling on my upper lip.
Standing exposes me. It makes me stupidly aware of my own body all at once—my knees locked too straight, my hands with nowhere natural to rest, the fact standing there makes me feel taller and somehow smaller at the same time, like I’ve been placed here to be looked at.
“Give her your seat.” Deogal’s voice cuts through the room.
It hits me like a threat. My body reacts before my mind does, a sharp pull low in my stomach, my shoulders going tight. I hate it. I hate that he can do that with so little.
Peter stiffens. “That’s not how this works.”
Peter remains fixed, holding onto the moment like he can keep control if he just doesn’t let go first. Blood rushes through my ears so loudly that their next words are muffled.
I blink hard as if that will reset my nervous system.
The seconds crawl by with no movement. Then the chair legs scrape against the floor, loud and ugly, and Peter moves. Steps back. Leaves it open.
My legs almost give way, because now I have to choose. Taking the seat feels like agreeing to something I don’t understand, but standing there feels worse. So, I sit. Slowly. Carefully. Every movement measured, like if I do it wrong the room will notice.
The metal chair is cold through my clothes. My hands find the table because they need somewhere to go, fingers flattening against steel that feels too much like an operating table waiting for something to be opened.
For a second, I can’t look at him properly. Because seeing him here—really here, under fluorescent prison light instead of the thick, distorted darkness of sleep—does something ugly to my body.
My mind keeps trying to force the two versions together. The man who stood at the edge of my bed like a secret I should have buried. The mouth at my throat. The voice in the dark, low and patient and inside me. The thing that never felt entirely like a dream and never felt safe enough to be real.
And this... orange prison uniform stretched over broad shoulders. Chains at his wrists. Concrete walls. Cameras. Observation glass. Except none of it helps because somehow, he still looks less contained than everyone else in the room, like the prison has been built around him instead of for him.
My pulse is so fast it feels violent, beating behind my eyes, a dull throbbing pressure that makes it difficult to think.
I force myself to breathe, to drag on all my professional training.
I have done this thousands of times. This doesn’t need to be any different.
“Good morning, Deogal,” I say, and my voice holds. Barely.
The silence after it stretches.
Then he leans forward. The chains shift with him, a soft metallic whisper, and something in my chest tightens so sharply it borders on pain. His gaze drags over me, slow enough to feel like touch.
For one horrible second, neither of us speaks. Then his mouth moves, just slightly.
“Doctor,” he says.
It’s the same cadence of what he whispers in the dark. Heat floods my skin so fast it feels like humiliation. My fingers tighten against the table before I realise I’m doing it.
No. No, absolutely not.
This is interrogation. This is fluorescent light and observation notes and behavioural analysis.
This is not my bedroom.
This is not a dream.
He watches the thoughts happen. I know he does, because something shifts in his expression, faint and cruel, like satisfaction. Then, without breaking eye contact, he lifts his cuffed hands and taps two fingers once against the table.
Tap.
Tap.
My entire body locks.
It’s disgustingly familiar. The tapping on my bathroom window a week ago. The same sound I heard before I felt him at the side of my bed. Before I convinced myself stress was making me sick.
My mouth goes dry.
Deogal smiles like a man watching the first brick loosen before the whole house comes down.
My training screams at me to recover, to regain control before Peter and the others behind the glass smell blood in the water. I straighten in the chair, even though my spine feels like it might crack under the effort.
I drag a slow breath into my lungs and make myself move. I pick up my pen. The click of it sounds far too loud. I press the tip to the paper, though the words blur for a second before they settle.
“Let’s begin,” I say, and this time my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.
My other hand reaches for the file.
I let my eyes drop to the page. I need one second where I am not looking directly at him.
“Why are you talking now?” I manage.
He doesn’t answer straight away.
My pulse starts again, hard and stupid. I hate that he can probably see it in my throat.
“Why not now?”
It settles badly.
I keep my expression flat. “You were silent for months.”
“Yes.”
“You refused every interview.”
The room feels smaller. I glance down at my notes again, but the words are useless now, just shapes pretending to be useful.
I swallow once. “Then why me?”
The second the words are in the air, I want them back. They sound cheap, desperate, and something ugly within me knows I don’t want him to say the answer out loud. Not in front of Peter. Not in front of the others.
Silence folds over the room. He looks at me for so long my skin starts to feel wrong, too tight over my bones.
