Chapter 25 Bree
Bree
I wake naked on floor cushions.
Velvet under my skin. Warm. Too warm.
My body hums like I’ve been running, like I’ve been touched everywhere.
For a moment I can’t tell if I’m breathing or if the air is breathing me.
Something moves beyond the edge of the light.
A shape—tall, human—dark hair catching the faint glow of Ether that still drifts above the cushions.
I blink once, twice. The shape doesn’t vanish.
A ghost, then.
Of course it’s a ghost. Everything here is ghosts.
I let my eyes close again.
Heat rolls through me in slow, lazy waves.
Memory, maybe. His hands sliding down my back. His mouth at my throat.
The low voice that told me I was made for surrender.
Every nerve answers as if it’s happening again. My hips tilt. My breath catches.
The cushions exhale silver light and my Ether follows—soft, obedient, dark at the edges.
A whisper brushes my ear: good girl.
I arch toward it before I remember there’s no one here.
When I open my eyes, the ghost is closer.
Kneeling now. Close enough that I can almost make out a face.
My heart trips over itself. “No…” The sound is barely a breath.
It can’t be him. I killed him. I saw—
The thought unravels before it can finish.
The memory drags me back under.
Shadow against skin. The press of teeth where my pulse lives.
Pleasure sharp enough to burn.
I reach for air that isn’t there and moan into the dark.
My Ether rises in thin, luminous threads, answering hunger with hunger.
Every pulse makes the silver dimmer.
I should be afraid of that, but all I feel is want.
Footsteps again. Closer.
I twist onto my side, half-asleep, half-remembering. Fingers—his fingers—draw patterns between my thighs.
My body trembles, chasing sensation that might be dream, might be memory, might be both.
The cushions slide beneath me. The air tastes sweet and metallic.
I come with a sound that isn’t mine, Ether flooding outward in black-rimmed light.
For a heartbeat the ghost’s face flares in that light—shock, awe, pain.
Then everything fades.
When I blink, he’s beside me. Real enough to cast a shadow.
Real enough that the cold from him feels like air after fire.
My hand lifts without thinking, reaching for warmth that isn’t here anymore.
But the ghost’s fingers brush mine instead.
Light bursts—silver threaded with black. Beautiful. Wrong.
It wraps around us like smoke, twining from my wrist to his.
He shudders, eyes going wide, mouth parting as if to speak.
No sound comes out—only a gasp that tears through the quiet like a prayer.
I feel something pull from me, something essential, and still I don’t let go.
The warmth fades first.
Then the light.
Then him.
He’s still holding my hand when the world starts to dim.
I can feel the tremor in his fingers, the slowing rhythm of his breath.
A thread hums between us—thin, alive, unfinished.
His voice finally finds me as everything tilts toward dark.
Soft. Distant. Devoted.
“I’ll find you again,” he says. “However long it takes. I’ll find you.”
The words chase me down as I fall back into the dream.
Back to the silk. The hands. The heat.
Back to belonging.
I don’t notice the Ether dimming around me, or how his body goes still beside the cushions.
I just sink into the warmth, sighing like I’ve come home.
Maybe I’m sleeping.
Maybe I’m awake.
I can’t tell anymore.
All I know is I want to go back.