Chapter Forty-Nine
Rheda
I stop outside the interrogation room without meaning to. My fingers curl around the doorframe as though it’s keeping me upright.
The room is quiet enough that I can hear the fluorescent light buzzing.
I stare at it longer than I should.
The second hand moves, but it feels delayed, like time is dragging itself forward instead of flowing. One second. Then another. Neither of them land properly. My skin prickles. I check it again, irrationally certain the numbers will have changed into something impossible.
They haven’t.
When I look up, my attention catches on the room like a hook in skin. Peter is already inside, sitting at the table, waiting for me. His posture is rigid, impatient.
I pause at the threshold without really knowing why. Something in my body is trying to pull backwards. My hand still rests on the doorframe. My pulse starts to climb.
Come here. Peter’s words still echo in the back of my mind.
I can almost feel it, the ghost of hands on my skin, something brutal positioning me like a doll.
No.
I force it down, burying under every ounce of control I can muster.
Peter glances over his shoulder. That look alone is enough to snap my posture back into place. I fix my shoulders, swallow down the lump in my throat. I step forward before my body can resist again, crossing the threshold properly this time.
The door closes behind me with a quiet click.
I flinch, my muscles bracing before I can stop them. I try to regulate it—slow inhale, measured exhale—but the rhythm doesn’t settle cleanly. It stutters, like my body is no longer following the instruction properly.
The room is exactly as it should be. Table bolted to the floor. Chair positioned opposite. Walls bare. No visual stimuli, no distractions. Designed for control, for clarity, for psychological pressure.
There’s a chair for me.
I notice it instantly.
My gaze flicks to it beside the table, then back again, checking, recalibrating. I shift my weight slightly, and a dull ache runs through my thighs. A lingering soreness, deep in the muscle, like the aftermath of strain, like I’ve been tense for too long. I blink slowly.
Peter clears his throat, already settling into position like he owns the space. “Let’s continue.”
I move automatically, slipping into the chair.
I can feel him. I haven’t even looked yet, but I can feel him.
The awareness is immediate and invasive, like the air itself has thickened around him. My skin prickles, nerves firing in a way that doesn’t match the situation, and I hate how instinctive it is.
Eventually, I force myself to look.
My eyes track over his face, searching for something I can’t name. He is unfairly beautiful. Sharp cheekbones, dark lashes, a mouth too soft-looking for the violence attached to his name. Everything about him is precise, almost delicate, until I look at his eyes.
It ruins it.
His pupils are swollen, dark enough to swallow the colour whole. They make the rest of him feel wrong, like beauty stretched over something that was never meant to wear it.
Peter leans forward. “So, you’re ready to speak.”
Deogal says nothing. He just sits there, looking at Peter, letting the quiet drag on until the room starts to tighten around it.
“We have a date for your death. Friday. It’s been brought forward.” Peter hums.
My stomach lurches before I can stop it, palms immediately slick.
Friday.
The word rots through me.
I look at the bruises around his wrists and something sudden twists low in my stomach.
If he says they hurt him, Peter has to document it. If Peter documents it, the board has to review it.
Review means delay.
Delay means alive.
My fingers tighten around the file hard enough to bend the paper.
“You said you’d talk.” The words fall out before I can stop them. My voice comes out rougher than I expect, like I’ve been screaming.
Deogal inclines his head slightly. His black eyes settle on me, not just watching, but taking. The kind of attention that feels like he’s peeling something back layer by layer just by looking.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Ask.”
It lands too easy.
My stomach turns.
For a second, I can’t move. I glance at Peter instinctively, looking for him to step in, to take the room back. He doesn’t say anything.
And Deogal is watching me. Waiting for me.
I swallow, hard enough it hurts. My fingers tighten around the file in my hands, the edge of the paper biting into my palm. The case file. The victims. The reason I am here.
The reason he is here.
The reason he is going to die if no one says the right thing in the right room with the right people listening.
My throat tightens.
I already know too much. I’ve seen enough in pieces, in sleep, in broken flashes that don’t belong to me and still wake up inside my body like bruises. I know there is something beneath the murders. Something done to him first.
But knowing it doesn’t matter. Dreams don’t change sentencing. Instinct doesn’t stop a death warrant.
He has to say it. Out loud. In front of Peter.
I force air into my lungs. “Why did you kill them?”
The room goes so quiet I can hear blood rushing in my ears.
His mouth parts slightly, and when he speaks his voice is calm enough to make my stomach turn. “They took from me.”
My pulse slams against my throat.
A confession.
My hand tightens so hard around the file the pages crumple, and he sees it. His mouth shifts, faint and cruel, because he knows exactly what he’s just handed us.
Peter leans forward. “What did they take?”
Deogal doesn’t look at him. His eyes stay fixed on me, dark and unbroken. It does something ugly to me.
I can hear Peter breathing. I feel pinned here, throat tight, pulse beating too hard in the soft place beneath my jaw.
Peter asks again, sharper this time, but it barely reaches me. “What did they take?”
Still nothing.
I force myself to swallow. It hurts.
“What did they take from you?” I try.
His eyes don’t leave mine. “The part that says no.”
The words go through me so cleanly that I almost don’t feel them at first.
My thighs suddenly ache again, sharper this time, sudden enough that I have to shift my weight to hide it. I feel heat climb the back of my neck and then drain out of me just as quickly.
Peter lets out a hard, disgusted breath beside me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Deogal doesn’t answer him. He watches me absorb it.
The part that says no.