When he finally moves, it is slow. He leans forward until the chain between his wrists pulls taut with a quiet metallic strain, until he is close enough that I can see the tiny scar cutting through his eyebrow, the shadow of stubble at his jaw, the mouth I know better in the dark than I should.
“Because” he says, “the others ask questions they already know the answers to.”
My breath catches, small and stupid.
“But you...” He pauses there, and I swear he can hear my heart trying to break through my ribs. “You ask the ones you feel in your body first.”
The words land like fingers under my chin.
My face burns.
“You don’t know me.” I rush. “You can’t know that.”
“No,” he says softly. “You’re right. I don’t know you.”
He’s lying. His eyes give him away first—too bright, too steady, that awful flicker of amusement sitting in them like he’s watching me trip over something he placed there himself. The corner of his mouth shifts, not quite a smile, just enough to tell me he knows exactly what he’s doing.
He makes no attempt to hide it.
That is somehow worse.
I should redirect. I should drag this back to something clinical, something I can defend in the debrief later. I should remember there are men watching me, and every second of this being logged and replayed and turned into evidence.
I should end it here.
Instead, I sit there with my mouth dry and my pulse beating so hard it feels lodged in my teeth, while a man in chains looks at me like he has already had access to parts of me I haven’t admitted exist.
My hand drops to the file in front of me, fingers pressing too hard against the paper. I look down.
Homicide.
The word hits like cold water.
Victims. Statements. Blood. Men dead because of him.
I latch onto it. “Why did you kill them?”
For the first time, something in him changes. Surprise flicks across his face, sharp and then gone like it was never there.
He leans back slightly. “Not with them here.”
My spine locks.
Of course.
Of course that’s what this is.
He wants to get me alone.
Peter responds immediately. “Not happening.”
The refusal is sharp, but it doesn’t land the way it should. There’s a fracture in it now. He’s seen the shift in the room. He definitely doesn’t trust me in the middle of it, but he needs something, a crack he can use. And right now, I am the closest thing he has to one.
My throat feels tight.
I glance back, just for a second, and I can feel Peter already reading the answer on my face before I’ve even decided to give it.
“Give us a minute,” I hear myself say.
Peter turns sharply. “Absolutely not.”
“If he’s going to engage,” I say, my voice quieter now, “let him.”
He stares at me. “Rheda—”
“It’s fine.” I interrupt, too fast. “If anything happens, come straight back in.”
I turn away because if Peter really looks at me right now, he’ll see it. How hard I’m holding myself together. How badly I want this room empty.
For a second, nobody moves. The room just sits there, suffocating on it.
I keep my eyes on the file in front of me, because looking at either of them feels impossible.
I can feel Peter still standing there beside me.
I can feel the hesitation in it, the fact that he knows this is a bad idea and is trying to decide whether I’m worth overruling in front of everyone.
Seconds stretch.
Then, finally, I hear it. The quiet rustle of fabric. The shift of shoes against the floor. A breath, sharp through someone’s nose.
Movement.
The door opens behind me, heavy and mechanical, the sound dragging across the room like something being peeled open. Cold air slips in for half a second. Then it closes with a sharp hiss.
I stare at the table for a moment longer, my hand still flat against the file, my pulse climbing so hard it makes my fingers feel numb.
And just like that, we are alone, and if anything, the silence gets worse.
My pulse climbs.
“Why did you kill them?” The question sounds different now, pitched.
His gaze moves over me slowly like he is checking what still belongs to him.
He rotates his wrists within the restraint. I can’t stop staring at them like I know something is about to happen.
“Careful, Doctor.” His voice is quiet.
My mouth dries. “What am I being careful of?”
“You’re watching the wrong thing,” he says, his lip curling into a smile.
“I’m observing your restraints,” I reply. “Which is exactly what I should be doing.”
His head tilts, slight, controlled, but enough to change the angle of him. His gaze drags over me in a slow, sweeping touch.
“You should be watching yourself.”
“You’re attempting to destabilise the interview,” I say, flustered. I readjust in my chair like that will help the heat in my cheeks.
“You’re already destabilised.”
I swallow hard. “I am in control of this interrogation.”
“Sure, you are.” Deogal tilts his head. And this time the almost-smile settles properly, subtle but undeniable. “If it helps you sleep at night.”