Chapter 18
The Flame
“Breathe for me, Bella.”
Luca’s voice wrapped around me like warm smoke, calm and steady, coaxing my body into relaxing as I lay sprawled across soft sheets. My eyes were half-lidded, my limbs heavy with exhaustion.
“Good girl,” he murmured when I obeyed. “There you go. I’ve got you.”
I smiled softly, turning my face further into the pillow. I was drifting between realms, stuck between waking and sleeping. I could feel my body, but I was floating, my mind still asleep.
My dream was fuzzy. I couldn’t see him properly, and that was strange.
Usually in my dreams, I could at least make out parts of him.
A hand. A chest. The line of his hips when he stood near the camera and showed me exactly how much he wanted me.
But this time everything felt blurred around the edges, hazy and distorted, like my brain couldn’t decide what it wanted to show me.
Still, I knew it was Luca.
I knew because of the voice.
“You’re thinking too hard again,” he teased gently. “You always do that when you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“You’re chewing the inside of your cheek.”
A soft laugh escaped me because he was right. He was always right about little things like that.
“I can practically hear you glaring through the phone,” I muttered.
Another laugh.
Then silence.
Not an uncomfortable silence. It never was with Luca. It was the kind that settled warmly around me. The kind of silence that came with familiarity and warmth.
“Luca,” I breathed. I shifted onto my back, finally looking up, and a scream was smothered by a gloved hand.
The silver mask stared down at me.
Silas tilted his head slowly, the silver catching the dim light as he leaned over me, his other gloved hand resting beside my head.
But when he spoke, it was still Luca’s voice.
“You’re frightened again, little ember.”
I tried to move away from him, but his hand slid against my throat before I could.
“Don’t try to run from me, Belle. Never run from me again.”
He wasn’t rough, and I wasn’t scared.
His thumb stroked slowly over my pulse, and I hated the way my body melted beneath the touch.
“H-how are you doing that?” I whispered.
The mask lowered closer.
“You already know.”
Luca’s voice.
Silas’s body.
Luca’s calm.
Silas’s presence.
Nothing made sense anymore.
The room flickered around me. One second I was lying in the basement bed beneath the glow of the overhead lights, and the next I was back in my bedroom at home, curled in my egg chair with my phone pressed to my ear whilst Luca talked me through another panic attack.
“Look at me, Belle.”
Silver.
Black gloves.
Warm voice.
“You’re safe.”
The words should not have comforted me coming from him.
And yet they did.
I frowned in my sleep, something deep inside me twisting painfully as the dream shifted again.
Now I was beneath the couch in my father’s office, my chest heaving as Silas crouched in front of me.
Only this time, when he brought his finger to the mask, Luca’s voice whispered softly through the darkness.
“Good girl.”
My eyes snapped open.
For one horrible second, I didn’t know where I was.
The basement ceiling slowly came into focus above me, my pulse hammering wildly as the dream clung stubbornly to the edges of my mind.
Luca.
Silas.
The mask.
The voice.
I dragged a hand over my face and sat upright too quickly, my stomach rolling as dizziness hit me.
“What the fuck…” I whispered.
The room was empty.
No silver mask waiting in the corner.
No silent figure leaning against the wall watching me.
Just me.
A shaky breath escaped me before I could stop it, relief flooding through my body so intensely it almost hurt.
Thank God.
I pressed both hands against my face, trying to steady myself.
This was getting ridiculous now.
Dreams were one thing. People dreamed weird shit all the time. But this? My brain was beginning to blur Luca and Silas together in ways that genuinely unsettled me.
Luca had become my safety net. The person I willingly told all my secrets to.
But day by day, piece by piece, Silas was replacing him.
He forced my secrets through the cameras and monitoring.
He inserted himself into the space I had reserved for Luca, and with no way to contact him—to remind myself he was real—there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I shoved the blanket off me and climbed out of bed, pacing the small room whilst trying to force my thoughts into some kind of order.
Was I losing my mind?
Maybe isolation was finally getting to me. Maybe my brain was desperately trying to merge the only two men who had ever paid attention to me into one person because it was easier than accepting reality.
Because reality was that Luca made me feel safe.
Silas absolutely fucking didn’t.
One listened to me talk for hours about my fears and my dreams, and my stupid little thoughts that nobody else cared enough to hear.
The other had kidnapped me.
Luca comforted me in ways nobody else ever had.
Silas terrified me in ways I didn’t fully understand yet. And yet…
I stopped pacing.
Luca had always taught me to pay attention.
To breathe through panic.
To listen instead of react.
To notice details.
And now I was starting to realise that everything Luca had ever taught me seemed perfectly designed for surviving Silas.
That’s why I was blending the two.
Because Luca was still here. My subconscious remembered him. Remembered what he had taught me. He never saved me. He always made me think for myself.
And that was all I needed to escape here.