I know what he’s doing.
He’s giving me pieces. Not enough to help him. Just enough to hurt me.
My voice comes out lower than before. “What did they do to you?”
Peter turns his head sharply. “Rheda—”
I don’t look at him.
I can’t.
Because if I look away now, if I let Peter shut this down, it disappears. It goes back inside Deogal. Back inside the dreams. Back into things I can’t prove.
And Friday stays Friday.
My fingers dig into my badge.
Say it.
Please.
Just say it.
I ask again, slower this time. “What did they do to you, Deogal?”
“You want me to make this easier for you,” Deogal says.
My pulse climbs. “That isn’t what I asked.”
“No,” he murmurs. “It isn’t.”
He knows.
He knows exactly what I’m trying to do. He knows I’m asking because testimony changes things. Because mitigation matters. Because a documented history of torture, coercion, abuse, institutional concealment—anything—could slow the board down, could force review, could make death less immediate.
It could keep him alive.
Peter goes still beside me.
“What did they do to you?”
“Careful,” Peter says sharply.
I barely hear him.
Something shifts across Deogal’s face. Small. Brief. Like he enjoys hearing the question.
Peter leans back slightly from the table. “This interview is not about your sympathy.”
Heat climbs instantly up my throat.
“I’m not sympathising,” I say too quickly.
Peter’s eyes cut toward me. The room feels suddenly too quiet.
Deogal watches me through all of it without blinking. He finally breaks the silence. “They hurt me.”
The answer should feel important. Instead, it slides under my skin wrong. It’s too vague. Too easy.
My chest tightens with frustration. “How?”
Peter’s jaw locks immediately. “Enough.”
Deogal shifts forward an inch.
“First they leave you in the dark long enough that every sound starts feeling like a threat,” he says quietly. “Then they make you wait outside the door while somebody else screams.”
My stomach drops.
“Then eventually,” his eyes stay fixed on mine, “your body starts shaking before they even touch you.”
My fingers tighten painfully around the file.
Peter shoves back from the table hard enough that the chair legs screech.
“Stop.” His voice hardens. “Don’t you dare sit there and make her listen to this.”
Deogal smiles faintly. “I thought you wanted a confession.”
“We already have one.”
“No,” Deogal says. “You have a word you can use.”
He turns back to me. “And she wants the rest.”
Heat crawls up my throat, sharp and humiliating.
Peter looks at me like he doesn’t recognise me.
I force myself to speak before he can. “Did they torture you?”
My pulse is so loud I can barely hear anything else.
Deogal’s eyes hold mine.
Please.
Say yes.
Say it.
Say it so I can write it down. Say it so he has to hear it. Say it so they can’t put you down like an animal and pretend this was simple.
For a second, I think he will. His mouth parts. My whole body tightens.
Then his voice drops, “What would you do with my yes, Doctor?”
The disappointment is so violent it almost feels physical.
My voice comes out too quiet. “Answer the question.”
“No.”
The word hits harder than yes would have.
No.
Not because it’s denial.
Because it’s punishment.
Peter exhales through his nose, harsh and relieved. “There. Done.”
“No,” I say, too quickly. “That’s not—”
Peter cuts across me. “He answered.”
“He’s lying.”
My pulse drops into my stomach.
Peter’s eyes narrow. “You want to repeat that?”
I feel Deogal watching me. I feel the trap closing. I shouldn’t have said it.
Damn.
Peter steps closer to the table. “You’re not here to defend him.”
“I’m not defending him.”
“You just accused a condemned prisoner of lying because he didn’t give you the answer you wanted.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Because he’s right. Not in the way he thinks, but enough.
Deogal’s voice slips into the space between us. “She wants me alive.”
My head snaps toward him. The words land worse than anything else he could have said.
“That’s enough,” Peter says.
But Deogal isn’t finished. “She wants a reason that looks clean on paper.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“She wants a wound she can show someone.”
“Enough.” Peter slams his hand onto the table. The crack of it makes me flinch.
Deogal doesn’t move. His gaze drops for half a second to my hands, to the file crushed between my fingers, then lifts again.
“You don’t need me to say what happened,” he says quietly. “You need permission to believe it.”
My throat closes.
For a moment, I can’t breathe around it.
Peter’s voice is low now, dangerous.
“This ends Friday. No more stories. No more games. You killed three people. You fucking butchered them, and you are not going to sit here and dress it up until she feels sorry for you.”
Peter’s face changes. “Clear the room.”
The command makes my palms sweat. It’s violent, too sudden.
The guards move immediately. The door unlocks with a sharp mechanical click that sounds too loud in the space, like something being broken open rather than released.
I don’t move.
For a second, just a second, I stay exactly where I am, my body refusing the instruction in a way I don’t understand.
It clings to me, thick and disorienting, like I’m being pulled in two directions at once.
Everything I know—training, instinct, logic—is pushing me toward the door, toward distance, toward safety.
But the rest of me is still standing in front of him, waiting for a word he refuses to give me.
That’s all I needed.
One word. One useful, official word.
He could have given it to me but he chose not to.
And somehow that hurts worse than the confession.
“Rheda.” Peter’s voice is sharper now.
That breaks it. I step back. Once then again.
Each movement feels slightly delayed, like my body is catching up to a decision my mind has already made. The room doesn’t shift the way it should when I move away from him.
I don’t look back.
I can’t.
Because I know, with a certainty that settles cold and heavy in my chest, that if I do...I’ll ask again.
I’ll give him another chance to refuse me.